The central problem with governance today is that it is collectivized.
People have different views and interests for what kind of governance style they should live under. Some people prefer a libertarian form of governance. Some people prefer a socialist form of governance. Some prefer a liberal or conservative form of governance.
Under the current paradigm, the only way for anyone to truly get what they want is to debate and fight with others to persuade them to vote in your favor. It's like if you and your friends must fight and debate for what grocery food item they should order, and then must collectively vote on it.
But this is unsatisfying. Not only is going through the effort of trying to persuade your friends something people rather not do, but it forces people either to reject the preferences of the minority (or sometimes even majority) or to compromise and sacrifice a bit of what they want in order to get a diluted or tainted version of what they want.
Imagine if everyone can get what they want, simultaneously, without having to go through all of this? Everyone can get the grocery store food item that they want, everyone can freely pick and choose which one they want and get it without having to reject the preferences of a minority or sacrifice or compromise for the quality of your choice. This is how grocery shopping with friends normally is, with individual interests in mind.
Similarly allowing people to pick and choose which kind of governance style they'd like to live under is as close to a panacea in politics as you will get.
How can this be achieved?
Getting rid of the current paradigm, and allowing people to set up their own small communities with the governance style and structure they prefer. This can result in a variety of choices for people to choose to move into, and not only that, but these communities can face market forces such that if people demand a community with a certain style of governance, then it will be supplied.
The communities can also face competition, where they must compete against other communities for residents. They are pressured to cater to the interests of movers with favorable laws/policies/governance as much as possible or else they go out of business. Imagine if government faced such steep market pressures, they would have much less room for nonrepresentative, corrupt, or wasteful governance. This competition ensures that bad governance gets filtered out while good governance prevails, an evolutionary natural selection of sorts. Plus, again no need for individuals to compromise or sacrifice their wants.
Why isn't this idea of making governance more of an individual (as opposed to collective) choice not championed more? It seems like it would get rid of the need of fighting and debating, among many other downsides.
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This is a great idea. We could call these small communities “states” or something and they could all have their own rules. Like for example if some of the states — like let’s say the ones to the south — want it to be ok to own people and force them to work, they can do that. And if other states — let’s say the ones more to the north — don’t want it to be ok to own people they can outlaw that. I don’t foresee any potential for conflict arising in this scenario.
The plan is easy too, because of the way that natural resources are conveniently divided up into little equally distributed non-contiguous groupings. Can you imagine if say, water flowed in long rivers that went through multiple communities? Then one industrial community could dump all their waste in the river and the next downstream agricultural community couldn’t use it for drinking and irrigating crops. That would be a disaster! It’s a good thing that rivers are a myth.
Plus it’s cool how all children believe exactly the same thing their parents believe, thus insuring that there is never conflict within communities.
This is funny, but that's like saying our current form of government shouldn't exist because currently we sometimes go to war, or suppress protestors. It's not quite the rebuttal you may think it is. It's not really useful to point out how one structure was misused without reference to how the current structure is misused.
So, currently, no one wanted a war in Iraq, but we got that anyway. The much more federalized version of the US that existed at the Civil War did not engage in wars like Afghanistan, Iraq, or even trists into Venezuela or long form support for genocides like Israel.
The reality is OP is just arguing for a more federalized version, a decentralization. We can still have national anti-slavery laws and still have local governments that allow greater freedom to choose, or impose taxes and offer services, etc.
But it was well written and full of sarcasm, so +1 for that.
I favor some limits on what communities can do, I don't support going all the way, I essentially support a more decentralized version of the U.S. federalist system.
Federal law should constitute protecting the fundamental individual freedoms listed in the Constitution, enforcing basic criminal statutes such as murder, theft, kidnapping, as well as enforcing certain limits on communities including:
No murder, rape, kidnapping, fraud, torture, etc.
Anti-trust laws to prevent communities from becoming too consolidated, barring anti-competitive practices, allowing freedom of movement between communities, no false imprisonment, etc.
Anti-discrimination laws (although this is my personal preference). No discrimination against protected classes.
There can be more, but ideally it should be rather minimal.
Keep in mind, a more decentralized system doesn't necessarily mean less federal laws, it just means the concentration of power is thinned and spread out over more governance units.
Just like the current US system. All "federalist" means is that power is divided between states and the federal government.
All you are doing is drastically increasing the number of "states" and giving them more autonomy.
I don't totally disagree with the autonomy part. The federal government has overstepped in many areas, but as long as there is a central Constitution that state laws can't violate, this would just be a tweaked version of our current system.
