the state of the union is "overrated"

Beneath the fold this week comes news that Belgium may soon cease to exist.

“We are two different nations, an artificial state created as a buffer between big powers, and we have nothing in common except a king, chocolate and beer,” said Filip Dewinter, the leader of Vlaams Belang, or Flemish Bloc, the extreme-right, xenophobic Flemish party, in an interview. “It’s ‘bye-bye, Belgium’ time.”

Personally, I think Mr. Dewinter vastly underestimates the ability of chocolate and beer to bring people together.

Anyway, Megan McArdle at Atlantic raises an interesting point:

The problem of disentangling financial assets and currency is one of the major forces mitigating against separatism...Now that the European Union has taken over the currency, as well as many of the trade and customs functions of traditional federal governments, Belgium as a state suddenly looks a lot less necessary. One wonders if the current era of economic integration (assuming it continues) might not bring increasing political balkanization.

For me, this is a compelling argument for a North American economic (not political) union (now would be a good a time as any to make one, since the USD and Loonie are now trading at 1:1.) This would be a much happier continent if we split into several more countries. California is already the world's 6th largest economy, Vermont actually has a (relatively) active secessionist movement, and Texas feels as foreign to me as Canada (which itself has a much more likely chance of balkanizing than the US.)

There would, of course, be the added benefit of no longer having an imperial government in DC (which itself could be returned to the Republic of Maryland and perhaps turned into some sort of super-awesome paintball park) getting us involved in wars on the other side of the world and attempting to impose similar top-down arrangements on other "artificial states" that might be better off broken into a two or three smaller entities. But I digress...

It's hard for me to get excited about being American these days. But I would relish the chance to be a founding citizen of Cascadia or Baja Arizona.