Recent searches
Search options
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @ChrisMayLA6 Singapore it is very interesting. It is a one-family state, and therefore not a real democracy. Yet, I think they have among the lowest taxes in the world.
So from a certain angle, their experiment with classical liberalism has been a roaring success!
Since I am libertarian, I cannot accept their authoritarian side when it comes to surveillance and punishment such as flogging, so sadly I cannot live there.
Fortunately there are countries with equally low
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @ChrisMayLA6 taxes and less surveillance and flogging that I can move to. =)
Yes Singapore is particularly singular, but also of limited relevance de to being a city state with all that that entails.... but an interesting set of policy experiments nonetheless
@ChrisMayLA6 @GhostOnTheHalfShell Maybe city states are the way of the future? Democracy was designed to ru na city state, so maybe it's a kind of "optimum size" where people feel that decisions really matter and affect them? The government could also change and adapt more quickly if it runs only a city state vs a country.
Its an interesting thought; certainly early merchant capitalism (of the sort tracked by Braudel) was city-state based.... and when we look at the mosaic of pre-national Italy, the states were nodes with hinterlands that supported them....
In the UK, one could see a devolution (which is sort of already being posited) towards areas with metropolitan centres started to move a little in that direction - all will depend on the control of fiscal powers, of course
@ChrisMayLA6 @GhostOnTheHalfShell True. I remember that from a history book series I was reading on the middle ages.
Would be fascinating, if that balance would be the optimum for quality of life, while theoretically, stopping political entities from achieving the size that starts world wars.
Then of course there is always the defense problem, as a small entity of city state size, if the neighbours are big.
@ChrisMayLA6 @GhostOnTheHalfShell Threats of nuclear, blackmail or biological warfare I think are the only destructive strategies that small city states could leverage to get any kind of safety from bigger neighbours.
On the side of peace there is of course trade. Ideally both would realize that they benefit far more from that, but all it takes is a crazy dictator to smash that beautiful thing to pieces.
The recognition of the mutual advantage of trade ebbs & flows across history as we know, but for the most part city states, due to their size need to trade or develop empires (think of the Venetian empire for instance), which the latter brings us back to the larger territorial units.... so, one might say city states can only survive in a economic network with each other, before on or other starts to accrue land & needs to both expand & defend that land....
@ChrisMayLA6 @GhostOnTheHalfShell True. Look at the greek city states and what led to their downfall. More difficult to coordinate than the invading empires. Maybe if they had more trade and were less antagonistic things would have turned out differently?
I think the game changer today when it comes to possible futures of city states in a world of nation states is the low cost and enormous destructive powers of modern asymmetrical warfare.