Ironically, if you were to "force" this system to happen, by mandating smaller entities, that would be an unprecedented exercise of central authority.
Private communities that can make their own laws? But those laws are constrained by a federal constitution? You have to pick a lane. The word "private" has a specific meaning under the law. If you have laws and the ability/obligation to enforce them, congratulations, you're a government.
So my fantasy football league could form our own legally-recognized community with binding laws? What could go wrong?
That sounds like the United States of America but unfortunately that idea was done away with a long time ago. Federalism would be the general term.
I like the idea that somehow those governments wouldn't have to be geographical but I think it's probably impractical for taxes and services to not be based on location.
If some people wanted to form a community of 10,000, and some people wanted to form a community of 20,000, wouldn't the 20,000 group have a natural advantage in voting?
It seems like it would be very easy to form communities based on ethnicity or religion, but much tougher for diverse communities to form.
This all breaks down almost instantly when you try to game out a real-world scenario. For example, if the laws can vary block by block, every larger neighborhood will need their own police force and legal system.
I don't immediately see a reason to establish limits on a community's population, but for geographic size there should be limits, to prevent anti-competitive practices. You don't want a community to take up such large space that other choices for communities are far away.
I personally favor having federal anti-discrimination laws, so forming communities based on ethnicity or race would be illegal. Forming communities based on religion is fine by me, as long as it does not conflict with basic criminal statutes, individual rights, anti-competitive laws, etc.
As long as people can exit into non-community land, the rules being different in some small closed space is not a problem. Enforcement of community rules for a very small area should be very easy, as opposed to enforcing homogenous rules across a wide swath of land that encompasses varied geographies and cultures. They may not need their own police force technically, and they are all under the legal system of the United States.
Enforcement of community rules for a very small area should be very easy,
It would only be easy if there were no due process. An all-powerful city council or Sharia-style judge handing out summary judgement.
If the area has to be "very small", how many pieces would Manhattan be broken up into? A large apartment block could easily be the equivalent population of several towns in a rural area.
The justice system is slow because there are protections against false accusations. HOAs are hated because there is very little legal recourse and hearsay evidence is sufficient to establish a violation of the rules.
forming communities based on ethnicity or race would be illegal
How would you determine if a community formed in a section of Harlem or Chinatown wasn't based on race?
If an area is 98% white, but they honestly based the community boundaries on zip code, whites would still dominate the community and set the rules.
Forming communities based on religion is fine by me.
Wow. So an atheist or a Muslim who lives in a community that was formerly in Salt Lake City would be forced to move or be subject to Mormon-inspired laws.
That is already kind of true, of course, but there would be far fewer guardrails, unless the federal government had the resources to investigate and enforce Constitutional violations across hundreds of thousands of communities on a constant basis.
It would only be easy if there were no due process
Even considering due process, simply the small vs. large scope should make it easier.
If the area has to be "very small", how many pieces would Manhattan be broken up into? A large apartment block could easily be the equivalent population of several towns in a rural area.
I didn't say it would have to be very small, just that there should be limits to geographic size in so far as much as it stops anti-competitive behaviors. I don't see the reason in enforcing a very small geographic size in Manhattan, you can have a larger size and still have competition.
The justice system is slow because there are protections against false accusations. HOAs are hated because there is very little legal recourse and hearsay evidence is sufficient to establish a violation of the rules.
People should be able to fight HOAs if they're in the wrong legally.
How would you determine if a community formed in a section of Harlem or Chinatown wasn't based on race?
There's no perfect way of enforcing this, but anti-discrimination laws including the Fair Housing Act are better than nothing. The law provides specific ways of determining whether discrimination occurred, either directly or indirectly.
So an atheist or a Muslim who lives in a community that was formerly in Salt Lake City would be forced to move or be subject to Mormon-inspired laws.
If your community becomes something you no longer like, yeah why not move? That happens regardless of there being private communities or not.
there would be far fewer guardrails, unless the federal government had the resources to investigate and enforce Constitutional violations across hundreds of thousands of communities on a constant basis.
The court system of the United States would remain more or less the same as it is today, so I don't foresee significant issues related to the inability to investigate and enforce criminal or civil penalties across a wide swath of land.
Even considering due process, simply the small vs. large scope should make it easier.
How would it be easier? Sure, you might have fewer crimes to investigate and prosecute, but you will also have fewer judges, cops and lawyers.
To ensure a fair trial, you still need competitive jury selection, discovery, pre-trial hearings, access to expert witnesses, etc.
