Hello Joe!
The USA as an economic and political system is dead man walking. It takes millions of dollars to get into US Congress or Senate, way out of reach of middle/poor class people, the majority. Almost all of your congressmen and women are either rich themselves or friends of the rich. Middle class is just another minority to them, a real nuisance.
You can email, write, fax and phone to your US congressmen every day for five years straight but his army of assistants will not most likely pass your message to him. Even if your message goes through, what he is gonna do about it? Probably nothing. After all, you are not one of his rich pals that provide him those crucial millions for reelection campaign.
Compare that to my country, Finland (population 5.3 million). The average budget of candidates for our parliament was about 40,000 dollars in our elections last March. That meant even average Joe and Jane could rather easily be candidates.
So I believe there is a upper population limit for functioning democracy. There should not be over 30 million people per democracy or otherwise, it gets more and more empire-like and pseudo-democracy, just like USA is now. The optimum size is probably under 10 million.
So dividing USA to 50 states but keeping the currency, Americans would be much better off. If Kansas wants to be Jesusland, so be it. Each state could experiment whatever they really want, the competition among states would find out the winners in the long term. Most likely, the "winning model" would eventually spread to all other states. All those liberals screaming out there are just beating a dead horse. Your current system is totally broken and unfixable.
So what you think about that?
Timo
Helsinki, Finland
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Timo,
I think the empire will collapse from its own hubris, folly and sheer eco-disaster long before such a thing could ever be formally organized, even if the gangsters running the country would allow it. Perhaps the result of the coming collapse will be smaller governmental units. I dunno.
Meanwhile, let me say that I have known quite a few Finns in America and they are amazingly level headed people. Why don't you send a few thousand more over here to improve our breeding stock?
True, they won't have health care, will be forced to marry very large and vain shopping-crazed women, have no guarantee of a minimum of food to exist upon, live among heavily armed tribes of religious fanatics, and be force fed state propaganda and chemically poisoned foods. But what the hell? Come on, show a little altruism. It is for humanity's sake.
In art and labor,
Joe
