This brings up another point. Anyone out there want to edit a book titled “Censored in Vermont”? I have no money to pay but listing “editor” on a resume’ might help??? Contact me by phone or e-mail if interested.

In fact, my socialist friends will be criticizing my statement in the article about Brock being a ‘hero’. Anytime I use that word they correct me and say that there is no such thing as a hero. I answer by saying that in a perfect world we would all be heroes in our own way.

Deadbeat calm down. There is nothing ahistorical about what your quoting.

The comparison of businesses serves as an EXAMPLE of how scale factors in; and it shows that Capitalism can have more than one form.

Scale plays the same role in our food system, many Federal programs, and of course economic globalization in general. I think the examples are everywhere, exceptions are very rare, but even then, growth (where it is not intrinsic) is deadly to an organism, including nation-states (empire over-reach, etc.).

Human scale appears to be the most workable, and achieves a level of healthy human living, allows for more transparent governance, and community. Still, this is, a necessary, but not sufficient means of achieving a better societal setup.

Looking out at the massive US landscape, it seems to beg for smaller, manageable (bio)regionalism, where cultures and economies, and historical traditions all meld to create a clear sense of living in a physically connected world. The human species thrives for this kind of connection, which more and more seems to be deprived because of the way “we’ve” set this society up – particularly over the past 100 years.

That’s why, while I think a single-payer health care has some merit – in contrast to what has and is being offered, it is a solution, I think, it best suited for a smaller entity, where the benefits are scaled to need, and where the administration is transparent and moves toward a self-regulation. There’s nothing wrong with self-regulation on a smaller transparent scale – in fact it’s far superior to Government regs, that are pervious, and require layers of bureaucracy to administer only to let creep in the sly preditores of the Wall Street/Bankerster class. That’s simply another example of where size becomes unmanageable, and in its unwieldness allows the more vile corrupt to occur.

Most health care is and should be prevention. It costs very little, and can be administered through families and social unites as well as local agencies (though the less intrusion of agencies who begin to see everyone as a client – the better).

Living needn’t be complex to be healthy, in fact, it is the reverse which is true. It’s time to re-think what we’ve become from the bottom up instead of layering another ideological mindset on top of this highly pathological and dysfunctional human devised system.

Recommend John McKnight from the ABCD Institute to shed some light on this.

Can a small nation-state be racist. Yes. Can it be anti-democratic. Yes. But the dynamics of local are critical. Discrimination can be guarded against, but when it plays to certain powers, it is hard to do anything more than be extremely vigilant against it.

This crap is so ahistorical it is laughable. It took a small community of white folks to distory Tulsa, Oklahoma — a well developed black community aka “The Black Wall Street”. Cut the crap Max and get some schooling.

Also, smaller states still need to be strongly connected to regions and globally. This has nothing to do with “frustration” and everything to do with looking at a problem and saying what happens when a nation-state expands and it’s resource demands become endless? What would counter-balance? and Small local businesses are substantially different in how they operate, and their whole reason for being than large corporate entities. They are each structurally different. One is built to serve a community and the other is built to grow profit at any cost and to do that through mergers, and transnational resourcse mining.

Once again Max argues absolutes and does not consider the CONTRADICTION of what he writes.

The issue is not small vs big. That is a false dichotomy. The issue is function, organization and service. Max fallacy is comparing small local business to a large corporate entity. I’ve witnessed small local businesses who don’t give a shit about the community and be in business to merely make profit. There are plenty of real estate “investors” and “slumlord” functioning as “small” business. In addition you can have a larger entities, like ACORN, non corporate; non profit based, that do great service FOR the BROADER community.

In fact Max would not be here on Dissident Voice spewing nonsence and contradiction if not for the LARGE initiative called the INTERNET and all the hardware and software that has been developed around it. The Internet and the computer industry was not built and developed by small business. It took the kind of SCALE you have in the United States to produce this world wide communication network.

My argument is that there is no right or wrong size. I’m not arguing for or against big or small. Both has their strength and weaknesses. Which should be acknowleged and critiqued. That is what dialectical thinking is about which Max has in fact made arguments against. What I am arguing is the motivation of these entities. And the motivation of these large corporate entities is PROFIT — Capitalism. And that is what needs to be challenged and overthrown.

Scale matters. It is not the only condition, but it is very important (I repeat myself to those who seem never to get it and instead want to argue point not ever made).

Small local businesses are substantially different in how they operate, and their whole reason for being than large corporate entities. They are each structurally different. One is built to serve a community and the other is built to grow profit at any cost and to do that through mergers, and transnational resourcse mining.