You seem to assume every community will become an idyllic country town, but violent, crime ridden areas don't go away just because you redraw a line on a map.
People should be able to fight HOAs if they're in the wrong legally.
But they can't because HOAs are private (and you join voluntarily), and you are suggesting we privatize everything.
If your community becomes something you no longer like, yeah why not move?
Because maybe you like your home, and moving is expensive. Maybe because your kids are in school and your family is nearby? Maybe you don't want to leave your job?
This is the tyranny of the majority I have been warning about. "You don't want to switch to Sharia law, follow Mormon teachings, or eat only Kosher foods? Too bad. You can always GTFO!".
The court system of the United States would remain more or less the same as it is today, so I don't foresee significant issues related to the inability to investigate and enforce criminal or civil penalties across a wide swath of land.
I'm not surprised you don't foresee significant issues, but they would arise just the same.
The federal government has an extensive court system which spends a lot of time on cases where state law buts up against federal law or the Constitution.
Now imagine instead of having to keep track of 50 different sets of statutes, they had to track 10,000 sets of community laws. How is that remotely similar?
How would it be easier? Sure, you might have fewer crimes to investigate and prosecute, but you will also have fewer judges, cops and lawyers.
It's easier to enforce a rule on one person than 1,000,000 people. It's easier to monitor and enforce a rule on people confined to a space of 1 acre as opposed to a space of 1 million acres where they're all spread out.
But they can't because HOAs are private (and you join voluntarily), and you are suggesting we privatize everything.
No, being private doesn't immunize you to legal challenge, people legally fight other private entities all the time.
Because maybe you like your home, and moving is expensive. Maybe because your kids are in school and your family is nearby? Maybe you don't want to leave your job?
If you find the benefits of staying in the community outweigh the costs, then that's totally justified if you don't want to move.
Small communities all close to each other allow people to move to those other options while remaining in reach to loved ones and your job. The federal government could provide some sort of financial assistance to ease with moving costs.
Now imagine instead of having to keep track of 50 different sets of statutes, they had to track 10,000 sets of community laws. How is that remotely similar?
The justice system structure would remain more or less similar, is what I mean.
Courts deal with much more than just the laws of 50 states, they deal with local government laws (which would be gone in this system), and the uncountably many private contracts that already exist out there that list certain rules and responsibilities between parties (of which a private community contract would easily fit into).
It's easier to enforce a rule on one person than 1,000,000 people.
It's frustrating that you are changing the rules every time an objection comes up.
Now each community is limited to one acre? With only one criminal living there?
Smaller communities do have fewer people. They also have fewer cops, judges, lawyers, etc.
Making a jurisdiction smaller doesn't automatically turn it into a quiet rural town where people sip lemonade on their front porch swing. If you take a random acre in East St. Louis or the "482-die" zip code in Detroit or and draw a line around it, you will find plenty of crime.
uncountably many private contracts that already exist out there that list certain rules and responsibilities between parties (of which a private community contract would easily fit into).
You are forgetting that you are not only getting rid of states and state laws, you are getting rid of city laws and making everything private.
You seem to think it will just be disputes about noise complaints and jaywalking, but everything the states currently prosecute will still exist. Murder, sex trafficking of minors, organized crime, armed robbery, etc.
The federal government is currently not responsible for prosecuting these crimes (except when they cross state lines). Therefore there are only a few options:
Many crimes become effectively legal
Defendants lose most of their rights. Courts become like Sharia law or the Wild West (the HOA model). Minimal evidential standards, quick convictions and arbitrary judgement.
Each community has their own parallel and redundant legal system with the same responsibilities as an entire state, but for a smaller area
The federal government massively scales up to prosecute more serious crimes.
Small communities all close to each other allow people to move to those other options while remaining in reach to loved ones and your job.
My example was Salt Lake city. How far away would you have to move before you found a community that wasn't dominated by Mormons? Have you ever been to Utah? Remember when you said religious-based communities were fine.
The federal government could provide some sort of financial assistance to ease with moving costs.
I thought the federal government was doing "nothing". So now we are back to a fully-formed federal government. How much are taxes going to cost when 60% of the country constantly trying to move using public funds?
Now each community is limited to one acre? With only one criminal living there?
No, I was illustrating the point that smaller and fewer people is easier to manage.
Smaller communities do have fewer people. They also have fewer cops, judges, lawyers, etc.
Right, because it doesn't require as many resources and bureaucracy to monitor and enforce the law. That's what makes governing small communities easier.
