Facebook, Territory, and the Demos
"The reason we think that territorial or historical or national groups ought make decisions together is that, typically if not invariably, the interests of individuals within those groups are affected by the actions and choices of others in that group. Those common reciprocal interests in one another’s actions and choices are what makes those groups appropriate units for collective decisionmaking, at least in a rough-and-ready way. Rough-and-ready, because (as flagged by the recurring qualifier, 'typically if not invariably') the correlation between territoriality or nationality or history and shared interests is far from perfect. Not every person who lives in a given territory is affected by the actions and choices of every other person in that territory; not every person in the territory is affected by every collective decision of the demos constituted on the basis of residence in that territory. Ditto for historical or national groups. Constituting a demos on the basis of shared territory or history or nationality is thus only an approximation to constituting it on the basis of what really matters, which is interlinked interests."
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