Administrative, distribution, transportation, and similar transaction costs obviously rise, perhaps exponentially, as geographic size increases. Control and communication also become more difficult to manage over long distances, often to the point where central authority and governance become nearly impossible. I propose that, out of these figures and even more so out of the history of the world, results a Law of Government Size, and it goes like this: Economic and social misery increase in direct proportion to the size and power of the central government of a nation. The consolidation of nations into power-ful empires leads not to shining periods of peace and prosperity and the advance of human betterment, but to increasing restriction, warfare, autocracy, crowding, immiseration, inequality, poverty, and starvation. [..] The argument for secession need not focus exclusively on population or geographic size— one might factor in cultural cohesion, developed infrastructure, historical identity—but that seems to be the sensible place to start in considering viable states. And since the experience of the world has shown that populations ranging from 3 mil-lion to 5 million are optimal for governance and efficiency, that is as good a measure as any to use to begin assessing secessionist potential and chances of success as independent states.
In When Zombies Attack64, Thomas E. Woods Jr, responds to the knee-jerk hysterical reactions to his book Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century, endorsed in principle by Martha Dean, a candidate for governor general in Connecticut, who repeated the argument that the States have a duty to act on behalf of their citizens, and nullify any clearly unconstitutional federal law. Among others he asks under ―what conditions liberty is more likely to flourish: with a multiplicity of competing jurisdictions, or one giant jurisdiction?‖ He supports his argument with that made by Ralph Raico in The Theory of Economic Development and the 'European Miracle'65 that it was the decentralisation of power, which contributed to the European Miracle of the Renaissance‘s development of liberty: Within this [decentralized power] system, it was highly imprudent for any prince to attempt to infringe property rights in the manner customary elsewhere in the world. In constant rivalry with one another, princes found that outright expropriations, confiscatory taxation, and the blocking of trade did not go unpunished. The punishment was to be compelled to witness the relative economic progress of one's rivals, often through the movement of capital, and capitalists, to neighboring realms. The possibility of "exit," facilitated by geographical compactness and, especially, by cultural affinity, acted to transform the state into a "constrained predator" (Anderson 1991, 58). Decentralization of power also came to mark the domestic arrangements of the various European polities. Here feudalism — which produced a nobility rooted in feudal right rather than in state-service — is thought by a number of scholars to have played an essential role (see, e.g., Baechler 1975, 78). Through the struggle for power within the realms, representative bodies came into being, and princes often found their hands tied by the charters of rights (Magna Carta, for instance) which they were forced to grant their subjects. In the end, even within the relatively small states of Europe, power was dispersed among estates, orders, chartered towns, religious communities, corps, universities, etc., each with its own guaranteed liberties. The rule of law came to be established throughout much of the Continent.
In Economic Relocalization: A Strategic Response to Peak Oil and Climate Change66, Jason Bradford provide a brief overview of the System‘s Theory of Ecological Economics, when Ecological Overshoot occurs. In order to avoid or mitigate Mother Nature‘s harsh consequences of Ecological Overshoot, he argues that Relocalisation is the strategic response to Ecological Overshoot:
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When Zombies Attack, Thomas E. Woods, LewRockwell.com: http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods156.html The European Miracle, Ralph Raico, 22 Dec 2006: http://mises.org/daily/2404/t_blank 66 http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2598 65