But, respectfully, its hard not to get the impression that what your advocating for would be, in fully effective terms, an even more centralized and even less democratic system than what we have now and we've already travelled very, very far in that direction. So wouldn't that just take us to a place quite similar in effect to what you are eloquently criticizing?
This is a great conversation. Sorry I'm slow to weigh in about what I was trying to say since I was traveling yesterday.
My point here isn't about the role of the state v. private power. It's about what we're trying to do with power in the first place. Are we using power to make people into better people, with the goal that it will lead to a better world? Or are we using power to make things work better, recognizing that some people will still do and believe things we don't like.
What I'm saying actually makes for a less intrusive state. Because instead of using power to change people's private beliefs and attitudes, it leaves people alone to think or believe or say whatever they want. It puts the focus instead of how systems works to make things work better.
Personally, however, while I'm very much a market guy who is concerned about abuses of power, especially the state's power to coerce, I think the twentieth century obsession over WHO is going to be responsible for things, the state or private power, should be left mostly in the past as an anachronism. This fight was core to the fight over the New Deal which is why we're still obsessed with it over habit. I'm less interested now on who is responsible for things than what is actually happening to deal with them. We are going to have a government. We have problems we need to coordinate or solve. We're not abolishing all government, or all power, and living in a commune. So the question that matters most is how are we dealing with our problems, what the rules are, and how we can make things better. I care more these days about making a system that works and leaves people free and flourishing than fighting over which institution gets to take credit for doing nothing and fumbling.
My initial points were about centralization and decentralization, for both the private sector and public sector, and within each, in what areas.
1) The Private Sector: We used to have a decentralized private sector economy. One of the biggest big examples, and it was also the longest running, was the USA's old internal capital flow inhibitors. For every single day of its existence until they were mostly gotten of between the latter 1970s and mid 1980s, the USA had interstate (in some cases states did it regionally) capital flow inhibitors. The biggest element of this, which was there the whole time, were the intentionally semi-porouse but still effetcively there interstate banking competeition limiters. These were de facto (and it could be argued, at least on the Federal side, illegally) done away with between the latter 1970s and mid 1980s and the de jure and fully done away with in the late 1990s with the full actualization of the interstate banking and branching efficiency act of 1994. Of all the instances, likely in the 100s, of places to debate "macroeconomic" opinion, this one of the strongest, I assure you. It played a big role in the concentration of markets and industry, the large reductions in relative *real* scientific efforts, and degradation of communities through capital flights, and so on. And that was just a price, albeit the biggest one, of the capital flow inhibitors. This played a big role in the transformation of the US economy from a diffuse one mostly governed by completive market structures into a concentrated one mostly governed by private sector central planning.
2) Public Sector: We have very centralized governmental policy making and power. Vast swaths of policy space should be reopened to states and localities. Even just in terms of revenue raising and control, we are very centralized, 2/3s of total tax revenue is collected by the Federal government, this should be markedly reduced. although, by retreating in some areas it could then, if it reforms them to reduce costs, such as in healthcare, beef up in some areas, like healthcare. But beyond revenues and spending powers (and its mportant states and localities are the raisers of their own money so that is is *theirs*), we get to policy lattitude, we have strngly liitlle room for poolicy varuability, which in and of itself, no matter what else we did, is deeply anti democratic, the key economic spheres are where things are both most suited for variability due to the immense diversities across geographic spaces and those areas are the ones that most lend themselves to area communities knowledge and creativities. But we have near zero variability room in economic policy areas.
The USA's Old Republic, and China, at least between the years 1985 and 2015, prove that a very large place, such as the USA (certainly the planet!) can simultaneously, and I really do want to emphasize *at the same time*, operate a paradigm of deep integration AND many partial but real market and government policy fragmentations
Others’ mileage may vary, but one of my key takeaways from majoring in public policy was that federalism and variety almost always led to better outcomes than a one-size-fits-all national program too blunt to adjust for the diversity of the country and as one single node too easy for special interests to take over. I think what he's advocating would/could involve devolution of a lot of power and decision making to states or municipalities to have the freedom to experiment and that people's ability to vote with their feet would encourage competition and innovation and weed out some of the bad apples. Whereas the politics of moral crusaders demanding humans be radically better lends itself to power grabs and suspension of traditional norms.
