[_heimdall]

The power and scale of governments doesn't have to be correlated with the scale of the society. The concept of nations themselves aren't even a necessity.

I get that this is what we have today and all we've had in recent history, but we are ignoring a huge number of possibilities to assume that being human means always inventing new things, using more resources, creating more weapons, and needing larger and larger governments because someone had to be in charge.