... go away, any more than bribing low-income nations to surrender their sovereignty on cross-border flows of wealth is "making government go away" ... its shifting the level at which the government is accomplished.

And, yes, I have a strong bias in favor of accomplishing those tasks locally that can be accomplished locally, on precisely the same grounds ... there is quite a bit that national government must due, and any complex social institution has limits on the range of things it can do and do well. Some of the things that national government must do are quite literally life and death tasks. So to my mind, the more tasks that can be successfully and equitably off-loaded, the better.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.