Independent nation?

Barry Smitherman stated last month that Texas could become an independent nation one day although the country collapsed.  To prove Barry was wrong, Paul Burka gave his opinions on Texas Monthly with some particular reasons. 
The definition of "independent nation" of Barry just only contains food, energy, water and roads. In the other hand, Paul has a wider explaination, and it seems quiet true to me. Any independent nation needs more than those. They need to stand on their own economy, education, agriculture, finance, and so on. If just like what Barry said, it is so easy to become an independent country for any other states not only Texas. In my opinion, the reply of Barry is exactly what I really want to say. Maybe in other content, Barry's idea can be true, but in this situation, I agree with Paul. Food, energy, water are not stable resources, they could be change in time. Just like what Paul mentioned, oil can be decreased in price as same as the way it is increased. Moreover, there are still some public services that are using funds from federal, not from the state's funds. What will happen if they are stopped funding? Could we be able to stand alone after that?
Becoming an independent nation is a very serious problem that we could not decide just by saying. It requires a lot of aspects to fullfill from the easiest to the hardest ones. We might survive after the U.S falls apart, but so not stand alone as a country.

Big city means big population?

Jody Seaborn made an opinion writing to comment on the article  of Juan Castillo about the new ranks of big cities in the U.S.
Austin is ranked 11th at the moment. Jody pointed out that Austin's population has been increased steadily for years. However, he made his idea that population cannot tell about the size of the cities. Moreover, he leaded to the point that even how fast Austin has been growing, it still cannot beat the other cities within 10 years. I agree with this idea. At the time Austin is increasing, we cannot tell that others are increasing the same way or not, it depends on the immigration and moving in and out of residents. With his explanations on San Francisco and Austin, I think it is true. Austin and San Francisco are both on the list of important cities in the U.S, which attract people to move in for jobs. So there is no proof to show that when Austin gets the bigger population, the others do the same or opposite way.
Big city does not only count on the population, it needs to count on more than one aspect, such as population, annual income, living condition, rate of employed and unemployed, immigrations, available jobs, and so on. Even though Austin is getting higher in population,  but at other aspects, it is still lack of, we cannot call it at a big city. However, we can give a future on it not so far from today.