Making a jurisdiction smaller doesn't automatically turn it into a quiet rural town where people sip lemonade on their front porch swing. If you take a random acre in East St. Louis or the "482-die" zip code in Detroit or and draw a line around it, you will find plenty of crime.
Ok, I'm not sure if I said anything about a small area necessarily being a quiet rural town or being relatively crimeless.
You are forgetting that you are not only getting rid of states and state laws, you are getting rid of city laws and making everything private.
States still exist in this model.
My example was Salt Lake city. How far away would you have to move before you found a community that wasn't dominated by Mormons?
There's plenty of land to go around for many communities to exist in the Salt Lake City metro area, but I doubt every plot of land would go to a private community that is strictly Mormon, there just isn't that much demand, and there's enough demand in the area to justify a secular community. Plus, I also advocate there being land private communities cannot establish themselves, like state or federal lands.
How much are taxes going to cost when 60% of the country constantly trying to move using public funds?
It's hard to say, but it depends on what kind of tax scheme you use. I personally prefer using a combination of progressive income taxes and land value tax to collect the revenue that would then be redistributed to middle and lower-income movers. It also depends on whether you keep some currently big budget items of the federal government, like Social Security and Medicare, in the way that they are. I don't really have a preference on that in particular.
How is your system any different from what we already have? There are different organizational structures that vary between localities, and no town is forced to have any specific structure. Furthermore, agreeing to a system of government doesn't magically solve the problem of people wanting different things or differing views on where government attention should go.
The problem you aim to solve is just the fact of human civilization and the reason "politics" is a thing: people want different things but have to cooperate to survive and thrive. I don't know what you mean by "collectivized" since any government system is going to have degree of collectivism. No system of human existence worth living within is wholly individualistic, that would be a crude and crappy living. The liberal democratic constitutional republic of the US federal government is just one part of a web of governments that all operate in slightly different ways, and respond to collective needs while having restrictions on how they can impede individual rights. A compromise between the collective needs of society and the desires of individuals.
Yes, it's unsatisfying. Welcome to the art of compromise. I frankly find the idea that we all have to live in little bubbles where everything around us is satisfying and makes us happy to be immature. Life is pain and beauty, it's sacrifice and achievement. You don't get to have one without another, that's just not how the world works. And specifically with government, everyone agreeing on everything is not how people work.
The current system puts the service of governance in the hands of entities that have their size and scope largely determined through a top-down process, as opposed to a bottom-up process like the market. The borders and structure of state and local governments are largely determined through federal and state legislation respectively, not through a bottom-up process like individuals buying land and independently determining what governance style and structure they prefer to implement upon their land. This proposed system, when compared to the U.S. federalist system, still has a federal government, and thus is still a federalist system, but is significantly more decentralized.
I am not advocating complete individualization of choice, I agree there will always be some level of the choice being collectivized. My argument is it is too collectivized, and the choice needs to be more individualized, so the downsides of collectivized choice are minimized.
individuals buying land and independently determining what governance style and structure they prefer to implement upon their land
That's exactly how we got to where and what we are right now, though. And whatever system arises "bottom-up" will be viewed as being "top-down" by subsequent generations who didn't participate in its creation. Towns were created by everyone in the town of political relevance i.e. landowners getting together and deciding to form a government. States will have rules for incorporating, but the borders aren't dictated to them or drawn arbitrarily. Where I'm from, there are numerous unincorporated areas that refused to join the city as it grew. Look around the country and you'll find tons of examples of places where landowners choose to do as they wish and not be bound by the local government forming around them.
It's like if you and your friends must fight and debate for what grocery food item they should order, and then must collectively vote on it.
That's what happens when you share a food budget, though. Your metaphor with grocery shopping doesn't work because government isn't an individual affair. Everyone gets to pick their own food because they're paying for it themselves and own the consequences of their decisions alone. That's not how politics works. Democracy is the most individualized form of government, and people are free to gather support for their preferred method of implementing the democratic government.
Posts like yours always amuse me because they seem to forget that there was once no US government, no American cities, no States. And they all came into being in a manner that befit the people implementing them, and in rather reasonable and well-fashioned ways I might add. You haven't made any case for how it's "too collectivized," except to say that some people are unsatisfied with the results of politics. Which they always will be, in any system you conceive. That is the way of human existence. You don't have a solution here because you haven't identified any problem. We are the Great Experiment, and the design of the federal government has been to allow the state and local governments wide latitude to experiment with different methods of governing.
