While I am a big supporter of moving government decisions making closer to the people (I live in Texas and the government in Austin seems very remote to me, let alone at the national level) but in addition to the earlier comments, limiting the size to around 100 people feels like it would put a lot of work on each person. A lot of people…
While I am a big supporter of moving government decisions making closer to the people (I live in Texas and the government in Austin seems very remote to me, let alone at the national level) but in addition to the earlier comments, limiting the size to around 100 people feels like it would put a lot of work on each person. A lot of people have busy lives already
I saw some research that people who were libertarian tended to share several personality traits - I may forget the details, but they tended to be conscientious, paid attention to details, enjoyed solving problems, etc. While there are a lot of them, that combination of traits is a minority. If you're design a government for the entire nation, you need to be able to find a mechanism that works with the bulk of the population. In one of your replies you mentioned not caring what paint a neighbor used, but... a lot of other people do. I would guess that none of us who take the time to read and write on these topics are actually typical
I need to hear everything you say. Life's gotten more complicated and time-consuming since Jefferson. I know we've gotten smarter about how to work in groups since then--or maybe I just think we have. Anyway, some flexibility could also help with time commitments. I can do five hours this week but four the next; I'd like to work on this but not that. Limiting the size so everyone gets to know one another in civil work I think would be important. But then for bigger jobs I could volunteer or be rotated in to work trans-locally with people from other village-states. Things generally would go with what work needs to be done and who has a passion for it. Less bureaucracy and more local care as much as possible. I think experts are great, but let them advise us so we are doing it ourselves. A lot of trial and error and flexibility for different locals and different people. No one size fits all.
I'm not libertarian myself: way too much weight on personal liberty for my taste. But that's just my taste. I wonder if this wouldn't attract others who think they fit under other political labels once people start small.
But there's no getting around priorities. Some people will have time for some, some for a lot, and some for none. This whole "republican virtue" emphasis was on not spending too much money and not working too much in order to have time to spend on public freedom.
Thank you for helping me to think harder. It helps. BTW, I was just in Austin for the first time earlier this month. It was different than I expected, though I enjoyed it. I'm in south-central Tennessee now. I've been spending the morning with neighbors cleaning up after a tornado last night that fortunately didn't kill anyone or tear down buildings. But it's a mess. Lots of volunteers from different walks of life. An impromptu, temporary village-state?
Interesting essay! I's say we we've likely gotten much dumber about working in group democratically because we havent done it in like around 80 years. The United States once had genuinely democratic governance structures, however imperfect and limited, fundamentally based around decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties. The Democratic Party, as a small "d" democratic institution, and the Republican Party, as a small "r" republican institution, were honest in their naming and functioned within a politically, economically, governmentally, financially, and scientifically decentralized system. These parties, while far from flawless, allowed for real representation, meaningful participation, and a level of public accountability in political, economic, governmental, financial, and scientific decision making.
However, due to the dirty deeds of an assortment of powerful special interest groups, our parties have transformed into centralized, exclusionary membership organizations. The so called Democratic Party has become a technocracy party, and the so called Republican Party became a conservative party. Neither really represents their original principles of democracy or republicanism, and they dont offer meaningful access or representation to the public. This transformation of the parties has been accompanied by a broader centralization of political, economic, and scientific decision making, which has caused the effective loss of most democratic governance structures.
It turns out that the 1930s USA remained a thoroughly politically, economically, governmentally, financially, and scientifically decentralized system Both FDR and Taft were routinely overturned and most decision making occurred at the sub-federal level. I found this wonderful anecdote of Keynes being defeated by members of the general public (BTW, we did what he recommended in 2009 and it worked out just like they said it would, our derivatives markets are so big now they ay be in the quadrillions, their plan was better and worked great until it was undone in the 90s).
We remained thoroughly small "p" populist and decentralized in the 1930s and things were as complicated then as it is now, maybe much more so given the lack of computers and far less telecommunications
Thanks, Mike. Centralization, specialization, and lobbyists do make us citizens feel unimportant in what is supposed to be our own government. These dynamics tend to turn citizens into a disconnected mass, too. I think they also help to make us easy marks for populists who can make an emotional connection with the "masses."
