Holy crap Techie, you're dropping out off the charts here in extremism.

Let me give you an analogy to how I perceive working with rest of the world.

I work for a contractor to the city and we run their bus transportation system. Now the city we contract to is the predominant city in terms of both population and wealth in a valley of a slew of other municipalities all bordering on one another. We can equate this city to the United States and these other localities countries in the rest of the world.

Now transportation is a unique industry but it has a lot of parallels to the interaction of countries on our globe. Our buses all continue on past jurisdictional boundaries on their daily trips and it was decided on long ago that the system would appear as one large valley-wide entity to the passengers. Fares would be consistent, a rider could get on in one city and get off in another without penalty or additional hassle. In order to keep this running smoothly a regional transit authority was created with input from the various municipalities. When it began, it was basically a puppet entity because the bulk of the finances were being paid by the major city. Much of their input was ceremonial and the top city had to provide many of the services that the poorer, less powerful entities couldn't do.

However, as the valley grew, these cities not only expanded in population but in wealth and power and could begin to take on some of the tasks that had been done for them in the past. As you can imagine though, the main city wasn't very happy sharing their power with them and the bickering began. Along with that conflict, things became very inefficient since the one main entity was trying to control all the others even though they were more intimately involved with their own rider's needs and wishes.

To wrap this up, what we're now seeing is the quality of the original city's administration diminishing and falling into political bickering and the regional authority becoming efficient and organized. Techie, it all came down to egos instead of people simply backing up, seeing that the world was changing, and allowing that their roles would have to change along with it. The other thing that would've prevented the meltdown would've been a mutual respect of one city to another and a gradual acknowledgment of the buildup of credibility.

You may have a disdain for Europe but I think you're a bit misguided. Sure they have their warts but they've also managed to stay solvent, at relative peace, and their citizens for the most part are educated, healthy, and happy with their lives. All this is happening while they have this huge influx of cultural diveristy into their lands that makes our Mexican immigration problem pale in comparison.

Just as our valley transportation system had to evolve into a unifying regional organization in order to stay at peace and efficient, the world requires that same degree of cooperation. One powerful land cannot dominate or they'll kill themselves with their ego.

You need to stop with the disparaging remarks that make it sound like you have some secretive inside track on the machinations of the world. We're all aware there's pitfalls in international cooperation but history has shown that nations fail if they close their borders and try to go it alone. They die choking on their own methane gas.

Art