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It's the opposite of central planning. According to the article, there is a uniform set of rules. Follow the rules, build your condo building. In the US there i

by jstalin 10y ago

It's the opposite of central planning. According to the article, there is a uniform set of rules. Follow the rules, build your condo building. In the US there is central planning on the local level, usually the city level. Planning commissions determine if your project meets the "character of the neighborhood" and neighbors bitch and complain that your project will "create more traffic" and the (central) planning commission denies your permit.

sokoloff 10y ago
I agree with what you observe, but I'd characterize Japan's solution as massively and strictly central planning, whereas the US has loosely adhered to local planning.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  You're confusing strictness with centralization. The rules are strict, but there is no centralized control. The way you get decentralization is by having rules. Consider Bitcoin for example. The rules are incredibly strict. You basically have no choice but to obey all of the rules in order to participate. They will not budge, and they were devised by one person, which calls to mind "central" and "control" but is just the opposite. Those rules are carefully constructed to allow the system to be completely decentralized. No permission is needed to participate. No one has the power to veto or alter your contributions. Simply obey the rules and no one else can have power over you. The distinction you are making about federal vs municipal control isn't about centralization vs decentralization, it's just about the scale of centralization. Municipalities are small, but they still have a single bottleneck at the mayor/city council. The reason this matters is that a rule-based decentralized system provides a structure that you can rely on. You can make a plan for compliance, and be reasonably assured that it will work. With centralized planning, even at if the central office is only governing something as small as an HOA, then there is no plan you can make which has an assurance of success. You are at the whim of the planners who have veto power. This turns planning into a stochastic game where your plans need to have redundancy at every level in order to have high probability of success, which increases cost and slows the pace of development substantially.
  - danbolt 10y ago
    I appreciate the distinctions! I feel like I should research them more, but I must be conflating the the terms in my mind.

by jstalin 10y ago

sokoloff 10y ago

I agree with what you observe, but I'd characterize Japan's solution as massively and strictly central planning, whereas the US has loosely adhered to local planning.

erikpukinskis 10y ago
You're confusing strictness with centralization. The rules are strict, but there is no centralized control. The way you get decentralization is by having rules. Consider Bitcoin for example. The rules are incredibly strict. You basically have no choice but to obey all of the rules in order to participate. They will not budge, and they were devised by one person, which calls to mind "central" and "control" but is just the opposite. Those rules are carefully constructed to allow the system to be completely decentralized. No permission is needed to participate. No one has the power to veto or alter your contributions. Simply obey the rules and no one else can have power over you. The distinction you are making about federal vs municipal control isn't about centralization vs decentralization, it's just about the scale of centralization. Municipalities are small, but they still have a single bottleneck at the mayor/city council. The reason this matters is that a rule-based decentralized system provides a structure that you can rely on. You can make a plan for compliance, and be reasonably assured that it will work. With centralized planning, even at if the central office is only governing something as small as an HOA, then there is no plan you can make which has an assurance of success. You are at the whim of the planners who have veto power. This turns planning into a stochastic game where your plans need to have redundancy at every level in order to have high probability of success, which increases cost and slows the pace of development substantially.
- danbolt 10y ago
  I appreciate the distinctions! I feel like I should research them more, but I must be conflating the the terms in my mind.