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Comment by raintrees | Hacker News Reader

Doesn't it seem like the United States has gotten too big for our Democracy to function correctly anymore? Maybe it is time to break it up... Or at least move authority back down to the smallest level:

  Solve problems in your local township.

  If can not resolve:

    Go up to County level for resolution.

    If can not resolve: 

      Go up to Sate level for resolution.

      If can not resolve: iterate as necessary.

(Edited for better formatting).

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So you want to make it even easier than it already is for corporations to control govt?

About that: Currently (until I get enough evidence/data to change my opinion) I subscribe to an amalgamation of John Perkins' and Jerry Mander's point of view on Corporations: They should not be bigger than their locality, also expressed as smaller is better.

As soon as their operations can no longer be felt in the same geographical area as any other part of said corporation, they have gotten too big and need to be broken back up again.

When corporations were smaller, it seemed there was better control and oversight. If they fouled their nests, it was eventually (preferably rapidly, but not always the case) obvious in the same locality and could be subjected to local response/censure, until wrongs were made right or they were closed.

Overall, more localized government would seem to also provide for better "vote with your feet:" If one does not like the local consensus, one may move to another locality, possibly not that far away from the first, where the environs are more to one's liking.

I am purposely using subjective language such as "seems" since I know I must not be as smart as others in these arenas. But so far, the ideas above have my support/backing/agreement.

fwiw.

I might support this thinking ... except that we would be the only country in the world doing it. Wouldn't we essentially be rolling back the entire industrial revolution? What happens to manufacturing, commerce and IT when everything is the size of a hamlet? Would there be no more national banks? Would be go back to having local banks print their own currency?

Now that banks have grown to the size of requiring Central Banks, is that such a good thing? I have read much suggesting that it easily lends itself to Ponzi schemes, and so far, we have continued to choose/been forced to pay up (bail-outs/too big to fail/too big to jail, etc.).

Financial booms/crisis seem to be cyclical, if one looks over a large enough period of time. It also seems that cycles before Central Banks didn't have such huge swings/blow-back. We tended to recover from the damage quicker and it was more localized.

It still seems like a bit much if I can't spend my local Bank of America branch dollars outside the town I'm in. Regulation is one thing but that's practically medieval.

Well, it does look like I am taking the Luddite side of this...

I am stuck with a basic conundrum: There are problems for humans that are larger than any one national government, and it makes logical sense for a world government to exist to address problems of that scale.

But when I stop and think about the types of people that are _attracted_ to positions of power, I shudder and decide I like my congressional deadlock, thank you very much.

And that does not even begin to get to the part where once a problem solving-body exists, all problems begin to look like nails to the hammer...

That brings me back around to potential answers that look much smaller than the current (working?) models.

Humans have conducted commerce well enough before there were national/international banks, since finance is mostly a matter of trust and faith, at the core. I do not doubt that there would continue to be commerce conducted over vast distances, even if our current financial institutions were greatly shrunk back down to something closer to local banks again.

But I agree that my suggestions sure sound like "boy I miss the good old days..."

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