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Samizdata quote of the day I suppose my biggest beef with Hilton’s book is that it identifies an endless stream of ideas for decentralising government, in order to make the statist beast better behaved, when I’d just kill it. You can’t personalise Leviathan. It doesn’t do cuddly.
– Graeme Leach
Or as we have been saying here since November 2001… the state is not your friend.
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Sometimes decentralisation is actually a bad thing.
For example when the State of Alabama allowed a few cities and counties more “freedom” (the Constitution of Alabama is very restrictive of local government) they bankrupted themselves.
Too small an example?
How about American big cities – basically all of their governments are spending money at an insane level, and they are no respecters of Civil Liberties either (as they use Assent Theft extensively).
In Japan and Britain also local government spent money wildly – till it had its “freedom” restricted.
It does not really matter if it is central or local government – it is still politicians and administrators……
SPENDING THE MONEY OF OTHER PEOPLE.
And ordering these other people about.
And it often possible to get a majority of voters behind insane policies.
Just tell them that “the rich” or “big business” will pay for X, Y, Z.
Or tell them that new regulations will only hurt “big business” and will help the “little guy”.
A local Populist (i.e. someone who uses such tactics) is no better than a national one.
Although wreaking a city is different from wreaking a nation.
“But when people see devastation around them they will turn against the Populists”.
No, they often do not.
Indeed the more state dependent the population becomes – the more votes the left is likely to get.
Till the whole thing falls apart.
And then it is too late for elections.
From the article:
Spot the flaw?
Government forces, markets don’t force, reality obliges us to do things.
Although the best solution is privatization of government functions, decentralization is better than centralization. If the country is indeed divided up into little feifdoms then the limitation of size and the competition for resources between these fiefdoms is a good thing. If you don’t like your “powerful mayor’ you can always move somewhere else — much more readily than you can change your central government. And you can even form your own town if you like.
It isn’t a perfect solution, but it is a start.
Of course part of the irony here is that in a sense that is what Thatcher was doing with the poll tax. Making the local governments charge the citizens in their area for the services they used, to make them actually accountable for their out of control spending. Of course, I guess that didn’t work out too well. Problem is that no system of government can make free a people who really want tyranny, which is, unfortunately the case more and more in western democracies.
If you want to see freedom restored there is really only one place to start — the privatization of the school system. The government run school system produces people in favor of government. He who pays the piper calls the tune.
Poor example. When a city does bad things, it is very easy to move to the city next door. More difficult to move to the State next door o even further away. Move to another Country????
Fraser, why not just set up an Internet home-school system? Running in competition with public schools? Yes, public schools are funded by taxes, but won’t that stop if few people are using them? If the teachers were doing even less than they are now?
Instead of overthrowing the system, why not work from within to correct the system? Offer private choices to diminish public monopolies?
I don’t see the problem.
Only 2 things to say about this.
Government can only be limited by starving it of funds.
Efficiency in government (ie: passing more laws doing more “stuff”) is always to the detriment of freedom.
The “old days” bloke who set up governments ended up crafting (in most cases) things which took some time to allow serious change. You couldnt win one election and bury the country in debt overnight without seriously violating the constitutions. This meant you had to mout and sustain and argement for 2-3 terms of government before serious changes became rooted.
Now the drive for efficiency (Obamas use of government agencies like the EPA to legislate by regulation springs to mind) means serious damage can be done quickly.
Yes.
Decentralisation doesn’t really work with the modern state.
All it means is we get large new bureaucracies at local level without any corresponding reductions at national level.
But that is not decentralization. Decentralization means that local bureaucracies replace the national ones, including funding.
OK, we’ll rephrase pete’s comment.
Decentralisation can’t really happen in the modern state.
> Nicholas (Self-Sovereignty) Gray
> Fraser, why not just set up an Internet home-school system? Running in competition with public schools?
Such things exist in abundance in the United States. From my memory something in the order of 2-5% of kids in the USA are home schooled (depending on who you ask, and depending on how you define “home school”.) The reasons they are not more prevalent is a complicated mix of regulation (specifically truancy laws and the state regulation of even home schools) overwhelming resistance by teachers’ unions, free competition from the state, the fact that many parents don’t want to be teachers, and the fact that schools are not just for education, but are a large free baby sitting service the state provides for working parents.
The private school industry is utterly undermined by competition from the free public alternative and the fact that the public is drained of funds that could be used to educate their children by taxes to educate other people’s children.
