This seems like an inevitable end to globalization and the inevitable consolidation. You can see the trends over recent human history; lots of things that were

This seems like an inevitable end to globalization and the inevitable consolidation. You can see the trends over recent human history; lots of things that were once localized were aggregated into a single service that served a whole county, and then into one that served the state, then region, country, etc. We all reap the benefits of that as the economies of scale drive down costs for consumers, thus making more advancement possible. We don't talk about the downsides, though. This is one of the major ones. If there are 1,000 people in your town, each of them is .1% of the vote, and is probably .1% of the revenue for each business. If a business does something you don't like, you can ding them for .1% of their revenue. If you get upset and convince 9 other people, that's a 1% decrease in revenue. If you can convince 500 other people, you have a majority, and can pass legislation to ban what that business is doing. We're talking numbers of people where you can launch a grassroots campaign with posterboard in yards; you could probably run a successful campaign for less than $1,000. If you have to change a county-level company, now you're suddenly 1 out of 100,000 people. Getting 500 people to agree with you does nothing. It's 0.5% of their customers, the same impact as if you, your SO, and 2 children stopped visiting the shop. Go up to the state level and you're no longer even a blip. The money you need in order to conduct a campaign goes up exponentially as well. I don't know what a statewide campaign costs, but I'm fair confident it's far, far beyond what any individual or small group of individuals can come up with. The end result is that this isn't a feeling, this is a reality. We, individually, wield less power over our communities than we ever have in the past because our communities have grown to be far larger than they were in the past. That dilutes the control we have, as the percentage of the revenue or votes you constitute goes down. I think we would do better with smaller communities that have more control. I think the weed laws are an okay example of that. The federal government has gone hands off and delegated that choice to the states. States where they choose to allow it typically don't force it; they allow local communities to keep it illegal if they would like. If some small town think it's going to be bad for them, they can choose to keep it illegal. I disagree with them, but I respect that that's what they want for their community.