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Note that you would achieve the same thing by pushing more power back to the states. This is the way the country was designed -- citizens retain most all of the

Note that you would achieve the same thing by pushing more power back to the states. This is the way the country was designed -- citizens retain most all of the power. They give some of that power to their state. Their state then gives some of that power to the nation. The nation ensures free trade among the states, defends against any foreign enemies, and provides basic nation-keeping duties: border, customs, etc. (One might even imagine addressing pollution and other externalities issues as being in the basic nation-building category) My answer is yes. The more we centralize powers that used to be local, the more we end up in this winner-take-all thing we have going on, where rules are made in a one-sized-fits all manner. That's bad for a multitude of reasons. As much as possible, distributed, self-optimizing systems out perform command-and-control systems. (But not always. When that paradigm doesn't work, the fallback should always be a federated, staggered and layered system)

alando46 10y ago
Is there any historical evidence suggesting that democracy can make enough people happy enough (to justify the pains of political negotiations) at the size/scale of the U.S?
- DanielBMarkham 10y ago
  No there isn't. Note that true democracy begins failing as soon as you begin leaving a small social group. By the time you get to the Dunbar Number, it's already failed and you have to move to some kind of representative system. Even representative systems fail, however, and for the same reason: human social interactions don't scale. So you might get to a Dunbar Number squared level, and decrease the feedback time, and make it work up to half a million or so. That's city or borough sized. From that point outwards it's just partisan power plays -- then you're really looking at how organized groups act -- which is a good reason to limit power more and more the larger the scale.

alando46 10y ago

Is there any historical evidence suggesting that democracy can make enough people happy enough (to justify the pains of political negotiations) at the size/scale of the U.S?

DanielBMarkham 10y ago
No there isn't. Note that true democracy begins failing as soon as you begin leaving a small social group. By the time you get to the Dunbar Number, it's already failed and you have to move to some kind of representative system. Even representative systems fail, however, and for the same reason: human social interactions don't scale. So you might get to a Dunbar Number squared level, and decrease the feedback time, and make it work up to half a million or so. That's city or borough sized. From that point outwards it's just partisan power plays -- then you're really looking at how organized groups act -- which is a good reason to limit power more and more the larger the scale.