> I don't agree with you on that point I'm afraid. There is nothing more corrupt than local politics.

There's nothing more corrupt than politics. The great thing about local politics is that localities are small; excessively corrupt politics in one locality can be avoided by dealing with another locality instead, or by playing multiple polities off against each other. Centralization means less variation: no other centers of authority to turn to when the one you're dealing with goes bad, and no gaps between poles of authority to retreat to when nothing is working right.

> Backhanders, bribes, virtually no transparency.

Except for the level of transparency that clues you in to the fact that corruption is happening in the first place. The difference between local and global is in scale and distance: corruption in larger-scale and more distant institutions is harder to discover, but it's silly to suggest that the complex of motivations and incentives that generate corruption close by aren't likewise present further away.

> I can't help but wonder who is going to keep an eye on these smaller, more secretive and ultimately more powerful political terror cells.

That's the beauty of having multiple centers of power in a society - they all keep each other in check far more effectively than the public at large can keep a single, centralized institution in check.

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" is a question applicable to all political systems, but it becomes more difficult to answer, not less so, as political systems become more centralized and authoritative.

> If you start start with the assumption that every politician will abuse their power

Well, if you don't start with the more basic assumption that, given the opportunity, some people will abuse others, then what's the justification for empowering any political state in the first place? If it's actually possible to construct our relationships so as to minimize or eliminate the possibility of abuse, then we don't need politics; if it isn't possible to do that, then politics itself will be susceptible to the same flaws as any other human institution.

The solution to this dilemma is to realize that (a) it is possible to formulate our interactions so as to minimize the likelihood and mitigate the impact of abuse, and that (b) the way to accomplish that is with more opportunities for exit, so we can disassociate from and insulate ourselves against abusers. Centralization of power reduces opportunities for exit, and mere voice isn't a sufficient substitute.

> I can't help but think think of African Warlords who have done exactly that, and it's horrific.

I've no idea what you're referring to. Warlordism is, by definition, a repudiation of the principles I'm articulating here. Warlords aren't typically interested in protecting a varied and dynamic civil society against abuses of concentrated power; they're typically interested in concentrating power for themselves, and subordinating others to themselves.

> everyone should have a say in the administering the decisions that impact on their life.

No; again, mere voice isn't enough. People must have the right to opt out and to reclaim responsibility for making those decisions, limited only by the boundaries between their lives and others'.

> Your idea is essentially just a lot of smaller nation states acting in their own blinkered interests

My "idea" consists of the empirical recognition that every particular grouping of human beings, no matter how ad-hoc or ephemeral, is effectively a society unto itself, and that the members of each group have the natural right to define the nature of their mutual interactions within that context without being subjected to manipulation by others outside of it.

The use of law - not policy - can function as a failsafe mechanism to prevent disputes from spilling out of their native contexts and harming third parties, or escalating into life-or-death conflicts, but that depends on law not being perverted into a system of active preemptive control over society. The century-long experiment in gradually replacing common law and equity with statutory policy and regulatory bureaucracy has been a clear failure, and one that demonstrably undermined the ability of law to function for its intended purpose.

> world where we all get an equal say in how we react to these things.

You envision a world of continuous, irresolvable conflict, then, as people with drastically different values attempt to realize them by having an "equal say" in a singular undifferentiated conceptual "space".

The real way to enable stability and prosperity in a highly diverse and complex world is precisely to protect people's ability to differentiate their own conceptual "space", as distinct from others, and to allow them maximum control over their own lives within that space, and minimum control over others'.

> but we do have a clear difference of opinion and we shouldn't shy away from that.

Well, that's the crux of it, isn't it? The existence of this very disagreement demonstrates that universal solutions to problems aren't attainable, and attempting them causes the exact sort of escalation of conflict that we've thankfully avoided thus far precisely because - this being a merely academic discussion on the internet - neither of us is in a position to impose our own preferences on the other.