I'm going to ramble a bit, interesting conversation... > Bottom up democracy is one thing, but if people can opt-out of the results of that democratic process

I'm going to ramble a bit, interesting conversation... > Bottom up democracy is one thing, but if people can opt-out of the results of that democratic process then things can fall apart, and an inability to opt out goes against anarchist principals? > Does everyone in a Canton agree? If not, it's rules are still imposed unwillingly on some. What exactly falls apart? If half the people want to go left, and the other half right, is there something wrong letting them each do their own different thing? Is it so important to be united at scale that people should be forced into something they don't want to do? It is my understanding that when power originates with the people then municipalities, cantons/states, and federal governments only are invested with powers if enough people in those structures agree. Ideally consensus - nobody vehemently opposed. Otherwise the smaller groups retain their independence. Along these lines the Swiss have the ability to repeal laws via petition/referendum. Like you said before, societies need to figure out for themselves the details of how they handle these things. The Swiss legislate their social programs at the canton level, each an average size of .3 million people. If you have a problem you can knock on the door of your representative, each answering to a couple thousand people. You might even know that person already. Compare that to the U.S. where most social programs are legislated at the federal level, involving 330 million people, one representative per 500k+ people. Look at the disaster that is health care in this country, written by industry lobbyists, overriding several new and interesting state plans, passed just barely by one senator who died before the bill was finished, almost repealed by the same margin several years later, still fought over and still a mess. I don't understand why many in the U.S. think we have to do things at the federal level when the Swiss do the same things in cantons that are the size of U.S. counties or mid-size cities. There are things the Swiss do at a federal level, like foreign affairs, national highways, nuclear power, etc. I don't know how flexible they are, but if a canton didn't want to participate wouldn't it make sense that the non-participating canton doesn't get the benefits - no federal defence, no highway, or none of the nuclear energy? Is that necessarily a problem? But they agree these are things worth cooperating on, and they do. David Graeber (democracy/anarchy) and Lepold Khor (bigness problems) influenced my thinking on a lot of this.