Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to re: Decisive versus democratic.

Missing the big picture
Tom Brosz — (archived)

All the hassle and speculation you guys are doing on how to generate some form of reasonable representation in the Federal government misses the main reason that it has become a problem in the first place:

The Federal government has WAY too much centralized power. The Federal government was originally visualized as an organization of individual states, and the latter would ideally be organized with most of the power at the local level.

The United States was intended to be a "bottom up" power structure. The inversion of that goal that has taken place has happened within the lifetimes of many people around today. Jerry Pournelle once said that when he was young, who your Mayor was was more important to the average person than who the President was.

The current Federal government has direct power over almost every aspect of your life. Small wonder that issues of representation, formerly confined to limited Federal issues, have now become critical for everyone. Who controls Washington D.C., controls nearly everything.

Begin decentralizing government, and returning power to the people, and the problem of who gets to elect who in Washington becomes a lot less important. There is a lot less problem making sure you are represented when a lot of the important decisions are local ones.

The $64,000 question, of course, is how to do this. The power structure in Washington likes it just the way it is, thank you. It's GOOD to be the King.

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