definitely good material for formulating strategies of evading the centralisation of power

in general, living more remote exposes you less to power but in some strategic configurations the more strong your system's defences are the bigger your society can get and thus leverage efficiency gains where it might otherwise succumb to co-option

put it this way, i live in an outlying district of portugal now, in an outlying part, with relativel high population density, and some quite unique strategic and tactical features to the landscape (logistics costs are very very high here) and the people successfully enjoy quite a bit of isolation due to this feature of the land... i believe similar things are at play with afghanistan and with the parts of south east asia that the chinese mandarins could not dominate, and are still largely independent (ie, thailand, laos, cambodia, vietnam)

the police barely pass my house more than once a week at their most frequent and usually during party times, and if there is car accidents, which are relatively severe in their impact due to the terrain

while i would prefer i did not have two yapping chihuahua mutts right next door, and there is some construction noise going on as more people build and renovate nearby, this is a nice place to be, i can probably stay pretty incognito here for some time before i get roped into bullshit by a tax collector