We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day If the best we get by having a choice between a “democratically” elected Statist behemoth and a dictatorially selected Statist behemoth then we’ve got a major problem. So “scale” is important when discussing democracy. Granted local authorities can be corrupt as well, but the whole notion is to “set aside” bad government, not elect in a new batch of the same. In the end, the bigger the government, no matter how it is contrived, the more self serving and unresponsive it will be. The anti-federalists knew this, but lost out for the most part
– Commenter ‘Brad‘
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
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There is no tyranny like local government tyranny.
Corrupt, self-serving, and unresponsive joined with a direct impact in matters of zoning, licensing, property taxation, school management, and other such issues causes at least as much, if not more, daily pain to the citizenry than nearly any statist federal initiative you can name.
How many bad local (or even state) governments, so often run by cabals of small businessmen, contractors, and other self-interested players (e.g. teachers unions in the case of school districts) continue year after year across the republic? I’ll wager they are “set aside” no more often than the big boys are. Cases like the Dover school board are news precisely because of the rarity.
In my experience local governmnet is just a pastime for bored housewives and small businessmen with big egos (like having an affair, but you get to screw more people). I don’t think most of them are wicked, although some undoubtedly are, but they are not at present a panacea for our woes.
Don’t forget the part about how petty, vindictive, and downright nasty local politics can be. Personal grudges with no basis in ideology can account for a lot. For every Nixon who used the FBI or IRS to harass an opponent, there are thousands of two-bit ward heelers who try to zone each others’ muffler shops out of business.
Yeah, but the advantages of small states are that it is easier to move to the state next door when living conditions become unbearable, and that they do not have the economies of scale of larger governments – hard to imagine a local government setting up a gun registry or an identity card system.
The Confederates also knew this, but got blown to hell by Honest Abe and his incredible, intelligent apes.
Have you ever actually read the articles of Confederation? Hardly a blueprint for small government!
The Articles of Confederation or the Confederate constitution?
The former (the government of the 13 during the war with Britain) did allow the Continental Congress to produce fiat money (hence “not worth a Continental”) but the powers of the Continental Congress were quite limited in other ways.
The Confederate constitution did allow the Confederate govenrment (even in peacetime) to engage in “improvements” (government roads, ports and other Pork), but the United States govenment has also (especially since the 1930’s) gone if for such things in a big way (of course “post roads” are allowed under the U.S. Constitution).
The Confederate Constitution did not give the Confederate government any power to set up Welfare State schemes – but then the United States government has no such power either (what happens is that the courts have chosen to “interpret” the PURPOSE of the powers granted to Congress “the common defence and general welfare” as a “general welfare power” in-its-self.
I suspect that politicians and judges could have been equally “creative” in the South (after all, during the Civil War they imposed higher “progressive” income tax and printed more fiat money than the North did).
However, the real problem with the Confederacy is that the States would not allow some people to leave. Yes there were some slaves in some Northern States – but nothing like the same number.
If lots of local govenrments really are going to be less anti freedom than one big cental government then people must be allowed to “vote with their feet” (to steal a line from a man who forbad this when he came to power – V.I. Lenin).
Also local government (State or local) must not either ether be funded by the big government or told what to do by it.
Sure a local government may be dominated by a group of businessmen (or a group of whatever), but this does not matter so much if one can just go down the road a few miles and have totally different taxes and regulations.
I believe that people would indeed (if it were not for State and Federal taxes, subsidies and regulations) tend to go from areas of high statism (in both taxes and regulations) to areas of low statism.
So IF PEOPLE WERE ALLOWED TO MOVE (and there were no central subsides or regulations telling local govenrments to do things) statism would tend to be forced down over time.
As it is local governments are told they must do various statist things even if they do not want to (in Britain the big Act of Parliament telling local councils they had to do X, Y, Z, whether they wanted to or not was passed as long ago as 1875), they are also funded by the State and Federal govenrments to a great extent.
For example, the choice that State govenments had over whether or not to go along with Medicare was distorted by the Federal government saying it would pay a large share of the cost. And if a local government says “you say X activity is voluntary, O.K. we will not do it” various State and Federal subsidies (that have nothing to do with the regulation or activity in question) tend to get cut off.
We already have this. Colorado has a huge problem with it, actually: people move in from California to enjoy our relatively low-tax and relatively civilized state. The problem is, they then start voting here and gradually turn our state into the hole that they left behind. I’m told that Arizona and Oregon are having the same headaches caused by the same people.
People leave Denver for the suburbs or the mountains for the same reason, and then whine about the fact that people play music at night, open offices in areas “that should be zoned for retail only,” and they have to plow their own driveways in the winter.