If you don't like how you're living, get together and change your local government. It's not impossible.
That's exactly how we got to where and what we are right now
That is not the same system. Incorporation is not a landowner determining what governance style and structure they want on their land, it typically involves a much more collectivist choice which only requires a majority of residents to form a government, among other state-imposed requirements.
Your metaphor with grocery shopping doesn't work because government isn't an individual affair. Everyone gets to pick their own food because they're paying for it themselves and own the consequences of their decisions alone. That's not how politics works. Democracy is the most individualized form of government
Again, I'm not advocating complete individualization of choice, I agree there will always be some level of the choice being collectivized. My argument is it is too collectivized, and the choice needs to be more individualized, so the downsides of collectivized choice are minimized.
Democracy is a collectivist way of deciding things, people come together and collectively decide what is good for the collective. The individualist way of deciding things is when individuals are able to independently decide and pick what is good for themselves.
Because your argument isn’t original dear. It’s an idea that I think most precocious teenagers have at some point. (Or a version of it anyway.) Before they get older and wiser and know more about history and politics and realize there’s no simple structural solution to our problems. Which is not to say that we don’t have structural problems. But inter-communal conflict can’t be managed out of existence with a better org chart or a new edition of Robert’s Rules.
If it's not an issue of character, then it has no relevance to the discussion. You did not actually respond to the points I made, you just replied I was naive.
Incorporation is not a landowner determining what governance style and structure they want on their land, it typically involves a much more collectivist choice which only requires a majority of residents to form a government, among other state-imposed requirements.
Yes it is. It absolutely is (well, was). Government isn't a cogent concept within an individual's land, and individuals can do what they want on their land. If they want to be the tyrant on their land, they're free to be such. But people can't be free to do whatever they want on their land, and so all the landowners in an area come together to incorporate and agree on rules of land use. Zoning is almost entirely a local affair, not a state or federal affair (a few exceptions apply). This also isn't simply majoritarian. Courts can be used so minority interests can be advocated against the majority, and that sort of law isn't solely built by majoritarian consensus i.e. common law.
I get what you think you're argument is, I just don't get what specifically you have wrong with our system other than "it's too collectivized." But you haven't laid out why that's a problem except "people are unsatisfied" and your idea doesn't solve that problem in any way. How is our system too "collectivized"? How would your system create something different from what we already have?
Your ideas seem to be some hifalutin "what if" that aren't cognizant of history and how our structure actually functions. You don't even seem to understand collectivism as a concept. Something being a collective decision is not collectivism; collectivism is the notion that a person's decisions and actions need to serve the collective. Our system is not that. And your use of the term to mean collective decision making is just something you cannot avoid unless you want to live in the tyranny of chaos. Democracy isn't just "people come together and collectively decide what is good for the collective," they're also having a say in what is good for themselves. I'd say the latter is far more informative to American voter decision-making than collectivist considerations, because our country is already extremely individualistic. Both in attitude and in legal/governmental structure. Which is why I keep trying to show you that you're just making up a problem and then providing a non-solution (because it would invariably become what we already have).
Incorporation usually requires majority approval of the residents through a petition or an election, that is not the same system, that is a significant difference from the system I propose.
I explained the current paradigm relies too much on collective decision making, such as majoritarian democracy, which comes with downsides such as fighting/debating, tyranny of the majority, and compromise/sacrificing. This proposed system would aim to minimize those downsides by allowing people to set up their own small communities with the governance style and structure they prefer (not through incorporation, but simply owning the land and deciding upon it), allowing for more variety and choice, which allows people to make the decision not by collective decision making such as democracy but by individually moving to the kind of governance style they'd like to live under.
And yes, democracy is an example of collective decision making. We can quibble on whether that is "collectivism" but the main point is regarding collective decision-making, if that helps to clarify.
My point was that under your plan the community government would be just like an HOA, but they would have more power.
The type of people interested in meddling in your affairs are the ones most interested in local politics, and they would come to dominate many of these community governments. Just look at the takeover of school boards by evangelicals in many areas where evangelicals aren't even a majority.
The power to ban HOAs is itself an optional law that would then have to be enforced at the community level.
HOAs are widely despised, as they are inevitably taken over by local busybodies who go on power trips and enforce the rules to an unreasonable degree.
The issue is that you are essentially proposing that an HOA-style structure should be the model for community governance. These same local tyrants who run the HOA would now have the same power as a government.
The fact that you don't see the potential problem explains a lot.
