Well it's interesting that the expanse of the United States was created during a period of colonialism. The trend ever since has been to break up those empires into more manageable pieces. Today, New York and Washington DC are the colonial powers, and the rest of us are the colonies. sending "home" our wealth as protection money against the imagined predations of powers farther a'sea. Perhaps the next step is the post-nation state, which many have imagined as a dystopia. I cannot say that I genuinely prefer living in DC's vassal, increasingly at the whim of a torrent of muds, to a Raytheon company town. I have voted with my feet many times, and I'd do it again. Hell is other people who dislike you. I'm ready to live where people like me call the shots, within functional borders as we see fit to establish to protect our common interest.