Nassim Nicholas Taleb thinks the nation state is fated to disappear over the next couple of decades, to be replaced by “city-states and statelings” that rely on a gold standard and can manage their finances properly. Matt Yglesias is skeptical:
Maybe so. And yet it seems to me that people have been predicting the nation-state’s demise for a long time and it seems like a very robust structure. If anything the trend I see toward greater adherence to a strict interpretation of what a nation-state is supposed to be. Belgium splitting in into two properly “national” states seems much more plausible than Los Angeles emerging as a quasi-sovereign entity.
Yeah, I don’t think LA is quite destined for national greatness yet. Ditto for the idea that our current recession spells some kind of permanent change in “consumerism” and spending habits. I know this kind of thing sounds cool, but it’s really unlikely that even a big global recession is going to fundamentally change either the course of human history or the current state of the art in human nature.
Our problems today may loom large, but they’re also quite solvable. True, the solutions involve a fair amount of nonheroic drudgery, and that’s not very much fun to write about, but it’s a whole lot more likely to improve actual human lives. Noses to the grindstone, folks.
