What’s remarkable is that everyone recognizes that “the disagreements over solutions have become” “intractable” but thinks the solution is to handle more things at the federal/EU/UN level.
There is nothing remarkable about that. Large problems require large entities to solve them, the kind of hole a country or state can dig itself into requires the next level up to dig it out again.
This is precisely why problems that affect the whole world are so hard to solve: we are not that well organized at that level, there are no sanctions for bad actors that are effective and with veto power and various power blocks not in alignment with each other the stage is set for a lot of misery.
It's not like we can appeal to the union of planets to bail us out.
Close cooperation has many benefits and the further dissection of nations has significant costs. I don’t think it’s surprising people aren’t rushing toward what comes next.
Because breaking up countries, let alone over fuzzy ethnic lines, is seldom a peaceful process that leads to prosperous smaller countries (over one's lifetime anyway). A most common outcome seems to be violence and war short-mid term followed by poverty and corruption long term.
Or an opportunity for a powerful figure to take power by force and rule over all.
I'm not for dictatorships, but we already have too many countries in the world. And provinces and states within these countries. Too many little fiefdoms. Too many wannabe lords. Too many presidents, premiers, prime ministers, governors, chancellors, kings, emperors. Too many parliaments, congresses, too many senators, deputies, representatives. Too much division. Hell, we're going to have American, Chinese, and European bases on the Moon and Mars. No wonder we can't tackle collective challenges. We'll be traveling through other galaxies and still call ourselves based on the particular piece of land we were born in on this particular planet called the Earth.
I fully acknowledge that this is a privileged point of view on my part. I am lucky enough to live in an industrialized and peaceful enough country to be able to hold this opinion without having to worry about my basic survival.
Was this translated from original Russian? Honestly, it really does sound like you're for dictatorships.
I think all that diversity - sure, even competing bases on the Moon - is the sign of a healthy society. Monoculture is much more perilous. Centralization gives you NASA, market chaos gives you SpaceX.
If people share your values and are ruling in your interest then it doesn't matter if they are far away. If someone is ruling against your interest and doesn't share your values, it's no benefit if they're local.
And what does "local" mean? London to Brussels is only 200 miles direct, that's closer than Belfast, Edinburgh, or St Davids which are all places more or less ruled by London as "local" to the UK.