next_migration | Getting out of Dodge (Reply)

I’m continuing to skip around in presenting text from my book. Since I haven’t yet been able to post it as a free PDF, I do want to make all of the text (modified for Internet) available. However, I want to skip over some of my grim introductory discussion of the political collapse of the United States in order to get faster into the most important part, which is, if you can’t stay where you are, where should you go? So the following text presupposes some argument to the effect that we’re on the verge of a civil war and the breakup of the Union may follow, and some discussion of others’ views of the geographic divisions in American culture. I will go back to those topics at some point.

If you’re living in a place that’s seriously unsustainable, where should you move for a less grim future? As we will see, this will depend upon your personal preferences and circumstances. These should primarily include your political, religious, and cultural affiliations, your social ties, and your potential for employment. More fortunate Americans, driven by the false promise of a stable consumer lifestyle and political regime that will always be pretty much the same across the country, have often chosen their homes based on such secondary criteria as pleasant weather, ultra-low state taxes, or the proximity of beaches or ski slopes. These amenities are nice, if that’s what you value, but far less important than a relatively secure living situation within a supportive community.

Some people will be happy in their larger geographic region and only want to get out of a coastal city with too high a population and too low an elevation to be well situated to face America’s coming decline. What about someone who lives in Los Angeles, Phoenix, or Las Vegas and wants to get out of not just that city, but the broader region it’s in? When the entire region is facing serious long-term problems, just moving out of Phoenix to Humboldt, Arizona, say, will not avoid the problem. Your life might be a little cheaper there, and a small community with less wealth might suffer less from decline, but droughts, suffocating heat waves, and fires will affect you too. In fact, in case of crises the authorities will consider it a much higher priority to keep power, water, and fuel flowing to Phoenix, because seven thousand angry citizens are easier to deal with (or evacuate, in the worst case) than a million angry citizens. The entire Southwest is going to be in trouble, and each person who can remove themselves from it in advance reduces the problem by that much. So: people who don’t already live in the most threatened regions should not move there, and current residents who are willing and able to leave them should strongly consider doing so, and soon.

Let me emphasize that there are two distinct reasons to consider leaving as soon as you can manage it. One is that, especially if you live in the Southwest, you might not have much longer before the consequences of climate change start seriously hammering your hometown. The other is that, especially if you live in the Southwest, less discreet members of the Red superfaction are beginning to talk about wanting to make sure you can’t escape. Sitting congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-Ga.) recently agreed that relocators from California might be barred from voting in their new homes, this in response to a right-wing pundit who suggested that former blue-state residents should be “actively discriminat[ed] against ... through legislation,” including not only exclusion from the franchise but “hav[ing] to pay a tax for their sins [sic].” To these representatives of their superfaction, people from California or other diverse areas are not Real Americans and, therefore, effectively, non-Americans who shouldn’t have the right to go to other states and be treated as American citizens. If the Union were to fully break up, or states became free to ignore the rights of citizens, there is a high risk that refugees from Southwestern disasters would not be permitted to leave, or would be allowed into or through Red states only if they possessed significant portable wealth to hand over (“a tax for their sins”). Again, if you personally would prefer to leave for a Red state because you are a religious conservative, that might not matter. Could you prove it during a crisis—assuming you were given the chance?

“Doesn’t the ability to move away from a future disaster zone reflect privilege?”

Yes, it does. That doesn’t mean that it’s wrong for you to do it. If moving out of a danger zone made matters worse for those who were left behind, being the first rat off the sinking ship might be immoral. However, the contrary is true in most cases. Of course, if bourgeois outmigration meant, e.g., that all the doctors and nurses left the state, that would be harmful; but this seems unlikely to happen. It’s more likely that if some ordinary workers move out, a tighter labor market would force employers to offer the remaining workers higher pay, or benefits or fairer scheduling or paid job training, to recruit the labor they want.

Underprivileged groups suffer the most from both overpopulation and overly greedy resource use. Between 2010 and 2019, Latino populations in the West increased by over 200% in the highest-risk areas for fire compared to zero-risk areas, even as white populations in the highest-risk areas fell 32%. The explanation is that many working-class Latinos have been priced out of housing in the core urbanized areas, and can only afford housing in more remote, higher-risk rural areas. Every middle-class resident who moves out of an urbanized area without being replaced by one from another state (or country) thereby reduces overall housing demand, and makes housing in the lower-risk area a tiny bit cheaper. The wealthier use more water than average, too, so the loss of their consumption makes a little more water available for others.

If you believe disaster—at least serious economic decline, if not something more spectacular—is probably coming sooner or later for your current hometown, removing yourself from its path in advance will reduce the future burden on others, as well as yourself. You and your family won’t be adding to the number of needy people standing in line at a food bank, or sleeping on gym floors after an evacuation. If friends and family who remain behind in that area someday ended up as refugees due to climate catastrophe or homeless due to job loss, you’d be able to invite them to come and stay with you, helping them to get established in a more sustainable area.

