You're probably onto something. Being too big leads to problems. But also leads to power.
You can't fuck with the US/China, even if nukes were removed, because they are a massive force that will crush you beneath their heel. So there is mass power in unity. However you look at europe, and you see a lot of gains as well, where multiple smaller governments exist, and a unifying body was created to compete with the likes of the US without giving up their individuality. But also the US is distributed since states govern themselves with overarching federal oversight.
It is massively complex. At the end of the day we need not only a small anarchistic state, we also need reasons why some cult of personality won't be able to rally his million followers and start guns blazing taking over neighbors. Unfortunately I feel like democracy is the least bad system we got.
As anti-AI as I am, I think democracy might be the best we get until the day we are able to create benevolent machine kings organising our lives. Monarchies/authoritarian governments can in theory be fairer and much more efficient at tackling big problems than any democracy, but fail spectacularly, and with a lot of bloodshed, when paired with human stupidity and greed.
Until then, we're in kind of a political limbo of mediocrity.
The image I have of anarchism is not the mainstream one of "million of people doing whatever they want"; organisation and hierarchy are not in conflict with anarchism, as long as you are free to leave and form your own. So, under that point of view, anarchism-as-political-force is little more than a multitude of small heterogeneous communities collaborating and trading with each other. Maybe the secret is to embrace our tribal nature, but avoiding the issue of cult of personality—this is an interesting dilemma to which I don't have a good answer for, so thank you for the food for thought.
The problem of "free to leave" is that that only works with unlimited resources. Why should I allow a random person into my house to eat my food and promise to assist, only to be free to leave at any time. And they have to go to another house, why would someone there do the same.
Being altruistic is great, but at some point you run out of necessary resources. And altruism dies at scale when resources dry up.
You can't fuck with the US/China, even if nukes were removed, because they are a massive force that will crush you beneath their heel. So there is mass power in unity. However you look at europe, and you see a lot of gains as well, where multiple smaller governments exist, and a unifying body was created to compete with the likes of the US without giving up their individuality. But also the US is distributed since states govern themselves with overarching federal oversight.
It is massively complex. At the end of the day we need not only a small anarchistic state, we also need reasons why some cult of personality won't be able to rally his million followers and start guns blazing taking over neighbors. Unfortunately I feel like democracy is the least bad system we got.