"Equilibrium level of government organizations" has two meanings. 1) Optimal scale for social functionality (small -- almost certainly 10,000,000, or less). 2) Optimal scale for state power (large -- probably over 100,000,000, given a relatively homogenized population).
-
-
Replying to @GarettJones
The size of countries consistently topping the Heritage economic freedom index is telling.
1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes -
Replying to @GarettJones @ATabarrok
Shouldn't the law of large numbers be stronger for micro-states? There are (at least potentially) a lot more of them. Then the weeding starts. ...
1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes -
... A huge part of the argument for average state down-sizing is that it will allow people to do stupid stuff at appropriate scale.
1 reply 1 retweet 9 likes -
... If 40% of micro-states were "attractive" massively dysfunctional Maoist nightmares it would count as an unalloyed good in my book. The 20% super-functional hard right regimes would more than "make up" for it. Difficult to pick up the process by just averaging it out.
1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes -
... Variation-selection dynamics like extreme multiplicity. Mega-states don't allow this.
1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes -
... So I think there's more value in recognizing that the top seven states on the Heritage Economic Freedom index are all small, than trying to statistically mash all small states. (I too would expect the worst to be small too -- praise Gnon.)
1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes -
... "They're the best AND the worst." -- Great. That's the point.
1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
... As far as the "But I'd rather have a 1 SD IQ advantage" argument is concerned -- Sure, but it's not ultimately an independent variable.
-
-
... China is going to skew the data for a while, but at the end of the day you can't do eugenics in a mega-state.
1 reply 1 retweet 4 likes - 1 more reply
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.