Where should you go, then? There are several criteria to consider at the regional level.

o Future climate and economic circumstances

o Present employment opportunities

o Family or community ties

o Possible political future

By and large, the northwestern United States east to the northern Great Plains should be avoided by most people. Day and Hall (2016) evaluate most of that region as being among the more sustainable parts of the country, except for the densely populated western part of Oregon and Washington, but ecosystem services in most of the area, such as water supply, are quite low. A major reason for that “sustainability” is therefore that population density is low, and most of the area has few towns of sufficient size to offer many employment opportunities. The wet coastal portions of Oregon and Washington have (or have had) a climate suitable to sustain large populations, but the physical and political climate has appealed to enough people that cost of living in the bigger cities is getting very high. The region is also seeing significant climate and infrastructure problems, such as bizarre heat waves. Summer droughts and fire risks will probably also increase in the Northwest.

The dry parts of the continental Northwest have some things in common economically and culturally with parts of the dry Southwest. If your marketable skills are in a field that is by its nature predominantly Western—ranching, for example—or if you are deeply emotionally attached to the Western way of life (Colin Woodard’s [2012] “Far West” culture), then you may be one of the few people who would be best off moving from the Southwest to the Northwest. Beware of areas of highest fire risk, though.

Most of the Great Plains, including the wetter eastern parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska and the Dakotas, are considered by Day and Hall to be in good position for the future. However, as for the Northwest, much of that sustainability comes from their low populations. The Dakotas, in particular, are too dry for non-irrigated agriculture. Precipitation may sometimes increase, but become more variable, with less snow and hotter summer temperatures, while in the southern Great Plains, life-threatening heat may become the summer norm. Probably the only people who should move to the Great Plains are people who have local ties and/or specialized skills in local demand.

“What about Alaska and Hawai’i?”

Don’t even think about Hawai’i. Hawai’i already has super-expensive housing, is remotely located in the middle of the ocean, and most of its food and consumer goods are supplied from outside. It was brought into the Union relatively recently, at gunpoint, so that it could serve as a naval base for the American empire. If the federal government lost the ability to exert constant power over Hawai’i, the state might well reclaim effective, if not overt, independence, and recently arrived “haoles” with few locally useful skills would not be popular people.

Alaska may be slightly less remote and expensive, but still gets a lot of food and other goods shipped in from distant places at high cost. Climate change will be conspicuous in this area, including melting of the permafrost that underlies many communities. As we have seen, some Russian thinkers like the idea of taking back Alaska, and its fossil fuels, once the U.S. falls apart. It’s not impossible that parts of the state would end up under Russian occupation. Rural Alaskans are mostly First Nations people and many have not yet been bludgeoned into forgetting all their traditional knowledge, so might be able to go back to fending for themselves if left alone to do so. Unless you are equally well equipped or have real ties to Alaska, there’s no reason you should prefer town living in Alaska to town living in the Lower 48, and plenty of reason why you shouldn’t.

For everyone else, the eastern half of the country, though more densely populated, should still be preferred for its greater capacity to absorb a large number of migrants. The primary reason for this is its far greater freshwater supplies, both now and in the predicted future. Water is life: both agriculture and industry, to say nothing of daily life, require water. People with very specialized skills, who can only work or be employed in a few places, are likely to weigh employment heavily in selecting a new home. However, most people could equally well be employed in any region, though not in every town in any region. In some places, the same skills might get you a different job title and a lower salary. Perhaps that is not as unthinkable as we have been taught to believe.

As will be discussed later in stronger terms, for those who do not have substantial savings or in-demand skills, a long-distance move is far more feasible if you have someone on the far end who can help you until you settle in. Likewise, for most older people, being near (even if sometimes not too near) younger relatives is a major benefit. If moving to a specific community where you have trustworthy family or friends is your best or only means of getting out of a dangerous spot, then you may have to settle for whatever political circumstances come with that.

If these are not considerations, I consider it rational to place very heavy weight on future political circumstances. As I will argue, with the country facing an escalating risk of civil war, it seems entirely possible that the eastern United States will someday be divided into multiple nations—hopefully only two and both good-sized, as anything else could well precipitate an immediate war and/or humanitarian catastrophe. At present, it seems fairly likely that much of the Northeastern quarter of the country, west to Minnesota (and, I prefer to believe, Iowa), would form a more-or-less democratic nation, at least if the citizenry of each state has an effective voice, while a larger Southeastern region, minimally from Missouri to South Carolina, Texas, and Florida, would prefer to form an illiberal, theocratic semi-democracy or Herrenvolk democracy. The future affiliations of a few border states, as noted, are hard to predict.

I strongly favor secular democracy. I think it is worth making a priority of striving to ensure that some portion of the current Union preserves that form of government as we decline, and would strongly prefer to live in that portion. If you feel the same, in looking for a new home you should focus on the northeastern quarter of the continental U.S.—but not the already overpopulated areas of the extreme Northeast. Readers who would prefer to live under overtly religious government or Herrenvolk democracy should look to the Southeast as the place most congenial to their beliefs. For reasons to be discussed later I am unwilling to predict the fates of Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, and possibly Indiana, but some of them could be worth gambling on. (Any of them would be if they’re the only option available to you. Most people—though not all—could at least physically survive in any of those states, no matter how odious they might find its future government. If everyone stays parked in the Southwest, many won’t survive.)

