I wrote this article years ago when I left East Germany, back in 87, along with the 27 others we had done our jobs really well, we knew the wall was coming down, we knew freedom and free markets would win.
Socialism, communism are just a failure.
The old USSR was too big to exist, it couldn't keep going, too many people and too much land mass to control. It had to crumble.
Canada is exactly the same, it has nothing to do with socialism or communism, which now during rewrite of this article are very much what Canada is about, it is just the size. As a series of individual countries it works. You trade with each other but you protect those within your borders, a simple concept that ago all the way back in history.
A family unit is just that, you protect what is yours.
I don't need do the history lesson and go all the way back to Mesopotamia, Egypt, this should be logical.
The larger your area, the more difficult it is to protect, this is why Islands become single strong holds, borders are natural and easier to defend, you can see them coming. (This somehow doesn't work in the modern age, it seem the UK actually goes out and actively brings invaders in)
Sorry, I will wander while I edit this, but to put it in very simple terms, the basic human pattern: land supports the family; the family (or its leaders) must protect the land.
The issue comes with expansion, when families merge, the land becomes more and the defence of that becomes more difficult, requiring more resources etc, so you have to spend in effort to keep what you have, and this means a clever invader can take something, without you even knowing, and by attrition you will lose what you have.
Rome did well, as did other leaders, this wasn't family, but the areas that "owned" got left to their own devices as much as possible, they reaped what that occupied land sowed, with a measure of security for all, but it was only in good that these other places traded.
Moving on to layered power.
Now in the modern world we move to what "political" power it, the idea of the family and protection of those within the borders has gone.
Now it is simply the more people I have, as a leader, the more I can personally make, the more we the political machine can have for ourselves.
The USSR had millions of people, and they couldn't keep control, and when faced with the question do I keep what I have or give some away so that I might be able to stay in power, having a little less isn't a bad thing, the response was, I want it all, and eventually everyone in power saw that the strongest might win personal wealth, and please don't think it is anything else, power comes with wealth, it doesn't come with anything else.
The USSR crumbled.
Now, the 2nd largest country in the world, Canada, it has a better chance of surviving because it is 4000 miles wide and only 200, if that, miles deep, the vast majority of Canada is nothing, no one lives there, no one worth talking about lives there, just ask the Canadian government, they openly admit, they don't care.
Now, as a commonwealth, it isn't really a country, it is, or was, a band of individual "nations" that traded and had their own system, but they managed to join together, but without doing what all other countries do, free trade.
Within a country, from one end to the other, you should be able to take your good and sell them. Within Canada, just crossing into another province incurs costs, Canada has always been a bunch of individual nations under one banner.
Much like the old USSR the power base is as one end of the country, and doesn't have a clue as to what happens thousands of miles away.
The only thing that has kept Canada together is the commonwealth, that is it, one banner, multiple different nations. Quebec is a nation as far as the Canadian government is considered, it can do whatever it want, and demand whatever it wants, the rest have to agree.
As politics moves forward to more and more the idea of personal wealth and power, the people will get less and less.
The more a government distances itself from the people, the more and more the chances of rebellion grow.
Quebec, with its special status has always wanted more independence, with the firm belief that France, their brothers in Language would save them, something France has clearly stated it would never do.
Now, with Alberta, it stands clear that Canada as a collection of nations under one banner can not survive.
The smaller the group, the tighter the bond, the safer the family unit, the safer the country, the safer the land.
If you bring religion into this argument it gets much messier, because religion doesn't care about borders, nor does it care about the people that worship, it is strictly about the power that comes from having a ready base of "sheep".
Spend some time in Rome and you will understand, the will chastise you for giving to beggars, and in some cases the priests will take from the beggars because the "church" should have it, at no point is it about the people, same for Islam, and many others.
I would suggest that humans should start again, working up from basic instincts, and putting aside what we call "intelligence", if we look many creatures have out lived us and continue to do so by just eating shitting and fucking.
If we could start at that again, and then slowly develop the idea, of home, family and borders, we might actually get it right. Families join and the land gets bigger, the demands gets more but the work is a little easier.
You need to eat, sleep and make more family.
