The idea of a nation or country as an organizing unit of human society is a new thing in human existence. In the Bronze Age there were city-states organized around the palace economy system. A ruling clan could control multiple cities, but each city-state operated as independent entities. Each one had a palace through which the economy flowed. More important, the people in those polities identified with their respective city-state.

The last time I bothered to read up on the history of the nation-state, it was pretty clear that historians did not agree on much of anything anymore with regards to the birth of the nation-state. The way I was taught in school was that the nation-state was born with the Peace of Westphalia. The Westphalian System was the first time Europeans had what we would consider to be nation-states.

A nation was defined as a sovereign state with defined, internationally recognized borders populated with people sharing a language and culture. More important, the ruling authorities had exclusive dominion over domestic affairs. The rulers of France would coin their own money, manage their taxes and laws, arbitrate disputes between its citizens and maintain whatever political institutions it found appropriate.

For the West, this has been the definition of a country for 367 years.That’s a long time but it is still an exception in human history. The Roman Republic lasted 482 years. The Roman empire lasted 400+ years. Put another way, the nation-state system has been in place for about 5% of human civilization. City-states and empires have been the norm, along with ad hoc temporary groupings along geographic and tribal lines.

This summer, the Westphalian System, as a practical matter, has been ended.  Greece no longer possesses the things one uses to define a country. The “Europeans” now control the financial system and the currency. They will manage the national budget, setting spending limits and priorities. They will dictate the laws and regulations. More important, the national parliament no longer has any say over these things.

Greece is not a ward of the state. Greece is a ward of the new global technocracy. The alphabet soup of international organization were just ad hoc councils until now, as they had no real power, other than what the participants agreed to do with one another. In July 2015, for the first time, a supra-national organization has taken over a country. Greece is now a territory, a possession of the EU.

That’s the only way to read what has gone down over the last week. The deal Greece “negotiated” with Europe is a full and total renunciation of its status as a free and independent country. Tsipras admitted as much right after the deal was agreed to on Monday. “We managed to avoid the most extreme measures,” Tsipras said. “Greece will fight to return to growth and to reclaim its lost sovereignty.”

In another age, a trouble maker country like Greece would face invasion by other countries. If the Germans wanted the gold they lent the Greek king, they would have to take it by force. Today, they invade their financial systems and take the money that way. Of course, they are not really taking the money. They are simply transferring what’s left in the banks to the bankers in Europe. They will keep doing that to make sure future interest payments are met.

It’s a fascinating thing in that most people, including me, thought the Greek crisis was a threat to the EU model. It is turning out to be a confirmation of the model. Maybe the Greek people will revolt. Maybe there’s a Greek Gavrilo Princip waiting for Merkel somewhere. I don’t see any indications of that, but who knows what the future brings. For now it looks like a stunning coup for the Germans and their vision of Europe.

It is also a glimpse of what our rulers have in mind for the rest of us. Participatory government is not very useful in the global age. The Dutch East India Company had good reason to not go around the world spreading Dutch republicanism. It is a hindrance to doing deals. The modern global economy is for cloud people, through supranational organizations, to make deals. Voters just get in the way.

The next thing to watch is how Greek politicians and the Greek voters respond in future elections. If you’re a Greek voter, you have to know voting in local elections is pointless. Years of that exercise have only made your situation worse. Similarly, the young ambitious pols have to see that courting voters is a waste of time. Snuggling up to the technocrats in Brussels is the key to success.

Something no one in the major media bothers to discuss, because it is hard, is how the loyalty chain is supposed to work in this new global world. Kinship is the most basic form of loyalty. It is based in biology. You increase the odds of your genes carrying on by working with the people in your kin group. It is a basic evolutionary strategy. Similarly, the tribe is just an extension of this as is the clan. National identity is just the same concept scaled to its maximum.

The thing is, loyalty is both vertical and horizontal. The head of a family has duties to his family and his family has duties to him. These duties and loyalties are also between members of the family. In larger groups, these become more formalized in customs, rules and, when you get big enough, laws and religions. Still, even at the nation level, the call of blood is still there. Francois Hollande is loyal to France as a Frenchman. Merkel is loyal to Germany as a German.

How this is supposed to work in a global technocracy where the rulers are floating around in cloud cities, disconnected from the people they rule, is a mystery. How can Greeks have loyalty to Brussels? How can a Dutch technocrat working in a cubicle somewhere in Europe feel any loyalty to a grape farmer in Tuscany? To one another, they are not people, just numbers on a page.

What is imagined for us is a no-trust, transactional society where everyone is an economic man, whether he likes it or not. There will be no countries and therefore no citizens. Everyone will be a rootless, atomized cosmopolitan. The Greeks get to try it out first, but the rest of the world will soon follow.