Secular democrats, especially ones who consider themselves liberal or who emphasize their identity as members of targeted subgroups, may be inclined to move to the bluest states they can find, avoiding the risks and short-term downsides of moving to a red-ruled bluish state such as Wisconsin. This “Big Sort,” already progressed alarmingly far, could become a catastrophic mistake. Insurrectionist theocrat Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri was reported by the Kansas City Star to celebrate on the day Roe v. Wade was overturned by claiming that this would cement Republican national rule via the electoral college—minority rule, though he failed to acknowledge it. Here’s his gloating prediction:

[T]he effect is going to be that more and more red states are going to become more red, purple states are going to become red and the blue states are going to get a lot bluer. And I would look for Republicans as a result of this to extend their strength in the Electoral College. And that’s very good news.

Well, good for conservative Christian men anyway (he also envisions that, as the reporter phrased it, “social conservatives would no longer have to work with fiscal conservatives in politics,” the implications being fairly clear). Since purple states mostly have GOP-dominated legislatures, as do some bluish states thanks to Project Redmap and the extreme gerrymandering that followed, Hawley’s assumption and hope is that women who fear they might someday need an abortion, or people who need to use contraception or to exist as LGBTQ (or, perhaps, non-Christian), will flee those states, tipping their factional balance into the genuinely red zone. The solidly blue states, though, are not safe or able to house all those fleeing heretics and infidels. Since they are small and/or urban-dominated, most are already densely populated, as their housing costs may hint. California is spacious, but running out of water in many places. New England has water, but cannot begin to cultivate its own food.

Under South Africa’s apartheid regime, Africans were confined to “bantustans,” small reservations on poor land that were barely survivable—very much like Native American reservations in the first wave of American imperialism. Remember that word and keep it handy in formulating your plans for the future; consider its application to the urban vs. rural distribution of factions in the Yugoslavian civil war and genocide. At all costs, the Blue faction should not be collaborating in allowing themselves to be packed into bantustans in hard times.

Facing a permanent superminority in the Senate despite holding a majority of the population, those bantustans would face any kind of oppression and exploitation the supermajority desired. For example, the Border Patrol—a militarized agency employing many right-wingers—now has the power to essentially run amuck, freely stopping, harassing or assaulting anyone they like, within 100 miles of any border. That area includes almost two-thirds of the U.S. population, who are disproportionately blue because the target zone encompasses most of our largest cities, which are coastal, and some entire small states in the blue Northeast. Even if it remained possible for a liberal President to be elected and take office, the recent trend for single lower-court Trump judges to seize control of national executive policy could mean that a permanently red Senate and federal court system could direct the agency into a permanent role of terrorizing the Blue faction.

Trump also has recently explicitly stated that if re-elected or re-installed by coup in 2024, he would (illegally) seize control of the National Guard in blue states and send them into blue cities, to be used against criminals, drug addicts, the mentally ill, and the homeless; on the excuse of “crime” he would literally set up concentration camps for perhaps “millions” of homeless (and others?) from blue cities. If blue regions attempted to secede in response to such tyrannical abuses, they could be met with even greater military violence, which, as in Yugoslavia, would be easier because of the small geographic areas to target. Or they might just be blockaded, at which point they would find that generating most of the nation’s economic activity doesn’t fully compensate for generating very little of its food. (Go to DuckDuckGo—not Google—and look up Qalqilya if you want to know what it’s like to live in an urban bantustan when the farmland is held by a faction that hates you.)

Guaranteed abortion access shouldn’t be the deciding factor for most people in choosing where to move. How many of the people who have the luxury of choosing where to move, which implies that they do have some savings, will really need an abortion in the next few years and not be able to afford travel to another state or smuggled medication? It’s horrible to think that if your daughter were raped your state government would try to turn her into an incubator, but is it likely? And if it did happen, would you have resources to help? There will be more and more informal underground railroads to help women facing health catastrophes and the like, I would hope. But safe abortion may become less available anyway as the industrial age declines. Meanwhile, blue bantustans where abortion is now protected, stripped of effective voices in the national political process, could soon face federal abortion bans and federal violence. Your children’s liberties and lives, as well as your own, could depend upon your not gerrymandering yourself into political oblivion.

Therefore, if Josh Hawley—the Senator who pumped his fist at an insurrectionist rally—says that he hopes people like you will pick up and move from Arizona or North Carolina to San Francisco and Boston, don’t do it! You know very well that he doesn’t have your best interests in mind. To him, you’re an enemy to be crushed. Don’t climb into the winepress. Instead, move out of a ruby-red theocratic state where you have no voice, or a sapphire-blue state that’s not sustainable, to a purple state or red-ruled blue state where you might, with luck, have a voice in shaping your own future.