The question hardly anyone asks

Seven people do ask the question: Kirkpatrick Sale, E. F. Schumacher, Leopold Kohr, Ralph Borsodi, Mildred Loomis, Rudolf Bahro, and Paul Goodman.

What size collective makes sense?

Earliest: the band of about 50 (comprised of several kinship families)
Then: the Paleolithic tribe of about 300 (comprised of multiple nomadic bands or small villages)
Then: the Neolithic village of about 500
Then: the township of 2,000
Then: the city-state of 100,000
Then: the metropolitan city of 1 million
Then: the modern nation-state of ten million or a hundred million or a thousand million

Over the weekend our government (again) bailed out our banking system, supposedly for the benefit of all of us.

That “us” is 340 million people.

That collective is too large. Within that context the benefit tends to go mostly to the 1%. Within a human-scaled village such a travesty would be visible and intolerable.