It is hard to compete when your competition regulates you, your staff campaigns against you, and your customers have to pay your competition whether they use them or not.
The state is not your friend. But some states are less unfriendly than others. And it seems to me to be far easier to persuade the less unfriendly states to become even less unfriendly than to persuade the really unfriendly states to do the same thing.
Also, given that the libertarian revolution appears to be someway off we are going to have to live with states for a good while yet. Better that they be the less bad ones. If localism makes states less bad (as it seems to in Switzerland) then that should be supported.
@Patrick Crozier
> The state is not your friend. But some states are less unfriendly than others.
The real benefit of a decentralized federalism is not that the state (or small version thereof) because less bad, it just is put in a situation where it has to compete with other such governments. The competition being for people, businesses and just plain credibility. It is hard to say “only the government can do such and such” when the city next door leaves it up to the private sector.
The bottom line is that if there are lots of mini governments fighting against and competing against each other, they are less able to direct their attention against its citizens. Better than one huge monopoly state which can direct all its attention to “helping” its citizens.
‘Yes, public schools are funded by taxes, but won’t that stop if few people are using them?’
I’m afraid it won’t. There will be less students being indoctrinated but the costs will not go down – We still have to maintain the school buildings and bus fleets on and on – Yes, there will be people who will defend that idea !!.
Nor will teachers lose their jobs, at least not quickly nor at first. – We have a contract and you WILL pay us even if we don’t teach a single child ! – that idea will be defended as well.
‘Instead of overthrowing the system, why not work from within to correct the system?’
Nice idea and in a perfect world …………….. but it won’t work.
You are far too outnumbered by people with multi-generational deeply entrenched ideas and skin in the current game and they will defend those to their last breath. Maybe over a very long period of time it would be successful but I doubt it.
Alisa, your definition of decentralization is correct but I’m afraid I have to agree with Pete. You can replace the federal bureaucracies but they will not ‘go away’. SO you will be left with two of them which is many time worse than just one !!
Some food for thought when it comes to eliminating unneeded bureaucracies.
What EXACTLY does the Department of the Interior ACTUALLY do ( or accomplish if you wish ) ??
The Department of Energy has yet to produce a single watt of energy, a single barrel of oil or anything else energy related. So why the **** do we need it ??
The State Department has over 70 THOUSAND employees.
DOING WHAT ?? 70,000 ???!!!!
It seems to me that Graeme Leach sets up a false dichotomy. Sure, the goal should be much smaller government, but how do you get from here to there? (Before answering, consider that the tendency for government to grow is the political equivalent of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.)
Most people in this forum do not seem to be anarcho-capitalists, and Graeme Leach, calling for “much smaller government” as opposed to no government, does not seem to be of that persuasion either; so, instead of complaining that decentralization should not be a goal in itself, why not discuss whether decentralization can be the way to our goals?
But if the purpose of a SQoD is to be thought-provoking, then it’s fine.
WRT Paul Marks’ 1st comment: the paradigm of how decentralization can be bad, remains in my opinion slavery in the Southern States.
BTW i agree with Eric: that local government is at greater risk of bankruptcy, is actually a good thing.
Finally, just to be provocative: if you think decentralization doesn’t matter, why vote in the referendum on leaving the EU?
I am very much of the view that local government always comes as extra government rather than an alternative to central government, and is thus in no way preferable… nor is it a route to less government unless said local government acquires an army than is not beholden to the central government.
because it eliminates a tier of government.
Jerry, I did not claim that decentralization can be realistically achieved under current conditions (I don’t have a definite opinion on that), I only pointed out that what was described in that (Pete’s?) comment was not decentralization.
I agree that giving more power to local governments, without first taking it away from the national one, is just giving more power to government in general. The optimal course would probably be eliminating as many functions of government at the national level, and then constituencies could give those powers to their local governments if they so desired. But, I have no idea how realistically doable would that be either.
Frollicking mole:
Meanwhile, consider Obamatrade and the Sith’s pushing to speed up the its passing by requiring only 51 Senate votes to pass instead of 60. The purpose of this is to remove the possibility of a filibuster to hold up the passing.
At least one of the Heffalumpian Presidential yearners is, I’m informed, in agreement with It on this. I regret to say I refer to Gov. Scott Walker.
Those who believe that the Legislature passes far too many laws, that it does so far too quickly, and that the results are far too frequently disastrous, are absolutely right.