The Robustness of the Nation-State

Nassim Taleb forecasts the future and says that within 15 years: "The great top-down nation-state will be only cosmetically alive, weakened by deficits, politicians' misalignment of interests and the magnification of errors by centralised systems. The pre-modernist robust model of city-states and statelings will prevail, with obsessive fiscal prudence."

Maybe so. And yet it seems to me that people have been predicting the nation-state's demise for a long time and it seems like a very robust structure. If anything the trend I see toward greater adherence to a strict interpretation of what a nation-state is supposed to be. Belgium splitting in into two properly "national" states seems much more plausible than Los Angeles emerging as a quasi-sovereign entity.