[marcusverus]

Our legacy governments make this very difficult.

Sadly, while many of our governments readily adopted the concept of representative democracy, they retained other oppressive aspects of the ancient systems which they replaced. The old monarchies claimed a right to rule their subject peoples in perpetuity, deriving their power directly from God. Our modern governments claim the same thing! Instead of that divine right flowing directly from God to the state, it flows from God, through your forbears who created the government, to the state. Isn't that slick? They derive their legitimacy from man's divine right to choose his own government, while simultaneously denying that YOU have such a right! It's the 'ole divine right to rule with extra steps.

So while you can choose who controls your government via democratic means, you'll have a helluva time choosing a new government, since the old government will waive the crusty old document that your great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather signed and say that you are committing treason.

See the Catalan independence movement[0], or the official position of the UK government on the most recent Scottish independence referendum[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_independence_movement [1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/11/23/u...

[mtklein]

Not saying it's worked out perfectly, but the US Declaration of Independence must count among those crusty old documents, and its preamble explicitly declares that throwing off such a government is the right and duty of the governed (admittedly preceded with some couching from "Prudence, indeed...").

[marcusverus]

True, true! I didn't mean to imply anything negative about old, crusty documents in general! Especially the ones, like The Declaration, that serve to clarify and bolster our common understanding of our natural human rights.