Shortestcut to peace, or what's your state's Gross National Product?

On past occasions I have jokingly suggested secession from the Union as the best way to end our wars with Afghanistan and Iraq. Doing so for those bold enough to strike out on their own as independent nations would also avoid our upcoming wars with Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and possibly Jordan and China (for brevity's sake, I've chosen to not include all of Latin America and Russia in this list).

Going to the polls every two years, trying to elect lucid representatives who see the folly of futile U.S. global domination may take too long and may arrive too late. The Earth, and the United States, most probably do NOT have the luxury of taking their time to bring about the drastic changes required for a more peaceful world and avoid reversion to a state of global Stone Agedness as now being realized in the Middle East under the U.S. policy of nation ghettoization we are now witnessing there.

So I sometimes have suggested--if you feel empire is something you and your next seven generations can't afford--simply convince your state to secede.

But after stumbling across the following map, I'm having second thoughts. Before you convince your representatives to hoist the state flag over the U.S.'s atop the flag pole above your state's capitol, you might want to take a look at this.

(Thanks to Carl Stormer and The Big Picture website. To enlarge, click here.)

This is a map comparing your state's economic prowess to the Gross National Product of nation states around the world. Say for example you live in Ohio. Were you to become an independent nation, you would enjoy the equivalent economic power of Australia. Utah, about the same as Peru's.

Delaware? Hell, I'd forgotten Delaware was even a state. Maybe that's why, as a nation, it'd become another Romania. Maine, a Morocco. Interesting stuff. For some of us, depending on where one lives, scary stuff maybe.

Poor New Mexico would wield the economic equivalent of a Hungary, yet would instantly become the world's fourth largest nuclear weapons power. Texas = Canada, yet with a predominantly ultra-conservative base, would be a far more aggressive nation state then its Great White Northern neighbors. Texas would be a United States on steroids.

So while Gross National Products don't tell you everything about how your state would fare as a nation, you may still want to consider that anyway before opting out. As noted, other factors enter in. You might want to take a look at your state, county, and city governments. Or better still, you may want to start by just looking next door first. At your neighbors.

Secession might not be the super highway to peace I'd envisioned. Instead, it may be a deeply rutted and pot-holed dead end, leaving me to wonder if there's any hope at all for peace. Maybe in lieu of secession, if there's to be any future at all for mankind, we should consider instead an evolutionary succession of our earthly dominion to some other species, like salmon or slime mold?