There are a lot of things I can put in this section...so I'm going to post a lot of things. Three separate posts with several months of thought, but I think I'll begin on the Federal vs Local control question. Why here? Because I believe that the list of powers assigned to the US Federal Congress in this section might seem specific, but I argue that they're rather arbitrary. Right now the United Kingdom is doing some soul searching as the last vestiges of empire are falling away and Scotland is chomping at the bit to leave, with Wales not soon after. Thus, England is studying ways to restore powers to the local government whilst retaining some powers at the national level. Also, in the Ukraine, the world is brought to a precipice because the Russian speaking Crimean region of the Ukraine wants to separate from the rest of the country. Right now, it is autonomous, but it no longer trusts the nationalist government to let it retain these powers, so Putn Rasputin has seized it by force.
Why do it this way? Why not let regions be autonomous when at all possible, deciding which leagues they'd rather be affiliated with, and also; which powers they grant to their larger regional bodies. If people could simply choose over time what they wanted, then this would be a lot easier. Which makes the federal vs local question very much about a legislature.
I am above all other things, a pragmatist, despite how much of an idealog or a fanatic I might seem. I believe in striving for the best we can do, but working with what we have in the meantime. In as such, it strikes me that as much as a direct democratic democracy with timelocks might be desirable, we're likely to have legislatures for some time to come. After all, even Switzerland has them, right? And they're the most democratic country on Earth.
So if we're going to have a legislature, and if we're going to periodically reboot the constitution to avoid Temporal Tyranny, then we need to reboot the constitution at least once every two or three generations. So if we do, and if we're going to have legislatures, then the question becomes, what powers are going to be ascribed to the league/federation/national level, vs those retained by the locals. I'm sure there are as many opinions on that as there are people reading this, and likely a million more times that. But the question is left for the people determining their constitution, because each generation, nation and culture has their own ideas of what that might be.
So like the other elements of the constitutional posts I've made, I want to explore different options of accomplishing this.
I think the first thing is that in any constitution, there has to be a set of guarantees in the frame work for both sides; ie things that never change. I'd argue that the federal government must always have the power to tax and the power to raise an army. Otherwise, you end up with a confederation, and confederations suck; there is a reason the EU and the CSA had as many problems as they did. The truth is, that generally, the advantage of scale on any policy at the federal national level is going to be pronounced, no matter what it is, but the diversity of experimentation and the ability to actually know your politicians and make greater changes takes place at the local. Since government is force, any government must have some ability to enforce whatever laws it passes. And to have a law enforcement agency, it must be able to tax. The same also applies at a local level. Beyond that, I argue, Education, Health, Science, Law Enforcement, etc should all be decided by constitutional delegates in any cycle but ideally, you could divide up a minimum framework for each. Let's take a look at a few.
Note: I'm not going to look at the 'no local' or 'no federal' options because quite frankly, I think that all those choices are bad ones. There might be situations where they're a good idea, but I'll be damned if I can think of them.
Weak Local/Weak Federal: An anarchist's dream, the federal and the local just have only the bare minimum powers necessary and the government is literally prohibited from legislating ANYTHING not expressly allowed them on either level. This has lots of problems, but I think the big ones are; no social justice, no counter to business running rampant, no flexibility in emergency especially with an insane conservative minority and more importantly, weak government does not equal small government. I'll cover that in another post. Its strengths? Well, corruption would likely be less, taxes would likely be less, so for the 1% it would be heaven, and libertarians would finally be happy I guess.
Weak Local/Medium Federal: In this system the federal government gets 60-70% of governmental duties whilst local governments only get the remaining amount. There are still limits on the federal government and the local government, but the federal government is definitely stronger than the local governments. I think this is a good set up, not the best, but it has advantages. It means that there is never any doubt about who is in charge (ie no civil wars), you get economy of scale on all the things the national government does, and you still get some local control.
Weak Local/Strong Federal: This is the UK, where you have a strong parliament and almost no local controls. As I mentioned, the UK is looking at transferring power back to local governments. You do get all kinds of neat advantages at a strong federal level (as is illustrated in the UK with all their social benefits) but you'll end up with a capital that reserves all the powers to itself and doesn't care about the regional provinces. You think 'inside the beltway thinking' is bad now? Try it under this scenario. Pass.
