Pretty much all of the ugly problems of the world – economic inequality, climate change, domination of our politics by money, and just general crap quality of life – are made worse by the gargantuan scale of our institutions. Bigness may not be the cause of our many problems, but it goes a long way towards preventing any progress in solving them. Government is vast, impersonal and distant; corporations are faceless monoliths that have their own needs and logic. I’ve long believed in the principle of subsidiarity: that institutions should be as close as possible to the people they affect. It’s why I believe in DEVOLUTION rather than revolution per se: revolution would keep our institutional elephantiasis, while devolving to smaller units of government and of business would make progress much, much more possible.

I think collapse of the US, Soviet-style, is not a matter of if but of when… and HOW. Empires crumble, and they’re often messy on the way out. I’d much rather see a planned devolution, rather than the Republic of New England skirmishing with the Union of Great Lakes States over access to the St. Lawrence Watershed, or nuclear war between Texas and California. But history will decide.

Even the Wall Street Journal is positive about the benefits of a breakup, and it’s true that this is one area where the far-left and the hard-right have often met. I think, though, that they envision a US much more like the EU than my own preference of a patchwork of city-states and county-scale governments from sea to shining sea, with a functioning judicial system to arbitrate disputes and ensure civil rights, so that the remnants don’t turn into apartheid states.

I think we’re much more likely to devolve into some Beyond Thunderdome dystopia than an anarchist commonwealth, but the future has a way of surprising you…