Fealty Virus

Imagine all of American suddenly taken over by a virus that has one effect: it causes whoever is infected to become the vassal of whoever it was that infected him. A sudden outbreak of fealty, a strange and fractal pattern of personal allegiances all over the place, and some unlikely sovereign- a homeless guy, some housewife, or a sadistic killer. A sudden and arbitrary revert from the relatively new nation-state to governance via personal relationship.

We'd quickly be freer than we are now, even if a really bad guy found himself at the top of the allegiance pole. The criminally minded take other people's stuff in order to satisfy their own desires. This costs less than the money that has been wasted on global warming. Whatever personal vendettas a bad sovereign might have would cause less death and cost less than wars supposedly spreading democracy. Perhaps most significantly, the self-indulgent, when given the opportunity, tend to overdose on their particular poison.
Which means, after some indeterminate period of time, and some indeterminate number of Elvis style deaths, we'd have a sovereign with some self-restraint.

An interesting side question is morality vs fealty- if your lord asked you to do something you thought was immoral, wouldn't you consider it a higher service to him to refuse, rather than do harm to him by doing it? Of course, eventually he finds someone with a less developed conscience- but they too ought to have an attrition higher than the average.

Meanwhile, the average person would have these two relationships to deal with in lieu of several institutions engaged in political law. Anyone with sense would see prosperity for those both before and after as prosperity for themselves. People would be interested in protecting persons and their property, not arbitrary borders and abstract notions.

(Note to public school students: fealty does not equal slavery.)