What would the economy of an independent Vermont look like?
I can’t believe I missed this post a few weeks ago, during the final days of the Second Vermont Republic fiasco. Woodlot over at VT Scrapwood wrote an incredibly insightful piece on what exactly an independent Vermont’s economy would look like and consist of. As Woodlot puts it, there’d be a lot to be concerned about:
SVR will lose 1/3 to 1/2 of its population during the first five years. The national and international employers with Vermont branches and operations will on an orderly basis pack up shop and leave. IBM, GE Healthcare, Goodrich, Unilever will be among the first to make this move. The large Vermont-headquartered companies may not abandon the state as quickly but they will search for alternatives…
Most conventional Vermont dairy farming will cease. We already know there is an oversupply of milk in the United States and as soon as SVR is created the lobbyists working for Wisconsin , California, Idaho etc will flock to Washington with two messages. First, the U.S. does not need Vermont milk and second, Vermont milk can not be trusted. The U.S. will man the borders and SVR borders and turn the trucks around…
Higher education. Middlebury college will be the first to go. They will take their billion dollar endowment and reconstitute on U.S. soil (maybe at their Monterey Institute Campus). Norwich University will cease at the roughly same time. I doubt the core of cadets will want to train officers for the new SVR version of the Swiss Guards or whatever will protect the SVR borders and the U.S. military is not going to want officers trained in a republic…
There’s other points, too, such as how the banking and insurance industries would be affected. Now, Woodlot states he is not in favor of secession, and perhaps many of the things mentioned in the piece would be seen as beneficial to the ‘small is better’ contingent that makes up a large part of the secession movement (when there still was one to speak of, that is). And you might count me in there, as well. But Woodlot, unlike SVR’s Thomas Naylor, seems to be grounded in reality, so regardless of the philosophical differences, there are some real concerns that would need to be addressed that apparently Naylor hasn’t thought of, isn’t concerned about, or perhaps when he prays to Ethan Allen every night, Ethan tells him it will all work out in the end. Have a read.
