We've previously argued about the idea that a majoritarian electronic democracy with very reliaable non corruptible state structures could actually work in a way that makes no one happy but makes Representative Democracy look as quaint as Fuedal Monarchies did in terms of abusive structures. But if Just In Time flat structures do exist; with the bite of the state but the nearest utopian style minimalism that reality still demands for a functional state. But for the state to do the things that most people want it to do like deliver the mail and protect you from slavery and poverty and loniliness it will need to have structures. It will need to have institutions. And at some point, you make decisions in a fair society based on geographic region. It is only acceptable to make decisions by region rather than by population when you get to the level at which society must regard the needs of the one with the needs of the many. The many MUST recognize the needs of the invidivudal, because the individual is the many.
Which is a lot of fancy words for saying take what history says with a very heavy dump truck of salt. On the other hand, in the normal real world, people want to have a reason to get up in the morning; have something to do, and not worry about their basic needs like feeding themselves, clothing themselves, and being able to spend their time doing the things that they want to do and do it at level for their own needs not those of a small elite few who are particularly assholes. That means democracy, there is no way around that, and that means that there will be disagreements about how to do things. So you need to decide where we need to be free as a society and be free as an individual and they are not the same and they are the same. And extermists will continously and sometimes with out reason push their own view there; when most of the time common sense and intuition says it has to be a balance, and that no one can really decide what that balance is but the majority.
But everyone lives somewhere. And your sense of where that somewhere is may very. For some people, their whole world is a part of a city that is a few blocks and everything they would ever want government to do should cover that area and what those people in that area would want is all government should ever be or do. And then there are some who believe the world should have no borders and that anything that happens within those borders should apply to everybody everywhere. And for most of us, we dont really think of the world like that. We just want things to be normal and let us care about what we care about. But for those fringes, it isnt about me or you but really about grouping people all as one big whole for everything that it is they care about against the things that people in one part of the country want compared to everyone else. And those people will form coalitions of the things they want. That's been happening for as long as we can remember.
Even in a minimalist flat utopia, nobody wants to have trash dropped where they live, no one wants to be the last in line for resources or even the newest upgrade to vital technology like telephones or the internet or whatever random thing it is next infrastructure wise. Your system of government needs to understand a sliding scale of invidivuality by geography to understand that you cant let a group of people dominate even a small geographic area against its will any more than you can decide to make just .000001% of your population be slaves. You are either all the way against slavery, or you are a slaver. And no one wants just a little poop in their sandwich. That means in a just society, a truly just society you need to balance the needs of the city or even the city block against the needs of a nation. You need to treat the people of 16th street and Elm just the same as you treat the people of Wyoming.
And to me, the sweet spot for that to happen isnt some demonic compromise of self sovereignty of the many by minority geographic tyranny. Its to make sure that when the rubber hits the road to decide whether a street is going to get paved here or there, that both parties have an equal voice in the room. And that means that the people who show up and engage in the policy making at the institutional level have to have the right to do that. It comes to how you spend your time and focus. I dont have all the answers, but I know at the department level, the actual top level of execution, those that want to be in a self identified geographic location should be able to have their interests equally represented. And I dont know what that structure will look like, but I imagine a just version would be as chaotic as the web of life itself.
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