Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“Arguments for the right of a region, Catalonia or Scotland, to secede are often put as a right to self-determination. That, in my view, is to confuse groups with persons. Catalans are persons; ‘The Catalans’ are not. A Catalan has rights, the collective does not. If the Spanish government violates the rights of a Catalan by taxing or drafting him those would still be violations of his rights if done by a Catalonian government. The arguments for and against secession that interest me have to do not with whether peoples have a right to self-determination but whether making secession easier will make the world a better or a worse place for the persons who live in it. To answer that question, I begin with a short, but I think relevant, digression.” (08/04/25)