About 175 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville, referring to the unfortunate mindset of so many of “the ambitious and capable” in our society, wrote, “It is a waste of one’s time to want to prove to them that extreme centralization can be harmful to the state, since they centralize for themselves.”
and
"The seemingly inescapable conclusion is that a great deal of Americans’ hard-earned money is flowing to the nation’s capital and simply staying there."