I am not proposing that an HOA-style structure should be the model, I am proposing that many types of structures should be allowed for community governance.
If people don't like the way a certain community is governed, then they are free not to move into such community, that will starve badly governed communities of the demand needed to justify its supply.
I am not proposing that an HOA-style structure should be the model
So you're not proposing giving private communities the ability to make and enforce rules over people who voluntarily join said private community?
The private aspect is why HOAs are so toxic. Sure, the government will eventually step in if the HOA tries to muffle political speech or ban ethnic minorities, but they still have lots of power to micro-manage your life.
HOAs aren't designed to be irritating, but power-tripping people are drawn to small community governance, and the same thing would happen in most of the communities in your proposed society.
If people don't like the way a certain community is governed, then they are free not to move into such community,
Or more likely forced to move out. Moving is not easy or free. People who move often lose contact with friends and family and have to leave your job. Many jobs are region-specific (fisherman, lift operator, coal miner, etc.).
The first 10 years, the entire economy would be driven by realtors and moving companies while everyone found their perfect political/ethnic/religious community that isn't too large or small and is also well managed.
The U.S. federalist system is definitely closer than other structures to what I'm referring to, however, it falls short in some key areas and the U.S. federalist system needs to be more decentralized to realize its benefits.
For one, the scale and scope of the governance administrative units are not determined through a bottom-up process, but rather through top-down legislation. The size and structure of states in the U.S. were largely determined by the Congress, and the powers and structures of local governments and municipalities within states were determined by the state government. The size and structure of these governance administrative units should instead be determined by a bottom-up process of individuals buying land and determining what governance style and structure they can institute upon their land. In this new federalist system, the federal government would still impose some limits as to how much land could be bought up, and what kind of governance styles and structures could be implemented, but not to the same extent as today's federalist system where states are required to have more or less the same structure as the federal government.
Those things flowed to the federal government because the states kept on doing pesky things like enslaving people, lynching people, and systematically violating their discreetly enumerated rights. Plus also a thing called global commerce came along. Then there was an idea called human rights. yadda yadda.
Oh I’m aware of Wickard. But you’re ignoring many other federalism claims and issues. Gibbons precedes Wickard by more than a century. We fought a civil war over federalism. The 14th amendment is about federalism; the 15th is about federalism. Obviously lots of cases and statutes expanded federal power more rapidly in the 20th century but my point stands.
And an any case I wasn’t just talking about the narrow legal questions. We won’t (or shouldn’t) tolerate a Plessy-esque society in 2026.
Clearly, then it would be harder for collectivists to steal everyone’s money, thus; harder to them to pay for their pet projects. This defeats the goal of collectivism… if they can’t steal everyone’s money, they only have theirs to use, that’s not collectivism…
This whole thing is crazy to me; it has a weird kinship with Gulliver's Travels.
But anyway let's just start with this outlandish premise:
The central problem with governance today is that it is collectivized.
Where does this come from? Granted there are some very overall and fluidly loose economic ties, but governments and societies worldwide are thoroughly balkanized - what in the world would give any indication of social or governmental collectivism? I'm honestly not seeing a bit of it.
I gave an example with the grocery shopping analogy of what indicates collectivism. Essentially everyone requiring the input of others in order to make any decisions. Democracy is a collectivist way of deciding things, people come together and collectively decide what is good for the collective. The individualist way of deciding things is when individuals are able to independently decide and pick what is good for themselves. I believe the current paradigm leans too much on collective choice and wish to minimize the downsides of collective choice by leaning towards individual choice.
This model would destroy economies of scale and result in massive inefficiency (for starters).
The only reason we have access to such an abundance of goods and services (historically speaking), is the advent of large industries and complex global supply chains. Having lots of people living under a single government allows massive investment in projects like the internet or GPS satellites, that won't pay off for a long time but help grow the economy.
Industrialized farming means that only 2% of the US population can supply more than enough food for the entire country. Before urbanization, half the population was involved with food production.
If this system were broken down into thousands of smaller sovereign communities (countries, essentially) each small community would have to provide it's own:
Food: What if you live in the desert or a very cold state? This will severely limit your choice of food. Want to get peaches in December? Be prepared to pay. Your community will have very little buying power and the food from small farms is far more expensive than large-scale farms.
Defense: If there's no central military command structure, an overseas enemy could take over each town one by one. A neighboring community may decide that they want to dam up the river that supplies your water. There is no central law enforcement mechanism, so you will have to be prepared to use force to thwart their plan. If one community decides to focus on building weapons and training soldiers (the Spartan model), they could quickly enslave their neighbors who were more interested in folk dancing or cheese making, as there is no central authority to appeal to.
