Japan’s cities work in ways that feel almost impossible to replicate in the United States, and much of that difference begins with zoning. The country uses a nationally standardized land-use system that local governments apply without the power to modify. This top-down simplicity enables dense, walkable communities where homes, businesses, shrines, schools, and even light industry can coexist on the same block. The result is a built environment that’s cohesive, adaptable, and fundamentally human-scaled: narrow alleyways, tall slender buildings, vibrant shopping streets, and small businesses tucked into every crevice. There are few aesthetic mandates and little room for NIMBY obstructionism because the rules aren’t up for local debate.
Japan’s national zoning framework is composed of twelve defined land-use categories, and their significance is not in their complexity but in their clarity and restraint. Unlike the sprawling, hyper-granular, and often contradictory zoning codes of American municipalities, Japan’s categories are broad and permissive. Most zones allow for mixed uses by default; residential, commercial, and small-scale industrial functions can often occupy the same space. This avoids the rigid separation of uses that characterizes American suburbia and frees Japanese cities to evolve block-by-block without the paralysis of endless permitting battles or neighborhood vetoes. It also ensures that local governments focus on implementation, not negotiation.
Japan is an interesting place. Part of what makes it so is how its built environment functions, not just as architecture, but as a reflection of its political structure. Across the country, the urban fabric is cohesive, and that cohesion ripples outward into infrastructure and services. Trains and ferries outperform cars in most regions. Where cars are present, they rarely dominate the landscape the way they do in American or European suburbia, or in Indian or Chinese cities. Tokyo has public toilets in abundance. The train stations are among the cleanest in the world. Rent is low enough to keep small businesses alive and visible. Neighborhoods feel lived-in and textured. You’ll find shopping arcades in residential areas, and homes embedded in commercial districts. Only in areas of heavy industry does exclusionary zoning, so familiar in the American context, appear. Elsewhere, the land is either mixed-use or culturally significant, like a park or a temple. Why does that work?
It’s not a rhetorical question. It leads directly to a larger one: Why does federalism work? Because compared to unitary systems, federal systems are a mess. At best, they are slow-burning failures, like Centralia, Pennsylvania, where an underground coal seam has been smoldering since 1962. At worst, they’re raging infernos: incoherent, fragile, and prone to collapse.
A unitary system is a true hierarchy: the Sovereign sits at the top, and all lower ranks act only with delegated power. They have no intrinsic authority of their own. A federal system, by contrast, is a false hierarchy. Yes, there’s a Sovereign at the top, and yes, some subordinate entities operate under delegated power—but others are Sovereigns in their own right. We call them “lesser sovereigns” because within their constitutionally defined domains, they answer to no one above them.
In the United States, the Federal Government is the Sovereign. The Federal Executive acts using its delegated powers, as do the Territories, places like Puerto Rico and Guam. But the States, and the Tribes, are sovereigns too. They get to act independently in spheres not granted to the Federal Sovereign. That’s not a loophole, it’s a design feature of the Constitution.
So when you hear someone squawking about “states’ rights,” they’re almost certainly trying to manipulate you. Whatever their agenda, it usually has little to do with the actual legal question at hand. But their rhetoric leans on a deeper truth: some domains really do belong to lesser sovereigns, and in those domains, they sit at the top of their own little hierarchy. Inside their bubble, they run a mini unitary system, nested beside and beneath the broader federal structure.
This fractal sovereignty is the source of most structural dysfunction in the United States. Why? Because unclear jurisdictional boundaries benefit the kind of people Ta-Nehisi Coates once defined as assholes: those who demand that every social interaction happen on their terms. And unfortunately, American politics over-represents these people. It is, in many ways, a machine built to serve them.
Which brings us back to Japan. Japan is a unitary state. The national government sets the rules, and local governments execute them with delegated authority. That’s why a national land-use system—twelve zones, fixed and non-negotiable—actually works. It’s not subject to local bickering or carve-outs. After World War II, when Japan had to rebuild from the ground up, they didn’t have time for exception requests and permitting squabbles. They needed clarity, speed, and coordination. So they made a rule that was as simple as possible, but no simpler.
Which is something only unitary systems can do.
Which begs the question: Can federal systems evolve? Or are they structurally capped; burning all their energy just to hold the boundary lines in place? More specifically: Is the United States even capable of solving its domestic crises anymore, or will congenital defects lock it into permanent dysfunction?
