by James A. Bacon
File this under the heading of Fundamental Governance Reform. In a recent edition of the “Utne Reader,” Kirkpatrick Sales makes the case that the optimal size of a successful independent state is somewhere between 3 million and 5 million. By his logic, the United States is massively dysfunctional. Even Virginia is too big for its own good. (Maybe we’d all be better off in Northern Virginia did secede from the commonwealth!)
Were it not for the problem of national defense, I’d be all in favor of breaking up the country into smaller pieces. Fifty independent states would not do a very good job of keeping world sea lanes open for global trade. Otherwise, Sales’ argument reminds me of one that the urbanist Jane Jacobs once made (as I best recollect it), that maintaining a unitary currency, fiscal policy and monetary policy for a nation as diverse as the United States cannot possibly benefit all regions equally. Each region would be better off, she contended, it if could optimize its own mix of economic policies. Inspired by fiscal crises in the PIIGS countries, much the same debate is taking place in Europe today.
(Hat tip to EMR, who is too engaged in his “Enough?” project to do much blogging himself.)