Both are businesses; and both sell services and goods of one sort or another. One could say they both represent a form of Capitalism; but these forms are decidely different. A community owned business or family owned local business scaled to meet local needs is a very different entity.

As lichen says, decentralization, local control enables (doesn’t guarantee) grass-roots, bottom up democracy. Mammoth nation-states foster top-down, command and control organizing principles. War is waged as the nation-state must consumer ever more resources, life a cancer gone wild. Sustainability is a word to be manipulated by politico like Obama, while he is clearly a soldier of an ever expansive empire.

Can a small nation-state be racist. Yes. Can it be anti-democratic. Yes. But the dynamics of local are critical. Discrimination can be guarded against, but when it plays to certain powers, it is hard to do anything more than be extremely vigilant against it.

Also, smaller states still need to be strongly connected to regions and globally. This has nothing to do with “frustration” and everything to do with looking at a problem and saying what happens when a nation-state expands and it’s resource demands become endless? What would counter-balance?

The only way to have a chance at any kind of responsiveness is to make that political system responsive on a daily basis. I can have lunch with a city councilor. He’s out in 2 years if he doesn’t respond to issues. Political machines find it harder to gain traction.

There are a lot of advantages to scale that goes away with succession. And even after succession there is nothing from keeping such smaller entities from consolidating in order to reap the benefits of scale. This notion of “smallest” is grounded in frustration from an unresponsive politcal system due to its roots in Capitalism.

If you confront Capitalism then people will be able to choose the configuration that best work for them.

I think what is really too big, though, is the political system–the marriage between the political class, corporations, and mainstream media. Smaller nations still choked by that will not bring any solutions at all, and as we know, smaller nations are not immune to the formation.

And much of schooling today and nearly everywhere apears shamanic, feudal, and cultish. And of the media-political talk dwn to us not even to talk.
For a talk by any human to a group of people to earn the label “talk”, we must sit in a circle.
In any other arrangement, and particularly a person talking dwn on us from a podium, does not earn the label “talk”. And whatever one wld call such arrangements, it still wld be a shameful act even if most listeners to such a ‘speaker’ wld not espy the sham.

This is obvious, yet missed. Probably because people are taught to look up to some people. And if one is semantically blind, what is obvious, is often not seen.

I wld never ever go to a hall or auditorium to listen to anyone on a pedestal talking dwn to me and who invites questions where the lofty person thinks and behaves in a way that stronlgy suggests or even demands that a question can be answered only in one way: his or hers!
Or even that only one or two or three questions pertain to an issue.
Such meetings are much undemocratic! Another very common ruse is for a speaker to proclaim that your question does not pertain.
Such a person thinks elementalistically; i.e., atempts to separate verbally what cannot be separated empirically.
In reality everything is connected; nothing exists by itself or for itself. And even the ‘stupidest’ question pertains!
Next time a pol or priest tries this trick on u, let him/her know that u know the strategem! tnx

Small states are no panacea. Small states can be just as authoritarian as large ones – the only advantage for others is that the problem is confined. Small entities also have economies of scale problems.

Large entities have ‘one-size-fits-all’ problems. The solutions for all do not lie strictly in changing size but in networking the system between the several scales.

The really big states probably do need to be broken up – our country would be better off with seccession – one state on the model of European social democracy, the other could continue to dwell in feudal romanticism.

Scale shapes complexity and the demands on the whole. That really shouldn’t require much explanation.

Capitalism is a problem, but scale took the Soviet Union and Mao’s China and collapsed each in different ways both. Neither would fit the definition of Capitalism. The US is experiencing the same drift.

As far as defying the law, to what purpose? Where is the catalyst? What is the end-game?

The problem is not “size”. The problem is function. This idea of “smallness” tends to ignore the complexity of function by offering an infantile remedy.

This article contradicts itself by first advocating “smallness” but then speaks to the fact that the states have blocked doctors from volunteering their services. Well the states are smaller than the Federal gov’t yet the insurance interest has been able to uses their accumulated power to pit these smaller entities against each other.

Also if the law is bad why don’t people DEFY the law. Folks sit around and hope that by “changing” the law things are going to be better. IT IS TIME TO BREAK THE LAW. Stop paying your bills, become your own doctor and practice your own medicine.

Until people are willing to take a RISK and act like dissidents nothing is going to change.

However I think there is a contradiction with Single Payer and the general thesis, at least as described in US parlance.

Nation-states seem to work fairly well when they are relatively small – say, to China, USA, India, perhaps Russia. Size is always problematic.

It is clear that empires stretch beyond their means. Their energy demands cripple them in the end. The US is finding its might has less and less sway. The world moves on energy. Energy sources rule. Not military (who need excessive quantities of energy).