Interesting Links for 25-08-2014

[andrewducker]

• Media coverage of Worldcons: Loncon 3, 2014 and Seacon '79, 1979
  (tags: media conventions scifi )
• This is the biggest thing I disliked about the first Capaldi Doctor Who
  (tags: drwho )
• Fish: smarter than you think
  (tags: fish intelligence )
• Macro-economics. Not really much of a science
  (tags: science economics )
• Video game journalism is having

Comments

[bart_calendar]

Taxation mostly. The population of the Northern States was growing much more quickly than that of the Southern States. This led the South to worry that given electoral college math there would never be a Southern President again and that with the north having a long term stranglehold on the federal government that the southern states would be taxed into poverty.

The south also believed that overall that government existed to protect people with minority opinions from people with the current majority opinion. They felt that by giving power to a variety of governors the minority was more likely to be protected than if power was centralized in the federal system with a single president at the helm.

There were a ton of other minor states rights issues (as there are today.) It is true that both the North and the South eventually figured out that using slavery as a propoganda issue was good for both sides because "slavery bad" was a better slogan than "strong presidency" for the north and "we'll starve without slaves" was a better slogan than "we want more power" for the south.

[bart_calendar]

Which is probably what will happen now. When governors want to make a power grab "abortion bad", "unions bad", "guns good" will win a lot more people to their side than 'we want more power."

[fanf]

Ah, that makes sense, thanks. I expected there would have to be some fairly compelling economic forces behind it but didn't know enough to hazard a guess.

[bart_calendar]

It's a sticky subject because Hollywood has hammered home the incorrect idea that Lincoln launched the civil war to free the slaves, which was a tangential issue for the north at least.