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I actually think generation later trend would be more towards uniting rather than splitting. Splitting rarely benefits population as a whole. Sometime a portion

by sytelus 12y ago

I actually think generation later trend would be more towards uniting rather than splitting. Splitting rarely benefits population as a whole. Sometime a portion of population might benefit but overall it's loss. General evolutionary trends for human kind had been towards uniting. We started out as small tribes then evolving to city-size kingdoms and now to huge unions like China, Canada and USA. Big countries do well simply because there far far more resources at their disposal, they are more resilient to disasters and overall utilization of resources is much more balanced. Small countries have little chance of ever matching growth and momentum of large countries. Sure, Norway and Finland can be relatively "well off" by exploiting their natural resources but they simply aren't going to be country who goes to Mars or invents next big things. By law of numbers, number of engineers and scientists in small country will always be small and thus their ability to take on big projects always limited.

jiggy2011 12y ago
In this case breaking up the UK could be a first step towards consolidation within the EU.
ende 12y ago
This is very over generalized and a bit too simplistic of an analysis (no offense). There are certainly trends across history towards larger social organization, but this isn't necessarily always mutuy exclusive to smaller, more local organization. There are both natural and political reasons for this. The human animal, like any social animal, is biologically equipped to form social networks with only a limited quantity of individuals; non-scale free network effects come into play. Neither is larger social organization desirable from a democratic point of view, as the voice of the individual becomes increasingly diluted and far removed from the center of mass. This trend towards increasing unification you point out is also a mixed bag. Large unitarian states have tended to be rather aggressivly expansionist empires throughout history. There is a critical balance to be struck between local autonomy and global integration, and this is where notions of Federalism tend to arise. Many of today's territorial definitions are accidents of history with little regard for self-determination, yet locked into the Westphalian status quo. A global evolution towards higher economic integration, democratic peace, and frankly the nuclear preclusion of conventional warfare between developed nations, all conspire to form a new international security environment in which minor local territorial rearrangements no longer threaten profound effects on the chess boards of great powers. It then becomes possible to peacefully renegotiate some of this status quo. I expect that this isn't the last we've heard from scotland, and that the future of globalization with witness an increase in both unification towards an integrated whole as well as greater subdivision and recombination within and among local spheres. Another lesson from biology: it wasn't the continued absorption of all genetic material into increasing enlargement of single cellular life that brought us to where we are today, but rather the clever federalism of diversified multicellular life that sparked a revolution.

by sytelus 12y ago

jiggy2011 12y ago

In this case breaking up the UK could be a first step towards consolidation within the EU.

ende 12y ago

This is very over generalized and a bit too simplistic of an analysis (no offense). There are certainly trends across history towards larger social organization, but this isn't necessarily always mutuy exclusive to smaller, more local organization. There are both natural and political reasons for this. The human animal, like any social animal, is biologically equipped to form social networks with only a limited quantity of individuals; non-scale free network effects come into play. Neither is larger social organization desirable from a democratic point of view, as the voice of the individual becomes increasingly diluted and far removed from the center of mass. This trend towards increasing unification you point out is also a mixed bag. Large unitarian states have tended to be rather aggressivly expansionist empires throughout history. There is a critical balance to be struck between local autonomy and global integration, and this is where notions of Federalism tend to arise. Many of today's territorial definitions are accidents of history with little regard for self-determination, yet locked into the Westphalian status quo. A global evolution towards higher economic integration, democratic peace, and frankly the nuclear preclusion of conventional warfare between developed nations, all conspire to form a new international security environment in which minor local territorial rearrangements no longer threaten profound effects on the chess boards of great powers. It then becomes possible to peacefully renegotiate some of this status quo. I expect that this isn't the last we've heard from scotland, and that the future of globalization with witness an increase in both unification towards an integrated whole as well as greater subdivision and recombination within and among local spheres. Another lesson from biology: it wasn't the continued absorption of all genetic material into increasing enlargement of single cellular life that brought us to where we are today, but rather the clever federalism of diversified multicellular life that sparked a revolution.