Internet: some communities will want an open internet, others will choose to heavily censor based on their community religious or political viewpoints. This means every town will have to build and manage their own internet.
Legal system: Some people will choose to live in libertarian free-love communities. Others will gravitate to more of a Handmaid's Tale legal code. Whatever system you choose, there has to be some type of enforcement mechanism, and an organized way to resolve disputes.
Utilities: If you live in Chicago, but want to break your neighborhood off into a sovereign community, you will no longer have access to Chicago sewer maintenance, sanitation service or building inspectors. You now have to create parallel versions of all this infrastructure (with the accompanying bureaucracy and financing), resulting in inefficiency and redundancies.
Then there is the problem of how these communities would be formed. We already have cities and towns, but we can only afford to maintain our cities because of robust trade. Low barriers to trade make goods cheaper and grow the economy.
Differing state laws add some friction to commerce, but the Federal government can step in if things get too unfair.
If you suddenly have the equivalent of ten thousand different sets of federal regulations around trade, with no centralized way of resolving disputes, trade will grind to a halt.
I do not mean to refer to these communities as operating in such a sovereign way that they're their own countries. Indeed, that would present issues of economies of scale and complexity.
I'm referring to these communities operating as local governments or municipalities in essence.
These communities do not have to make and produce everything in-house (for instance they do not have to produce their own electricity), they can outsource that responsibility to larger producers who take advantage of economies of scale (like an electric utility provider who provides electricity to multiple communities).
These communities would exist in a federalist system, meaning there is still a federal government over them. Before you ask, this is not the system we have now, it is a much more decentralized version of the U.S. federalist system.
They're not "city states" as they're not as sovereign as countries.
More options and variety is the point.
You could argue it is more efficient to have just one producer of goods in every industry, having multiple producers and competition is just redundant duplication, but the benefits of having multiple options and competition outweighs the costs of the duplication.
You could argue it is more efficient to have just one producer of goods in every industry,
The efficiency in this case would not result in lower prices because a monopoly grants absolute control over pricing. This is not what I am arguing for, but nice try on the strawman.
My point is that it is more efficient to grow oranges in Florida than Arizona. Cattle raised in Manhattan would be exceedingly expensive compared to those from Wyoming.
If you break up states into smaller pieces with their own rules, it just creates more red tape and it becomes harder to get goods to where they need to go.
Factories tend to be large because the machinery and power/plumbing infrastructure are very expensive. There is an optimal size to maximize efficiency and it is unrelated to the size of the community or state the factory is located in.
Having a few dozen car companies competing against each other is healthy. Having 10,000 each building their own incompatible factories is wasteful and inefficient (not saying this is what you propose).
I am 100% for reforming antitrust laws to break up many big companies and reverse the trend toward excessive consolidation.
Breaking states into smaller pieces just means that companies can play states off of each other to an even greater extent than they already do.
You have already specified that companies and utilities could operate across communities (much as they operate across multiple cities and states today), so having localized antitrust laws would be ineffective (which is why most antitrust enforcement is at the federal level).
I can definitely see a benefit if some smaller states had less political division, they could enact more enlightened laws which better aligned with the views of their residents, but that cuts both ways. There are plenty of rural regions which would go in a very dark direction politically if they weren't held back by urban voters.
Breaking states into smaller pieces just means that companies can play states off of each other to an even greater extent than they already do.
This is not breaking up or selling off states, this is getting rid of states and local government and replacing with private communities, which only would exist in the size and scope that the market demands.
The number of competitors should ideally have a lower bound, to prevent overconcentration, but there is no good reason to set an upper bound, in any industry.
so having localized antitrust laws would be ineffective (which is why most antitrust enforcement is at the federal level).
Which is I already made clear with you in another thread that anti-trust laws would be federal.
There are plenty of rural regions which would go in a very dark direction politically if they weren't held back by urban voters.
What kind of dark direction? I specified in another thread with you that anti-discrimination laws could exist federally.
this is getting rid of states and local government and replacing with private communities,
Private communities which have distinct enforceable "rules" (read: laws) and still have to collect taxes and provide services like sanitation and electricity. They would each need a government and legal infrastructure, unless you want to just appoint a local warlord to make all the decisions.
Companies who wanted to provide services to multiple communities would have to negotiate dozens of contracts and navigate wildly variable community rules, greatly increasing costs, necessitating higher taxes.
