Bringing this back on topic a bit: it sounds like what is really being discussed here is how the 3.3 changes have allowed groups to accelerate, and that groups supporting a conglomeration of factions have been able to leverage simultaneous states for this growth despite the action nerf in March. This raises some questions: if Frontier wanted to slow the growth of player-supported minor factions, procedurally generated and otherwise, as part of an aim to create a more stable galaxy, was 3.3 the way to do it?
Would we rather have 3.2 mechanics, or 3.3 mechanics with the action rebalance to slow things down? I fall strongly in the former camp, because I think that the reduced impact of individual player impacts in a given amount of playtime is the easy way out.
In an ironic twist FD need to bring some sort of overhead calculation to the sizes of factions just like Powerplay or strategy games like Civ. It could be something simple like the bigger you get, the more difficult it is to make systems happy enough to expand from. Right now expansion is virus like, with no expansion tax.