[ExI] size of polities

[Jeff Davis]

On Feb 17, 2008 10:36 AM, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:

> One obvious idea that emerges from this is that most nations
> are too large to properly reflect the desires of an individual
> citizen. The U.S. in effect tried to solve this problem by
> having numerous states with separate laws, but eventually
> most regulation was taken over by the federal government.

                                  <snip>

> It is best to allow the smallest groups possible to set their
> own laws, except that for purposes of efficiency nations
> probably will want to be of some minimal size at least.

It seems that modern nation state has come about because militarily,
bigger is better, ie the 8000 lb gorilla beats the 800 lb gorilla
beats the 80 lb gorilla.  So it you possess a social organizational
system (with the appropriate "security" apparatus) to hold together
one of the larger groups of inherently diverse and consequently
fractious humans, and extract from them the tithe of their
productivity(taxes), then you have the military resources to survive
and prevail.  The situation is inherently unstable, but then nothing
lasts forever.

In contrast, the evolved ideal human social group would be tribal.
Large enough for the clan leaders to know everyone personally, and for
everyone to have -- for the condition of social harmony to prevail --
identical cultural values/identifiers.

Larger than that and the leaders are too removed from the polity to
sympathize with them and behave decently, become a tribe in their own
right -- the ruling class -- treat the polity as pawns, and pursue the
slaughter of innocents in a sociopathic enterprise to aggrandize their
own power.  The nation state and imperial system we have today.

YMMV.

Best, Jeff Davis

   "Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
                           Ray Charles