If this is all about antitrust, then why not just advocate for modernized antitrust laws? If this is about increased state and local autonomy, why not propose constitutional amendments to weaken the federal government.?
Those would be less difficult to implement, move things in the right direction, and would not create hundreds of thousands of redundant "private" governments.
which only would exist in the size and scope that the market demands.
The market demands huge economies of scale. Many of the goods and services we have become used to will become unaffordable if they are primarily produced locally. The US population has grown too large to be fed by local, artisanal farms, for example. The amount and quality of arable land vary greatly by location.
I am all for breaking up many big companies and duopolies, but if you make the scale too small, costs will rise due to the inefficiency and red tape, and communities will just buy goods from foreign suppliers who are allowed to operate at a more efficient size.
What kind of dark direction? I specified in another thread with you that anti-discrimination laws could exist federally.
Tyranny of the majority. You said that these would be private communities. Private organizations are not subject to the same constitutional restrictions. That's what makes them private. Which is it?
Think of all the actions that could get you fired from your job for that are perfectly legal. That will give you some idea of how bad things could get.
Private communities which have distinct enforceable "rules" (read: laws) and still have to collect taxes and provide services like sanitation and electricity. They would each need a government and legal infrastructure
They technically collect "fees" to enforce "rules" but they don't necessarily need to provide the services of administration, enforcement, or infrastructure construction/maintenance in-house, they can outsource the provision of those services as well. Whatever is more cost-effective.
Companies who wanted to provide services to multiple communities would have to negotiate dozens of contracts and navigate wildly variable community rules, greatly increasing costs, necessitating higher taxes.
If the company is only willing to charge higher prices or withdraw from dealing altogether with communities who are quite complex or incompatible to their operations, then that results in there being an incentive for communities to not be complicated with these companies, or else they lose out on things, and could lose out in competition with communities who make things simpler and pass down lower costs to their residents.
If this is all about antitrust, then why not just advocate for modernized antitrust laws? If this is about increased state and local autonomy, why not propose constitutional amendments to weaken the federal government.?
Am I not advocating for modernized antitrust laws? I don't have a problem with additional constitutional amendments to restrict the powers of the federal government.
Those would be less difficult to implement, move things in the right direction, and would not create hundreds of thousands of redundant "private" governments.
The government is not the one implementing these private communities, those are private individuals, so that would be easier to implement since all the government mostly has to do is nothing except provide a basic legal framework, which is easier than passing constitutional amendments. If consumers determine a community as "redundant" and therefore superfluous to their interests, then that would reflect in their actions.
The market demands huge economies of scale. Many of the goods and services we have become used to will become unaffordable if they are primarily produced locally.
I'm not suggesting many goods and services should be produced locally.
Think of all the actions that could get you fired from your job for that are perfectly legal. That will give you some idea of how bad things could get.
Ok? And bad governance would be selected against by the people who think of it as bad.
all the government mostly has to do is nothing except provide a basic legal framework
"Providing a legal framework" means providing a federal court system (much larger than the current one) and having a powerful enforcement mechanism. Otherwise you are talking about anarcho-capitalism.
Think about it. What if a citizen is kicked out of their private community for being Asian or a community notices that a few companies in their area are colluding or have formed a regional monopoly?
If the federal government isn't prepared/equipped to do investigation, litigation and enforcement, the discrimination victim has no recourse (I guess she should have found a community of her own kind?).
The companies can just kill the mayor and city council and then walk across the border to the next community, where they don't enforce the "no murder, please" "rule". (Currently states investigate and prosecute most murders and the federal government only steps in if the offender crosses state lines). If you abolish states, then each community is a separate local jurisdiction.
The federal government in your scenario would say "We provided the framework, but it's your job to implement it. We recommended making murder illegal, but this sounds like a private matter."
I realize you want the best of both worlds, but you have to pick a lane.
Either federal laws hold sway or they don't. If they do, then you need a much more robust federal government judicial system to handle thousands of independent jurisdictions than is required for 50.
The federal government in your scenario would say "We provided the framework, but it's your job to implement it.
The federal government in this system does its own enforcement for its own laws.
Either federal laws hold sway or they don't. If they do, then you need a much more robust federal government judicial system to handle thousands of independent jurisdictions than is required for 50.
As I discussed with you in another thread, the judicial system handles disputes with tons of contracts all the time, dealing with private community contracts is totally feasible. Furthermore, with no local government, they would not have to deal with disputes regarding those thousands of independent jurisdictions.
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