Medium Local/Weak Federal: So this the goal the founding fathers were aiming for in the constitution (as compared to Strong Local and Weak Federal or Weak Local and Weak Federal espoused by Libertarians.) It has a lot of advantages in that it still gives you enough government to do things, leads to lots of interesting experiments and doing things, whilst still having some of the advantages of united government such as defense and standardization etc. This is a functional government, especially if you reserve say...40% of the powers to the local governments and 20% to the federal, while flat out denying 40% or simply letting them be picked up piece meal as needed in emergencies. This government is not as prone to corruption in the old days but would still fare poorly against a Koch/Alec style take over or corporate/robber baron corruption. It is also a problem waiting to happen because a civil war is likely to result on any major issue dividing the local governments that is of sufficient passion. This would be a bad idea among all reality based inhabitants but with conservatives or divergent realities it would be a disaster. In short, it is probably the best of all possible worlds up until the industrial era, and then it likely isn't going to work at all.
Medium Local/Strong Federal: This is what we have now. It's workable, but it has problems. To begin with, a government that does everything for its citizens will always be expanding. Also a strong federal government, specifically a strong federal legislature, has all of the problems I've mentioned before, primarily that it still focuses power into the hands of a few who can be bribed and corrupted with a little to much ease. More importantly, a strong federal legislature might ignore its citizens entirely. It has LOTS of advantages though as manifest by our powerful GNP. A strong federal government checked by a plurality of states allows a dynamic ebb and flow which creates the most critical path of functionality. It allows for strong federal agencies and strong state agencies whilst still ensuring the dominance of the federal government.
Strong Local/Strong Federal: Just like the last version, but very little restricted. I envision this scenario as one in which there are many specific spheres of influence between the regional government and the federal government, so they they theoretically check each other, but no restrictions on what they can do beyond that. Thus in this scenario, even if you have a bill of rights, it's 'optional in emergency' like the UK. That is to say, the parliament in the UK is paramount and can do what it likes. So a system like this would have local and federal governments with essentially unlimited powers in their respective spheres. The parliament in the UK still allows for a lot of freedoms and the inhabitants of the UK certainly believe those freedoms are inviolate. The trick is, this is the strongest case of the classic libertarian argument about a government only growing larger, never smaller; after all if both local and federal governments are strong, each crisis will lead to the creation of another agency or another law, and there is likely no mechanism to remove it once in place. Civil war isn't as likely because if both are strong, then they can theoretically check each other but might do so at the cost of the citizens. So there are advantages, and its theoretically workable but hardly what I'd call desirable.
Strong Local/Weak Federal: OK, this doesn't HAVE to be a confederation, even though it pretty much sounds like one. Maybe we'll call this a weak federation? IE for example a scenario in which the federal government is still paramount but only has 20% of potential duties whilst the local governments have 60%, still leaving certain areas to them that are forbidden form access. This form of government to me has all of the problems of Medium Local/Strong Federal, but also exacerbated difficulties when you have strong local governments that might try to claw back authority from the federal government. Even assuming they could do this (and it is possible I believe) it lose a lot of the advantages of the economies of scale. Still, I think in a truly flexible system, there are likely some cycles where the locals will choose to do this in their society, even if they are likely to change it in the next. A framework to allow local and federal control must allow this, even if I think they'll find that ultimately they don't like it.
Strong Local/Medium Federal: I can see this happening, but I do admit I'm not sure what it would look like. But again, I picture this happening at times on the cycle of things but having this much government control is probably going to cause government over reach.
Medium Local/Medium Federal: It might seem as if I have contrived things to show this, but I honestly believe this to be the best of all possible worlds. A third of all potential functions controlled by local governments, a third by federal governments and a third that they can't touch. And I think that each set of generations should get to decide for themselves what these things might be. Yes, there will be abuses, but I argue the abuses of not allowing folks to determine these themselves would be worse, much worse.
More to come.
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