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When you think about the power structure of our governments, power flows top-down; from National -> State -> Local government, which makes sense. But when decid

When you think about the power structure of our governments, power flows top-down; from National -> State -> Local government, which makes sense. But when deciding which local governments participate in which State governments, and which states participate in which national government (if any), these decisions should be managed bottom-up instead of top-down. Consider the situation in Oregon, where five rural counties have voted to leave the state of Oregon and to join the state of Idaho.[0] According to WaPo: > "Lawmakers in Oregon and Idaho would have to enact bills to redefine the states’ boundaries and redistrict their legislatures. They’d also have to muster the votes to override a potential veto from their respective governors. And then Congress would have to sign off on the move." In other words, these counties can only change states if they're able to get 320 million people to sign off on the change. That's crazy. Now, how to achieve this in practice? Ideally we would revert to the original Federal system (with a small, weak federal government and strong state governments) and allow for counties to move between states, but that seems unlikely. Alternatively, we could allow for counties to move between states, and allow States to self-organize into new federal/confederal nations, or to move between nations via some established process (i.e. referenda). These nations should coordinate at a supra-national level (like the EU) to facilitate commerce and free movement, and to allow for the settlement if nation-level disputes. [0]https://archive.is/l3tJG#selection-565.166-565.444 https://archive.is/l3tJG#selection-565.166-565.444

dragonwriter 5y ago
> In other words, these counties can only change states if they're able to get 320 million people to sign off on the change. Huh? They need: (1) a simple majority of each legislative house in Idaho, which is 18+36=54 people (2) a simple majority of each legislative house in Colorado, which is 18+33=51 people, and (3) a simple majority of each House of Congress, which is 51+218=269 people for a total of 269+54+51=374 people. Your 320 million estimate is off by about 6 orders of magnitude. (Even if you make the rather unrrasonable assumption that they need to convince enough unique voters to guarantee the election of a sufficient majority in each involved legislature—i.e., you assume that every eligible voter treats every Idaho, Colorado, and federal legislative election as a single issue referendum on the issue—you’ll find that the number is a very small fraction of the ~240 million eligible voters in the US.)
andrekandre 5y ago
thats really interesting, and makes sense to me, but i wonder about how feasible a weak central govt would work in such a globalized capitalism that we have today... wouldn't such flexibility/decentralization hurt national competitiveness vis-a-vis say, u.s vs china, or russia etc?
- marcusverus 5y ago
  It seems like it would definitely hurt economic competitiveness relative to our economic rivals who have top-down control (to whatever degree that confers an advantage). But it would also allow us to avoid some disadvantages of top-down governance. In the current federal system, it isn’t difficult to imagine the implantation of something like a national rent control bill (which, though productive fodder for populist politicians, would cause a rash of predictable economic problems), whereas it would be impossible to imagine the same change (and the related problems) occurring nationwide if said policy had to be adopted at the state level. It would also allow the states to serve their original role as “the marketplace of ideas”. One could imagine Oregon implementing state-run healthcare or a UBI, or Kansas implementing the “Fair Tax”, whereas now the states look to the federal government to implement these sorts of large policy changes.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> In other words, these counties can only change states if they're able to get 320 million people to sign off on the change. Huh? They need: (1) a simple majority of each legislative house in Idaho, which is 18+36=54 people (2) a simple majority of each legislative house in Colorado, which is 18+33=51 people, and (3) a simple majority of each House of Congress, which is 51+218=269 people for a total of 269+54+51=374 people. Your 320 million estimate is off by about 6 orders of magnitude. (Even if you make the rather unrrasonable assumption that they need to convince enough unique voters to guarantee the election of a sufficient majority in each involved legislature—i.e., you assume that every eligible voter treats every Idaho, Colorado, and federal legislative election as a single issue referendum on the issue—you’ll find that the number is a very small fraction of the ~240 million eligible voters in the US.)

andrekandre 5y ago

thats really interesting, and makes sense to me, but i wonder about how feasible a weak central govt would work in such a globalized capitalism that we have today... wouldn't such flexibility/decentralization hurt national competitiveness vis-a-vis say, u.s vs china, or russia etc?

marcusverus 5y ago
It seems like it would definitely hurt economic competitiveness relative to our economic rivals who have top-down control (to whatever degree that confers an advantage). But it would also allow us to avoid some disadvantages of top-down governance. In the current federal system, it isn’t difficult to imagine the implantation of something like a national rent control bill (which, though productive fodder for populist politicians, would cause a rash of predictable economic problems), whereas it would be impossible to imagine the same change (and the related problems) occurring nationwide if said policy had to be adopted at the state level. It would also allow the states to serve their original role as “the marketplace of ideas”. One could imagine Oregon implementing state-run healthcare or a UBI, or Kansas implementing the “Fair Tax”, whereas now the states look to the federal government to implement these sorts of large policy changes.