This isn’t an idle question. Because the enemies we face, corporations, criminal syndicates, authoritarian regimes, are unitary systems. And the defects inherent in federalism are vulnerabilities they actively exploit.
Our patchwork domestic system doesn’t coordinate; it gets played. Played by corporations arbitraging tax incentives across jurisdictions. Played by criminal gangs mining the tailings of lesser sovereigns, those too distracted by turf fights and favoritism to govern. Played by extremists who out-organize the state, out-fundraise the tax base, and out-evangelize the national mythos. These are losing strategies, losing tactics, and losing logistics. The profit centers of every state are being dismantled and scavenged in real time.
Internationally, everything is a cost center. Power projection? Cost center. Superpower status? Cost center. Global War on Terror? Cost center. Innovation engine? Cost center. Moral leadership? Cost center. Meanwhile, globalization is a fragile shell; pan-oceanic supply chains, off-shore manufacturing, transnational markets are all strategic vulnerabilities waiting for disaster, catastrophe, or enemy to exploit. These too are losing strategies, losing tactics, and losing logistics. The cost centers of international control metastasize, while the returns lag by orders of magnitude.
So what do we do?
We adapt.
Or we die.
Or become slaves.
Federalism in the United States is limited by design. And yet, we keep trying to stretch it beyond its capacity. Because our imperial ambitions demand an imperial sovereign. Because our states are too poor, too exploited, too enfeebled to stand alone. We have to stop doing that.
Yes, the states have lost control of the Federal Sovereign. But that doesn’t mean they should stop working together. Yes, the Federal Sovereign is a toxic partner—but that doesn’t mean it always will be. And yes, our national political parties are trapped in ideological incoherence that undermines everything we claim to value. But that doesn’t mean we have to let them dictate the forums, the narratives, or the terms of debate.
We don’t have to live with the status quo.
We don’t have to keep playing by broken rules.
We can think differently.
What does different look like?
It looks like states reasserting their collective power; not against the union, but within it. It looks like new alliances, parallel institutions, constitutional fidelity without party obedience, and governance designed for resilience, not theater. It looks like rebuilding federalism from the inside out, one compact, one standard, one refusal at a time.
Interstate Compacts let states bargain collectively with corporations.
If the Federal Sovereign is toxic, compacts create a buffer; a layer of mutual aid and self-sufficiency inside a broken federation.
Party-less elections free voters from candidates pre-approved by the extremist base of a national party. They restore elections to the people, not to the party apparatus.
Raise the standard for winning, not just the most votes cast, but a majority of all eligible voters. This forces candidates to appeal more broadly, to more people, not just to better-funded factions.
Conduct honest elections for Electors, not Candidates.
Let Electors vote their conscience. Let them deliberate. Yes, it invites chaos, but that chaos is what the Constitution intended. What we have instead, party-appointed loyalists and winner-take-all vote bundling, is a distortion, not a safeguard.
States and Tribes are sovereign. Their sovereignty is not small.
But they act like it is.
They already control land use.
They already control capital flow, building codes, human rights enforcement.
These are not federal powers. These are retained rights.
What’s missing is not the authority. It is the will to use them.
Meanwhile, the responsibilities of the Federal Sovereign fall into three distinct domains:
- Immediate responsibilities – like defense and diplomacy.
- Intermediate responsibilities – like infrastructure, and the operation of national services we choose to preserve outside the market: healthcare, education, pensions, retail banking.
- Long-term responsibilities – the ones that require generational commitment: climate, environment, economic justice, and national character.
We need institutions built for each layer of responsibility, and nothing more.
- Departments should handle only the immediate: defense, diplomacy, crisis response, and do so cleanly, without overreach.
- Government corporations should handle the intermediate: public systems too essential to profit from and too vital to abandon. These must be shielded from political whim and designed to serve the public, not the donor class.
- Federal Mission Centers must own the long-term. These should have direct injection rights into Congress and the Executive, not as advisors, but as line-drawers. Their authority should not be ideological, but scientific. Not temporary, but enduring. Not subject to majority vote, but accountable to truth.
And all of this must happen in public.
No secrets.
No sealed memos.
No shadow processes.
The only exceptions are espionage and clandestine military planning.
Everything else must be visible.
If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing in the light.
We have a choice.
We can build something better, or we can build something worse.
We may not choose to not build.