Fair enough. But its hard not to get the impression that what he really means is that in all meaningful areas, or I guess, to be fair, he could be taken to mean all material as in non cultural/social type stuff, so fiscal, economic, monetary, and non-social regulatory policy, there will be a centrally mandated framework, with most all resources (money/tax revenue and the like) taken to the center then divided across policy areas and sent back down to lower areas who will have latitude within strictly set frameworks, but this barely any autonomy, off the bat it sets resource priorities, and then it by definition eliminates almost all potential plans before they even hit the drawing board because everyone everywhere must operate within the tightly defined frameworks. And it also implicitly advancements the verifiably false notion that either everything is centralized or nothing is and there is only a constant degree of centralization that must hold across all areas; for example, most people have very little interest in experimenting or expressing themselves creatively in healthcare, nor is it likely there would be much, if any, any value to them doing so since its something that they, hopefully, have very little interaction with, but in the case of the economy that they spend their entire day within in and interacting with, and are constantly tacitly acquiring knowledge of, their is much interest in expressing themselves creatively, at least among a significant minority and majority that would like to do so a little bit every once in a while, well, their there is desire for decentralization and there is great value to be had in getting it, also, that also subdivides into many applied areas like parts of the arts, science, engineering, which inherently lend themselves to variability since their creative fields. But in those insstances he woul by deiftion lock awya almost all ideas…
As we bumble along policy-wise the genie's out of the bottle and a high degree of centralization at least as a baseline is probably not something that can be rolled back. But when it comes to creativity in healthcare for instance, Obamacare was an enormous missed opportunity that with a more "laboratory of democracy" approach could have accomplished a lot more for a lot people with less expense and bureaucracy. Instead of entrenching an insurance model basically designed to cover the professional middle and upper classes rather than universal, they could have promoted more of a traveling health care fair model for basic check-ups, vaccinations, nipping problems in the bud, etc. for poorer and less dense states with the insurance model perhaps a better fit for more urban professionalized states. In general, trying to think less moralistically about how to approach the idiosyncracies of different places and more in terms of interest group politics and city machines and so forth rather than simple good vs. evil is pretty much the only viable way to bumble forward.
Point taken. But I *suspect* that not only is not the case that there cannot be any unwinding, I *suspect* that unwinding is our likely future. My take on the USA's political economy is that is still very complicated, its just that it is a latent complexity because there exists an equilibrium in the political economy across not just the large special interests groups, but also a great many out of sight and out of mind smaller ones spread across our social and economic landscape. And they are all doing either well or well enough. But if capital "G" Globalism either falls or at east erodes by a large degree, and then the federal government can no longer do its magic three of large and perpetual budget deficits, large and perpetual trade deficits**, and low interest rates; all with high goods availability and very little inflation, well, if that money dries up, I suspect so will that equilibrium and we'll see that latent complexity activated very quickly and both sectoral and geographic interests expressing themselves politically in way they haven't in several decades, possibly in some cases in ways they haven't since the 1930s, and then we'll have some not insignificant amount of decentralization in at least some of the key economic spheres
But, respectfully, its hard not to get the impression that what your advocating for would be, in fully effective terms, an even more centralized and even less democratic system than what we have now and we've already travelled very, very far in that direction. So wouldn't that just take us to a place quite similar in effect to what you are eloquently criticizing?
This is a great conversation. Sorry I'm slow to weigh in about what I was trying to say since I was traveling yesterday.
My point here isn't about the role of the state v. private power. It's about what we're trying to do with power in the first place. Are we using power to make people into better people, with the goal that it will lead to a better world? Or are we using power to make things work better, recognizing that some people will still do and believe things we don't like.
What I'm saying actually makes for a less intrusive state. Because instead of using power to change people's private beliefs and attitudes, it leaves people alone to think or believe or say whatever they want. It puts the focus instead of how systems works to make things work better.
Personally, however, while I'm very much a market guy who is concerned about abuses of power, especially the state's power to coerce, I think the twentieth century obsession over WHO is going to be responsible for things, the state or private power, should be left mostly in the past as an anachronism. This fight was core to the fight over the New Deal which is why we're still obsessed with it over habit. I'm less interested now on who is responsible for things than what is actually happening to deal with them. We are going to have a government. We have problems we need to coordinate or solve. We're not abolishing all government, or all power, and living in a commune. So the question that matters most is how are we dealing with our problems, what the rules are, and how we can make things better. I care more these days about making a system that works and leaves people free and flourishing than fighting over which institution gets to take credit for doing nothing and fumbling.
HI! Thanks for elaborating!
My initial points were about centralization and decentralization, for both the private sector and public sector, and within each, in what areas.
1) The Private Sector: We used to have a decentralized private sector economy. One of the biggest big examples, and it was also the longest running, was the USA's old internal capital flow inhibitors. For every single day of its existence until they were mostly gotten of between the latter 1970s and mid 1980s, the USA had interstate (in some cases states did it regionally) capital flow inhibitors. The biggest element of this, which was there the whole time, were the intentionally semi-porouse but still effetcively there interstate banking competeition limiters. These were de facto (and it could be argued, at least on the Federal side, illegally) done away with between the latter 1970s and mid 1980s and the de jure and fully done away with in the late 1990s with the full actualization of the interstate banking and branching efficiency act of 1994. Of all the instances, likely in the 100s, of places to debate "macroeconomic" opinion, this one of the strongest, I assure you. It played a big role in the concentration of markets and industry, the large reductions in relative *real* scientific efforts, and degradation of communities through capital flights, and so on. And that was just a price, albeit the biggest one, of the capital flow inhibitors. This played a big role in the transformation of the US economy from a diffuse one mostly governed by completive market structures into a concentrated one mostly governed by private sector central planning.
