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It's not true that it never works. Centralizing production goals, decision making, and expenditure at the Federal government is what made the industrial respon

by danans 2y ago

It's not true that it never works. Centralizing production goals, decision making, and expenditure at the Federal government is what made the industrial response to WW2 successful. Centralizing tax revenue to fund retirements for the elderly (Social Security) resulted in the poverty rate of seniors being brought far lower. Centralizing zoning control at the state of California is _finally_ starting to make localities take responsibility for building more housing. These were/are centralizing efforts with the intent of helping the masses over the wealthy few. What doesn't work is centralizing power with the intent of concentrating wealth and security by taking wealth, labor, and security from working people, AKA extractive institutions. That's true whether it's the donor-class funded political establishment or regimes like the current US kleptocracy doing it.

int_19h 2y ago
Problem is, once you centralize, that remains in place for a long time, but the original intent, even if it was genuine, rarely outlives the people who implemented it for long. Generally speaking, every point of centralization is also a point where a lot of power can be acquired with relatively little resources. So regardless of intent, it attracts people who are into power, and over time, they take over. The original intent often remains symbolically and in the rhetoric used, but when you look beyond that into the actual policies, they are increasingly divorced from what is actually claimed.
- danans 2y ago
  > Generally speaking, every point of centralization is also a point where a lot of power can be acquired with relatively little resources This is why (1) shared principles and (2) credible democracy is important, to allow evolution of the centralized power (i.e. government) towards the shared principles, and why its corporate-bribed facsimile or oligarchic authoritarianism don't work.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    Credibility of democracy breaks down as you scale upward (which you have to do if you want to centralize). Any representative democracy in which the representative doesn't know all the people they represent is already suspect, but when you get to the point where a single guy supposedly represents hundreds of thousands or even millions, it's kinda obvious that there's no meaningful representation involved. The only way to avoid that is to grow the parliament instead to the point where it ceases to function as a deliberative assembly (and then what's the point of it?). Or you can have a bunch of smaller assemblies that actually are representative, and then a larger one to which assemblies delegate their own to cooperate. But that's exactly political decentralization - a multi-level federation.
jokethrowaway 2y ago
I think it can work for a short period of time if you have enlightened leaders or if the political machine wants to please you; they always alternate pleasing some people and upsetting others so that they can keep control. Over a long period of time the interest of the powerful will always win. There is a reason if no government (whether left or right) can fix the situation and inequality between the top 0.01% and the rest keeps increasing. The only solution to maximise wellbeing for individuals is to reduce the amount of control the powerful can exert on the rest of society.

by danans 2y ago

int_19h 2y ago

Problem is, once you centralize, that remains in place for a long time, but the original intent, even if it was genuine, rarely outlives the people who implemented it for long. Generally speaking, every point of centralization is also a point where a lot of power can be acquired with relatively little resources. So regardless of intent, it attracts people who are into power, and over time, they take over. The original intent often remains symbolically and in the rhetoric used, but when you look beyond that into the actual policies, they are increasingly divorced from what is actually claimed.

danans 2y ago
> Generally speaking, every point of centralization is also a point where a lot of power can be acquired with relatively little resources This is why (1) shared principles and (2) credible democracy is important, to allow evolution of the centralized power (i.e. government) towards the shared principles, and why its corporate-bribed facsimile or oligarchic authoritarianism don't work.
- int_19h 2y ago
  Credibility of democracy breaks down as you scale upward (which you have to do if you want to centralize). Any representative democracy in which the representative doesn't know all the people they represent is already suspect, but when you get to the point where a single guy supposedly represents hundreds of thousands or even millions, it's kinda obvious that there's no meaningful representation involved. The only way to avoid that is to grow the parliament instead to the point where it ceases to function as a deliberative assembly (and then what's the point of it?). Or you can have a bunch of smaller assemblies that actually are representative, and then a larger one to which assemblies delegate their own to cooperate. But that's exactly political decentralization - a multi-level federation.

jokethrowaway 2y ago

I think it can work for a short period of time if you have enlightened leaders or if the political machine wants to please you; they always alternate pleasing some people and upsetting others so that they can keep control. Over a long period of time the interest of the powerful will always win. There is a reason if no government (whether left or right) can fix the situation and inequality between the top 0.01% and the rest keeps increasing. The only solution to maximise wellbeing for individuals is to reduce the amount of control the powerful can exert on the rest of society.