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Comment by chiph | Hacker News Reader

UK leaving the EU. Scotland leaving England (but presumably still a Commonwealth nation...). So take that to the extreme, with the return to city-states, Burning-Man style with citizens moving house in their shipping-container homes as their loyalties/desires change.

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One of the great stories of the political landscape today is the... impedance mismatch, for lack of a better word... between technology enabling ever more decentralized control (and for "control", read "government"), and the fact that everywhere you look, centralized governments are expanding their power.

It's one of those thing we're all too close to see clearly, and I do not exempt myself from that problem, but I suspect in a hundred years it'll be one of the "big stories" told about this time period.

Strange how centralized governments everywhere are expanding their power under what are, universally, "small government" neoliberal regimes.

Not strange at all. Neoliberals are for big government everywhere except government regulation of big business. They want government and big business to work together as one organization of plutocrats to control everything.

Have you burned all the strawmen, yet?

Again, by words, "nobody" wants that. By actions... there's plenty of governing official that clearly do. Many of them have a "liberal" label on them. Many of them have other labels on them, too. Labels aren't as interesting as actions, though; distracting people with labels is one of their prime tools.

Look to actions, not words. The US is certainly not a small government country by action, regardless of its words.

> [...] under what are, universally, "small government" neoliberal regimes.

Where did you get that idea from?

Ahem, if only to clarify for our overseas brothers and sisters of the world :), "Scotland leaving the Union" is probably what you meant there. Scotland and England are two of the four countries that form the present United Kingdom [1].

If Scotland gains independence, it will likely remain an active partner in the European Union.

"but presumably still a Commonwealth nation" - yes, the current policy is to continue to with the current British Queen as a constitutional monarch and remain part of the Commonwealth. I myself would rather Scotland become a republic, but I can wait another few years before fighting that battle.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_of_the_United_Kingdo...

That would be interesting. Slightly similar to the new region boundaries in Snow Crash? Who needs countries/states as long as you have big enough clan/mafia/corporation groups...

I did have that thought in mind, but was more thinking about how people get upset with their government today (or their neighbors, or anything else they find annoying), but are unable to move to one they like better because they're tied to their house, children's school, etc. But if they can take their house with them, and homeschool with a MOOC, then things become a lot more interesting.

If people are able to move house (all of it but the yard) with 3-4 tractor trailer trucks, things become much more fluid and state & local governments will have to adopt more citizen-friendly policies, or suffer a brain/revenue drain.

Sort of like how Detroit lost almost 60% of it's population because they drove people away with corruption and bad policies. Only now it wouldn't take 70 years to happen.

That's one thing where the renter mindset has an advantage over homeowner mindset - you aren't financially tied to a particular stone, and can easily move as often as your kids can handle the school change and language barriers if you move across countries.

Moving house literally isn't an option anyway if you want to move from one jurisdiction to another, as it likely involves too large distances.

I'm doing quite well in my chosen city-state. Thank you.

(We are talking about Singapore.)

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