2) Public Sector: We have very centralized governmental policy making and power. Vast swaths of policy space should be reopened to states and localities. Even just in terms of revenue raising and control, we are very centralized, 2/3s of total tax revenue is collected by the Federal government, this should be markedly reduced. although, by retreating in some areas it could then, if it reforms them to reduce costs, such as in healthcare, beef up in some areas, like healthcare. But beyond revenues and spending powers (and its mportant states and localities are the raisers of their own money so that is is *theirs*), we get to policy lattitude, we have strngly liitlle room for poolicy varuability, which in and of itself, no matter what else we did, is deeply anti democratic, the key economic spheres are where things are both most suited for variability due to the immense diversities across geographic spaces and those areas are the ones that most lend themselves to area communities knowledge and creativities. But we have near zero variability room in economic policy areas.
The USA's Old Republic, and China, at least between the years 1985 and 2015, prove that a very large place, such as the USA (certainly the planet!) can simultaneously, and I really do want to emphasize *at the same time*, operate a paradigm of deep integration AND many partial but real market and government policy fragmentations
I hope you've been having a nice weekend,
--Mike
Others’ mileage may vary, but one of my key takeaways from majoring in public policy was that federalism and variety almost always led to better outcomes than a one-size-fits-all national program too blunt to adjust for the diversity of the country and as one single node too easy for special interests to take over. I think what he's advocating would/could involve devolution of a lot of power and decision making to states or municipalities to have the freedom to experiment and that people's ability to vote with their feet would encourage competition and innovation and weed out some of the bad apples. Whereas the politics of moral crusaders demanding humans be radically better lends itself to power grabs and suspension of traditional norms.
Fair enough. But its hard not to get the impression that what he really means is that in all meaningful areas, or I guess, to be fair, he could be taken to mean all material as in non cultural/social type stuff, so fiscal, economic, monetary, and non-social regulatory policy, there will be a centrally mandated framework, with most all resources (money/tax revenue and the like) taken to the center then divided across policy areas and sent back down to lower areas who will have latitude within strictly set frameworks, but this barely any autonomy, off the bat it sets resource priorities, and then it by definition eliminates almost all potential plans before they even hit the drawing board because everyone everywhere must operate within the tightly defined frameworks. And it also implicitly advancements the verifiably false notion that either everything is centralized or nothing is and there is only a constant degree of centralization that must hold across all areas; for example, most people have very little interest in experimenting or expressing themselves creatively in healthcare, nor is it likely there would be much, if any, any value to them doing so since its something that they, hopefully, have very little interaction with, but in the case of the economy that they spend their entire day within in and interacting with, and are constantly tacitly acquiring knowledge of, their is much interest in expressing themselves creatively, at least among a significant minority and majority that would like to do so a little bit every once in a while, well, their there is desire for decentralization and there is great value to be had in getting it, also, that also subdivides into many applied areas like parts of the arts, science, engineering, which inherently lend themselves to variability since their creative fields. But in those insstances he woul by deiftion lock awya almost all ideas…
As we bumble along policy-wise the genie's out of the bottle and a high degree of centralization at least as a baseline is probably not something that can be rolled back. But when it comes to creativity in healthcare for instance, Obamacare was an enormous missed opportunity that with a more "laboratory of democracy" approach could have accomplished a lot more for a lot people with less expense and bureaucracy. Instead of entrenching an insurance model basically designed to cover the professional middle and upper classes rather than universal, they could have promoted more of a traveling health care fair model for basic check-ups, vaccinations, nipping problems in the bud, etc. for poorer and less dense states with the insurance model perhaps a better fit for more urban professionalized states. In general, trying to think less moralistically about how to approach the idiosyncracies of different places and more in terms of interest group politics and city machines and so forth rather than simple good vs. evil is pretty much the only viable way to bumble forward.
Point taken. But I *suspect* that not only is not the case that there cannot be any unwinding, I *suspect* that unwinding is our likely future. My take on the USA's political economy is that is still very complicated, its just that it is a latent complexity because there exists an equilibrium in the political economy across not just the large special interests groups, but also a great many out of sight and out of mind smaller ones spread across our social and economic landscape. And they are all doing either well or well enough. But if capital "G" Globalism either falls or at east erodes by a large degree, and then the federal government can no longer do its magic three of large and perpetual budget deficits, large and perpetual trade deficits**, and low interest rates; all with high goods availability and very little inflation, well, if that money dries up, I suspect so will that equilibrium and we'll see that latent complexity activated very quickly and both sectoral and geographic interests expressing themselves politically in way they haven't in several decades, possibly in some cases in ways they haven't since the 1930s, and then we'll have some not insignificant amount of decentralization in at least some of the key economic spheres