The emotional connection between populists and masses is a cheap facsimile of real connections among citizens meeting frequently to conduct public business. I think that's Jefferson's point when he says that village-states will save us from the likes of a Caesar or a Bonaparte. Without these face-to-face encounters among citizens in public freedom, words like "democratic" and even "republican" as forms of government lose their meaning. Having been misled already by the promise of "representative democracy" (like Romeo's "cold fire" or "bright smoke"), we dismiss democracy before we've even tried it.
Hi, thanks for the interesting reply! Well I think you mean capital P" Populists, we avoided dictators for hundreds of years as populists, for example, the Jacksonians were actual small "p" populists, their war against the Second Bank wasnt merely rhetoric, it was a real structural battle against big power that held real control over capital and policy.
But it seems that your still envisioning representatives to the fed and state level?
Mike, correct on the representatives. My thought is that, perhaps, we'll trust those representatives under Jefferson's plan more than we do our representatives today not to be in the thrall of special interests or party loyalty. That because we'll tend to assume that they're having the same face-to-face experiences that we're having hyper-locally.
And, hopefully, with us citizens doing most of the government ourselves, our assumption won't be misplaced. Jefferson did teach us, though, that the citizens' watchful, jealous eye on our representatives is better suited for a republic than confidence in them. From his Kentucky Resolutions: ". . . confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism: free government is founded in jealousy and not in confidence; it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power."
Right now, we citizens overall are neither confident nor jealous. We're resigned, and we perceive ourselves as powerless. (We elect populists in part out of this perceived powerlessness: populists promise to be champions of us little people against the powerful.) I think village-states would at least develop in us Jefferson's foundation of free government--jealousy. Jefferson seemed to think so: "Where every man is a sharer in the direction of his ward-republic . . . he will let the heart be torn out of his body sooner than his power be wrested from him by a Caesar or a Bonaparte."
For more on the representational aspect, you might look at my response to Annie Blackwell's interesting comment. (I think it's one of the first comments on this post.) Thanks again for your involvement here.
While I am a big supporter of moving government decisions making closer to the people (I live in Texas and the government in Austin seems very remote to me, let alone at the national level) but in addition to the earlier comments, limiting the size to around 100 people feels like it would put a lot of work on each person. A lot of people have busy lives already
I saw some research that people who were libertarian tended to share several personality traits - I may forget the details, but they tended to be conscientious, paid attention to details, enjoyed solving problems, etc. While there are a lot of them, that combination of traits is a minority. If you're design a government for the entire nation, you need to be able to find a mechanism that works with the bulk of the population. In one of your replies you mentioned not caring what paint a neighbor used, but... a lot of other people do. I would guess that none of us who take the time to read and write on these topics are actually typical
I need to hear everything you say. Life's gotten more complicated and time-consuming since Jefferson. I know we've gotten smarter about how to work in groups since then--or maybe I just think we have. Anyway, some flexibility could also help with time commitments. I can do five hours this week but four the next; I'd like to work on this but not that. Limiting the size so everyone gets to know one another in civil work I think would be important. But then for bigger jobs I could volunteer or be rotated in to work trans-locally with people from other village-states. Things generally would go with what work needs to be done and who has a passion for it. Less bureaucracy and more local care as much as possible. I think experts are great, but let them advise us so we are doing it ourselves. A lot of trial and error and flexibility for different locals and different people. No one size fits all.
I'm not libertarian myself: way too much weight on personal liberty for my taste. But that's just my taste. I wonder if this wouldn't attract others who think they fit under other political labels once people start small.
But there's no getting around priorities. Some people will have time for some, some for a lot, and some for none. This whole "republican virtue" emphasis was on not spending too much money and not working too much in order to have time to spend on public freedom.
