Grunch of Giants (by Bucky) is in part about a contrivance known as "the corporation", an on-paper invention in legal fiction that defends the shareholders against losses beyond their original investments. If the ship goes down, only your share goes with it, not your entire estate.
Nation states, on the other hand, were deemed less "flash in the pan" (less here today, gone tomorrow) so securing debt against them might be a better proposition in the long term. Many a bank specializes in loans to sovereign nations.
As of the 1980s, the flim-flam was becoming more obvious, as the press for financial mechanisms to sustain a weapons buildup was pushed forward. Dragging Uncle Sam under was a part of the plan. He was the addict, war was the drug.
Fast forward to 2011, and we find the English schoolboy reality of "nation states" still failing to fit the facts on the ground. High ideals continue to wrap themselves in the claptrap of statehood however, whether these states be virtual or even fictional. Theme parks abound, Burma's among them, a sacred space.
Egypt's is a great civilization, as is Israel's, yet they permeate the globe by this time. Localizing to shrines, sacred sites, tourist attractions, continues to make sense. Carving the world into some jigsaw puzzle, ever changing, makes ever less sense.
An ethnicity needs airstrips and dots on the map (campus footprints) but vast contiguous tracts, in the shape of nations? We share a commons, that much is obvious. Resource managers have important responsibilities.
Count me a skeptic where schoolboy politics is concerned. Too much emphasis on "boy scout math" had gotten us into this pickle. Our Promised Land is not as much a "house divided" as the nationalists presume. Our New Atlantis is nothing other than the Global U itself, our Novus Ordo Seclorum.
Ecosystems pay no heed to political districting.
I'm all for zip codes however, as a way to deliver and assess demographics. I respect Bhutan's Dzongkhags, and Switzerland's cantons. We still need organs for local administration, systems for delivering mail and/or goods.
