for one governing structure, democratic or otherwise. The closest we have been able to come towards this is now, with "globalization." But with economic contraction on the horizon, globalization will be going in reverse. There will be more, and smaller nation states as time goes on. Democracy without "representatives" is impossible on a scale that is larger than the number of people that can sit around a table. The idea of some sort of non-representative "democracy" that could be organized in a country of 300,000,000 seems like a wishful-thinking fantasy. We've spent the 250 years since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution experimenting with various economic and political models. Now that we are entering an era of contraction, the time for such experimentation is over, as, quite simply, the clock has run out, there is no time to continue experimenting with something that at best has a long-shot chance at success. They say that if you go up in a small plane and fly over the Haiti/Dominican Republic border, that you can see it clearly from the air. The Hatian side has all been logged off and the soil eroded, while the Dominican side is still forested. The difference is due to the fact that the Hatian government is too weak to stop provate individuals from going in and cutting everything down, while the Dominican government made it clear that unauthorized loggers would be shot on sight. Not a "nice" solution to be sure, but at least it works. Unfortunately,