Thank you for helping me to think harder. It helps. BTW, I was just in Austin for the first time earlier this month. It was different than I expected, though I enjoyed it. I'm in south-central Tennessee now. I've been spending the morning with neighbors cleaning up after a tornado last night that fortunately didn't kill anyone or tear down buildings. But it's a mess. Lots of volunteers from different walks of life. An impromptu, temporary village-state?
Interesting essay! I's say we we've likely gotten much dumber about working in group democratically because we havent done it in like around 80 years. The United States once had genuinely democratic governance structures, however imperfect and limited, fundamentally based around decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties. The Democratic Party, as a small "d" democratic institution, and the Republican Party, as a small "r" republican institution, were honest in their naming and functioned within a politically, economically, governmentally, financially, and scientifically decentralized system. These parties, while far from flawless, allowed for real representation, meaningful participation, and a level of public accountability in political, economic, governmental, financial, and scientific decision making.
However, due to the dirty deeds of an assortment of powerful special interest groups, our parties have transformed into centralized, exclusionary membership organizations. The so called Democratic Party has become a technocracy party, and the so called Republican Party became a conservative party. Neither really represents their original principles of democracy or republicanism, and they dont offer meaningful access or representation to the public. This transformation of the parties has been accompanied by a broader centralization of political, economic, and scientific decision making, which has caused the effective loss of most democratic governance structures.
It turns out that the 1930s USA remained a thoroughly politically, economically, governmentally, financially, and scientifically decentralized system Both FDR and Taft were routinely overturned and most decision making occurred at the sub-federal level. I found this wonderful anecdote of Keynes being defeated by members of the general public (BTW, we did what he recommended in 2009 and it worked out just like they said it would, our derivatives markets are so big now they ay be in the quadrillions, their plan was better and worked great until it was undone in the 90s).
We remained thoroughly small "p" populist and decentralized in the 1930s and things were as complicated then as it is now, maybe much more so given the lack of computers and far less telecommunications
Thanks, Mike. Centralization, specialization, and lobbyists do make us citizens feel unimportant in what is supposed to be our own government. These dynamics tend to turn citizens into a disconnected mass, too. I think they also help to make us easy marks for populists who can make an emotional connection with the "masses."
The emotional connection between populists and masses is a cheap facsimile of real connections among citizens meeting frequently to conduct public business. I think that's Jefferson's point when he says that village-states will save us from the likes of a Caesar or a Bonaparte. Without these face-to-face encounters among citizens in public freedom, words like "democratic" and even "republican" as forms of government lose their meaning. Having been misled already by the promise of "representative democracy" (like Romeo's "cold fire" or "bright smoke"), we dismiss democracy before we've even tried it.
Hi, thanks for the interesting reply! Well I think you mean capital P" Populists, we avoided dictators for hundreds of years as populists, for example, the Jacksonians were actual small "p" populists, their war against the Second Bank wasnt merely rhetoric, it was a real structural battle against big power that held real control over capital and policy.
But it seems that your still envisioning representatives to the fed and state level?
Mike, correct on the representatives. My thought is that, perhaps, we'll trust those representatives under Jefferson's plan more than we do our representatives today not to be in the thrall of special interests or party loyalty. That because we'll tend to assume that they're having the same face-to-face experiences that we're having hyper-locally.
And, hopefully, with us citizens doing most of the government ourselves, our assumption won't be misplaced. Jefferson did teach us, though, that the citizens' watchful, jealous eye on our representatives is better suited for a republic than confidence in them. From his Kentucky Resolutions: ". . . confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism: free government is founded in jealousy and not in confidence; it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power."
Right now, we citizens overall are neither confident nor jealous. We're resigned, and we perceive ourselves as powerless. (We elect populists in part out of this perceived powerlessness: populists promise to be champions of us little people against the powerful.) I think village-states would at least develop in us Jefferson's foundation of free government--jealousy. Jefferson seemed to think so: "Where every man is a sharer in the direction of his ward-republic . . . he will let the heart be torn out of his body sooner than his power be wrested from him by a Caesar or a Bonaparte."
For more on the representational aspect, you might look at my response to Annie Blackwell's interesting comment. (I think it's one of the first comments on this post.) Thanks again for your involvement here.