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Doesn't all of that simply mean Texas (and the UK) are basically only giving up their seat at the table but still have to do all the things the other party wants in order to stay connected?

Unless the leaving party has a lot of somethings that the party they are leaving from wants, they don't really have much of a position to bargain.

Everyone seems to think that a (relatively) small unit of land and their people can 'take care of themselves', but unless you want to go back to just before the industrial revolution it really doesn't work that way. Almost everything everyone touches every day has some form of link to 'the outside world'.

Giving up interconnectivity really doesn't give anything back in return. (including self-regulation, unless you'd start living under a dome, or on the moon)



A "soft Brexit" would mean the UK would still have to follow the majority of EU rules, yet give up their say in the making of those rules. It sounds rather unfair, yet it is basically the EEA arrangement which Norway/Iceland/Liechtenstein already have, and appear happy with overall (they don't want to move toward full membership which would give them an equal say, nor do they want to leave the EEA which would give them greater independence in decision-making). Given the political constraint that full EU membership is no longer an option (absent a second referendum reversing the first), such a "soft Brexit" might actually put the UK in a better economic position than a "hard Brexit" in which they have more of a say in things but also have greater barriers to trade with the EU.

An independent Texas might find that an unequal deal with the US, in which the US gets to make all the major economic decisions and Texas just has to accept them, might actually put them in a better economic position than a more equal deal with greater trade barriers.

It isn't clear that Texas has that much of a say at the present anyway. For the last twenty to thirty years, it has been considered safe Republican territory, which given the nature of the US political system means it gets far less say than a swing state does. (That said, Texas used to be a swing state, and probably is going to become one again at some point, which will restore to it a lot of the political power it currently lacks.)


There about 10% away from being a swing state.




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