Vernor Vinge's short story 'Conquest By Default' features an interstellar anarchic civilization which has such a rule-against-scale (in any organization, includ

Vernor Vinge's short story 'Conquest By Default' features an interstellar anarchic civilization which has such a rule-against-scale (in any organization, including 'governments') as its highest law. That civilization then encounters Earth, with a number of oversized nations.