This is why I’m an anti-authoritarian first and a democrat second. Civil liberties are more important than democracy, they’re worth too much to let the masses throw them in the bin at the first scent of fear.

Same for me. I'd like to see many more small countries and city states. Or at least people taking federalism and subsidiarity serious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity

That's because people seem to be much more reasonable when voting with their feet and wallets, then when voting at the polling booth. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter for some background.)

Eg in a US context, there's no reason at all why they need to have a federal minimum wage as far as I can tell.

Different people have different opinions on how minimum wage works, if at all, but from what I can tell minimum wage is an issue that can be done at state or even municipality level only. There's no need to have federal uniformity here.

The issue is that all of those small separate states will do one thing or another wrong. This causes an outcry for centralization because the idea is that the central authority will set them right. And once the power has centralized it doesn't go back to the small states. Eventually people realize that the centralized state also does some things wrong, but now there's no alternative.

Where, of course, 'wrong' is in the eye of the beholder.

Many people cheer on Supreme Court decisions that forbid states from making certain laws or policies that their democratically elected legislatures and governments decided on.