Why it May Make Sense to Break Up the "Union"
Connecting Succession to the American Confederacy is So Nineteenth Century
Assuming change is good...There are two basic models for effecting political change in the American imagination. The most popular method, which we have just been observing, is from the top down. Elect visionary, reformist leaders to the highest offices and change the whole country at once. The second method is bottom up, often referred to as grass roots movements. Libertarians have been working on both with equal fervor and banging our heads against the wall most of the time, either way.
It is easier to light a fire from the bottom up, but the higher levels have an overpowering fire department. They're also good at starting back fires and building firewalls. Some reforms can and do take place locally but localities are still largely controlled and impacted by higher levels of government, which significantly limits the impact any local reforms can have.
Because of this, local reformers eventually give up trying to change government from below and try to win a seat at the top. Most of the time where Libertarians are concerned that becomes an exercise in futility. Sometimes it is successful, but even then, the lone elected official on the national level is not able to create much change, and is vulnerable to being coopted by the system. You know the old saying about power corrupting.
But what if there were no top. What if the best Libertarian strategy might be to eliminate the top rather than conquering it. In other words, is nationhood so twentieth century?
To answer this question, a brief history lesson. The rise of nation-states came from a need to consolidate power for purposes of security and to consolidate markets to create an economy of scale. With the rise of the information age, came also the rise of the global marketplace. Like it or not, it is a reality. The genie is out. But that can be a good thing. Why, because with the global marketplace, international borders are irrelevant, arbitrary, and actually more of a barrier to market efficiency than a boon to it. So if nation-states are no longer necessary for, and in fact are a hindrance to market efficiency, the only remaining rationale for nationhood is power and security.
We have seen plenty of evidence in the last eight years that the concentration of military power is not necessarily the means to security. The one with the biggest stick is also the biggest target, and if one has a big stick, even the little guys look for ways to get their own stick. Forget the ethics of international military adventurism, for a moment and just think practicality. If you live next to a beehive, you are obviously bigger and stronger, but is it a good idea to poke the bee hive with your big stick?
So perhaps we have entered the era of sovereign de-centralization, national devolution, the rise of the city-state. There's no reason why any geographical region no matter how small cannot be autonomous in the current global environment. The more fractured is sovereign power, the more numerous are sovereign entities, the more localized their control, the less likely we are to have war, and the greater chance we have for liberty to thrive and increase because power would be restored to the people at the center of their daily lives. There is no long distance disconnect. There is no exploitation of one area's resources for "national" interests.
So humor me for a moment. Suppose every small town and large city and every municipality in between each declared independence from the Federal Government and perhaps even from their states and counties. What would the Federal Government do? What could they do? If there is only one wasp on your window screen, your chances of squishing it are relatively good, especially if you chase it around and tire it out. But no matter how big and powerful you are relative to one wasp or a whole colony of wasps when they're all congregated in their hive, what happens when even ten of them start swarming around you? Not only is it impossible for you to defeat them, it is very possible that they can make you sick or even kill you, especially if the twenty are joined by thirty more.
No doubt at this point you are judging me as one or more of the following: a cook, a racist/supremacist, or an anarchist. But what if we are at an evolutionary crossroads in democracy? What if while we're thinking outside of lots of other smaller boxes, we allow ourselves to think outside of the box of modern nationhood? Instead of justifying a strategy for wholesale secession, lets go the other way. Give me five good reasons why we're better off being governed by strangers from far away, even if we voted for them, than by our neighbors. Assuming North America were to devolve into a continent of hundreds, even thousands of city-states and autonomous microstates who all maintain the basic principles of American democracy, perhaps even adopt the U.S. Constitution (the parts that are still relevant) as the foundation of their societies, what is the downside of this kind of de-centralization? Everyone's vote would be worth so much more. The impact of a new law or policy would be local only and would be instantly visible to and impactful of those who pass the laws and create the policies. If change or revision is needed it would be immediately apparent to all including those who have been elected to serve.
De-centralization also reduces the cost of government. The smaller the autonomous entity in population and/or geography, the less it costs to govern. In fact the entire government could be volunteers. Having a volunteer government of one's peers would create an incentive to term limits. Theoretically one would limit one's own term of office because of the cost and commitment of doing so as a volunteer, rather than fighting to save one's economic and political power, inherent in holding office at a higher, professinal level. Finally, if the autonomous region being governed is small enough to function adequately with volunteer legislators and executives, there is an automatic disincentive toward creating extraneous legislation, bureaucracy, or regulation, since the creation, passage and implementation of such is extremely labor-intensive.
For professionals who have to justify their large salaries and staffs and consolidate their power, there is an incentive to continually make government larger and more obtuse. Write laws that only lawyers can understand so everyone will have to pay for a lawyer to protect their rights. Create boondogles that only bureaucrats can navigate so that an entire class of bureaucrats will have lifetime employment "serving" the people. -jwh-
Secession anyone?
See What's in it For You, above right.
See also my article at The Nolan Chart:
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