############################ Emphasizing Local Governance ############################ **Note:** I'm using the term *county* as the unit of local governance. This is really a stand-in, as I don't know what the correct unit should be, but counties seem like the right size -- something that's precisely defined, smaller than a state and as such can emphasize and specialize in certain types of econimies, but is big enough that it mush consider the needs of a diverse range of citizens. ******************** Meanings of Locality ******************** Local governance doesn't always mean geophysical locality. I would like to expand the meaning to include specialist areas of governance and regulation. This could be a way of containing the influence of special interests such that they are empowered to initiate change within the governance real of their realm of specialist governance, while minimizing the impact of such influence on the commonwealth. The key here that I have to develop is how to define an area of specialist governance and then how to define how to populate representatives in that area. The going example I have is with specialist safety regulation: For example, petrochemical safety standards are not federally enforced but there is a petrochemical society that has such standards which, as I understand, are widely used. It would be beneficial if such standards were modified and ratified through a public-private legislative body and treated as governance. Need a way of making corporate interests explicit -- no more hiding behind representatives. Appoint special representatives that *explicitly* represent corporations. Enact *harsh* penalties for both corporations and representatives for violating this. ************************** Emphasis on Local Taxation ************************** A heuristic for fair taxation: your percentage of local taxes should be the highest, state second, and federal third. This incentivises political involvement correctly such that citizens are more involved in the places where they can really make a difference. Problems with this suggestion are: #. Military spending -- what if we took more of an EU approach and each state was in charge of a piece of the defense department? #. Non-discretionary spending programs. These should be managed by counties, who all are obligated to operate at a minimum level (that's fairly far below what I would consider morally acceptable). This minimum level can be managed by a collective federal insurance program of sorts that makes sure that the truely economically disadvantaged counties get something. This is good because it encourages voting with your feet, where people migrate to places that fit their political, cultural, and economic aspirations. ************************* Political Experimentation ************************* This is also good because it makes us a patchwork of political expiriments. If there are certain federally accepted human rights, and the management of the programs, such as social security, medicare, etc. is managed and taxed at a local level, then it encourages some very beneficial behaviors: 1) We as a country become robust to changes in policy, economics, etc, as the money and policies are kept at a local level. 2) Regions may suffer, as they don't have the economic power to compete with powerhouse regions, or because they make bad economic/political decisions, but they can gracefully fail without bringing the nation down with them. The nation can even support these regions through some sort of bankruptcy policy. 3) Having diversity of policy allows us to approach political change in a scientific, data driven manner, as we can have leaders/experimenters of political change, and followers who adopt policies after they've accumulated evidence of success. This has a corellary that we should have a federal standards in place for easily grabbing data from all counties with similar policies This works best when there are standards for interaction between the various counties. That is the primary responsibility of the federal government -- to facilitate and standardize the interactions between states. Figuring out what this data looks like, and how it's standardized can produce some interesting tangential gains, which I will explore further within the paper :doc:`county_games`. One of the most important aspects of this is that citizens need to be able to fluidly immigrate between different counties -- this allows people to align their politics with their location which then encourages involvement in their own political future as they are working for the 'team' that they identify with. ********************* Letting Counties Fail ********************* Having a political dynamism in terms of counties necessitates the need to allow them to fail, or declare bankrupcy (political or economic bankrupcy). Setting up a system to deal with political failure is healthy for the nation. It acknowledges that changes in political policy are an evolutionary process. Evolution only works if bad mutations fail and are purged from the genetic stock. Setting up a system that gracefully handles failed governments involves handling a few different concerns: #. The nation needs a standardized way to handle internal immigration. This includes migrating people's accounts, and transferring any wealth that they've accumulated to new counties. By wealth that they've accumulated, I'm trying to refer to whatever social benefits they've received. #. The nation needs a standardized way of identifying failed governments -- How do we identify when a county goes politically bankrupt. #. The nation needs a standardized way of birthing new governances from the ashes of a failed one. I would suggest that we manage a collection of different basic governance templates, that are tweaked for geography and population concerns, and let the governments grow from those points. We would also want a federal insurance policy to jumpstart these new governments to make sure they have the training and resources they need to become self-sufficient.