By any reckoning, the United States of America has been phenomenally successful. So successful that perhaps it’s time to split the stock. I can explain.
Over the last 250 years, this nation has grown from 2.5 million people tucked into 400,000 square miles of land to 340 million, spread over 2.7 million square miles. Of the 195 countries of the world, the U.S. now boasts the third-largest population, on the fourth-largest amount of territory. Indeed, if one adds in our 14 territorial possessions, including Puerto Rico and Guam, the population grows further, and the geographic footprint, including oceans, more than doubles. At the same time, America accounts for almost a quarter of planetary economic output.
Yet for all our success, there’s trouble in our blessed empire. We all know the litany of laments: falling confidence in government, declining optimism about the future, and general malaise. Indeed, there’s increasing talk of division, secession, even civil war. And now that the 2024 presidential election is on the horizon, the anomie notches up. The debate over whether or not the 14th Amendment precludes Donald Trump’s candidacy is becoming yet another matter of divisive dogma, as different people read the same words and come up with different answers. It seems fair to say that if either Joe Biden or Trump win the 2024 presidential election, half the country will regard the results as illegitimate. And hark, what discord could follow.
To sum up, the U.S. has become too big to lead. So, America’s “business model” needs a rethink. In the spirit of running a good operation, we need to make changes. What, specifically? Here’s a proven pick-me-up from the business world: split the stock. According to Investopedia, “A stock split is a corporate action in which a company increases the number of its outstanding shares by issuing more shares to current shareholders.” This is not dilution; typically, the shareholder gets a two-for-one deal, with each share being worth half as much. So why do companies go to this trouble? “Stock splits can improve trading liquidity and make the stock seem more affordable,” Investopedia explains. In other words, a split helps the company stay nimble. Stock splits give the company a sense of momentum. So if splitting is good tonic for a company, maybe the political equivalent would be helpful for a country.
So how, exactly, to split a country? Not violently, of course, but constitutionally. We can start with a point that we all realize, but which has not yet been fully reflected in our institutions: the increasing diversity of this country. Not just ethnically, but also ideologically and regionally. Altogether, this diversity makes it even harder to think the country can be run from a central axis, Washington, D.C. To put this another way, the notion that a third-of-a-billion Americans can be governed from a single node is, in itself, a formula for instability—and perhaps even for outright systemic collapse.
Yes, America has simply grown too big for one set of britches. So, we need more britches, and different kinds, because we know that one size does not fit all. For perspective on our measurements, we might recall that the U.S. won World War Two—an epic achievement—when the population was around 140 million. Today, the U.S. numbers well more than double that, while real GDP has increased ten fold.
It’s obvious: We’re bigger than we need to be. So, let’s think fresh thoughts about meeting the challenges of our time—realizing that diversity means difference. For instance, speaking of international conflicts, there’s the Ukraine War. To many Americans, mostly Democrats, Putin is another Hitler, ‘nuff said. So of course, they want to send aid to Ukraine. But to many other Americans, mostly Republicans, Ukraine is another Vietnam, or Iraq. So of course, we should stay out. How to resolve this? Under the current arrangement, we probably can’t. Everything we know about polarization tells us that Blue can’t change the mind of Red, and vice versa. So, the better answer, giving each side what it wants, is a split; doesn’t have to be outright secession, but rather, a federalist recognition of diversity and state sovereignty. So, the blue states would be free to aid Ukraine, while red states would be free to concentrate their resources on, say, fighting crime.
Yet because we’re so huge, each half, blue and red, would have plenty of mojo. As to Red, it can be said to number 25 states—the states that voted twice for Trump. And Blue could be defined as the 20 states that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020. (Five states split their results in those two elections.)
Red states account for some 156 million people, and blue states, 136 million. However, in economic output, Blue exceeds Red; Blue, by itself, would be the second-largest economy in the world, while Red would be third. So, plenty of wealth for each state, and each region, to pursue its bliss. Admittedly, the resulting geography on the North American continent would be a checkerboard, but we’re smart, we can figure it out. The main objective is to stop pretending that Maryland wants the same things out of life as Idaho. So, the greater wisdom is to shrink the amount of business transacted in Washington, D.C.; let’s lower the stack of Jenga blocks at the core, moving blocks instead out to the periphery. The distributed result will actually be sturdier.
Moreover, we’ll see an efflorescence of creativity and flourishing. In fact, states have already been branching out, trying things that the federal government does not approve of. Today, some 46 states have legalized at least some aspect of marijuana, even as pot is still illegal under federal law. Meanwhile, Wyoming is experimenting with cryptocurrency and financial secrecy, both of which challenge existing rules. On the east coast, Massachusetts is finding out what it’s like to be a sanctuary state, while Florida is seeing the results of no state income tax.
Yet with the full articulation of the red-blue split, states could go even further. Suppose a state were to emancipate itself from the dead hand of the Food and Drug Administration. The prospect of being able to experiment freely—on everything from Covid treatment to cancer—would bring forth a gusher of capital and innovation, the medical equivalent of the casinos that flowered in Nevada after that state legalized gambling in 1931.
And suppose all the states of Red got together and said “no” to the mandatory transition to electric vehicles. Plenty of cars, both battery and internal combustion, would still be sold, albeit on different sides of the split. And then we’d see a large-scale test as to which technology worked better, even as we already know that people are happier when they’re freer. The result of this national portfolio diversification would vindicate Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis’ vision of the states as “laboratories of democracy.”
The U.S. has done well over the last two-and-half centuries, and there’s no reason why, if we continue to make adjustments, we can’t keep going. Splitting the stock of the nation is a gift of agility, from business to government. In the marketplace, business stays flexible because it has to; whereas government, flush with monopolistic money and power, can become rigid—and thus, ultimately, brittle. That’s what’s happening now, and it’s no way to run a country.
For both private or public, the goal should be unleashing the American mind while working within the framework of our Constitution. Today that means liberating those laboratories of democracy; which are, at the same time, laboratories of prosperity, of technology, and of destiny. To anyone who believes in human freedom, as well as the American experiment, that’s an exciting prospect.
James P. Pinkerton served in the White House policy offices of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He worked at Fox News for 20 years, and has also toiled at many political campaigns, think tanks, and journalistic gigs.
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