6. Unitary state/centralism vs federalism and localism.
Smaller Is Better: Why Countries Should Be Broken Up
"Imagine a country where the people are divided over what some government policy should be. Half favor Policy A, and half favor Policy B. Whichever policy is implemented, only half the people will get to live under the policy they want, and there doesn't seem to be much the government can do about it.
However, suppose that in the western half of the country, a small major favor Policy A, while in the east, a small majority favor Policy B. By splitting the one country into 2, each can choose a different policy, and immediately more than half of the people get to live under the policy they want. And, those in the minority can migrate if they feel strongly enough about it.
Within each of the 2 new countries, the same principles apply. By splitting them up further, each small region, city, or community can have its own policy, based on what the majority of people within that small region want. This way, even more people get to live under the policy they want, and migration becomes even easier because everyone is closer to a border.
With many small countries, some of them may reject both Policies A and B, and go for Policy C instead. Or Policy D. Increasing diversity, choice, and competition between countries. People can start to see the impact of each government policy in practice. Good policies will be copied and spread as people see what works and what doesn't. Two countries that have the same policy on one issue might have different policies on another issue. Whether it benefits to policy alignment across a large area, neighboring countries that cooperate with each other on a voluntary, bottom-up basis. There is no need for them to surrender their sovereignty, or merge their political institutions.
Smaller countries have further benefits. Votes become more meaningful, and political campaigns become cheaper. In large countries, the base of the government can be far away, while in small countries, it is always close by. This means that the politicians are more likely to be from the same culture ro class as the citizens, and meeting or protesting against them becomes easeier. Governments become more accountable to their citizens.
Over time, the size and role of government in each of these small countries could diverge greatly. Big government, small government. Left wing, right wing. Capitalist, communist, socialist, corporatist. The role of government in each country will be broadly determined by the preferences of the people in these countries, which could change rapidly when they see the sucess or failure of different governments in neighboring countries.
Not only government policies and roles, but also forms of government would be subject to experimentation and competition. Some countries may opt for representative democracy. Others direct democracy, monarchy, or theocracy. Some may reject the state altogether and choose voluntarism.
Most of us which that we could change some government policy, or change the role or form of the government we live under. Instead of endless debate and disagreements at the level of national politics, a better strategy for more of us to live in the kind of country we want, would be for all of us to support the general principle that countries should be smaller."
"Economy of scale refers to the cost advantages of large purchases such as buying in bulk. It can refer to production as well where a firm's output is so large its average cost of production falls below the marginal cost.
But it's a fallacy to think that you can apply this concept to an entire economy. Socialists, for example, believe they can make programs like universal healthcare work because of economies of scale when in reality they make the system so unmanageable they invariably resort to some form of rationing. The reason why is that healthcare isn't a single product or service. Any country will experience an economy of scale with, say, insulin, because there's a significant portion of the population that has diabetes. But you have a problem when you have people with more rare diseases." "People suffering from all of these diseases put together might outnumber the diabetics, but you can't apply economy of scale to them because the treatments are all different.
And its even worse in a single-payer system. They actually end up with with an even smaller representative pool if they have any pool at all. They're just simply out-lobbied and out-voted by the bigger pools. To make matters worse, most of us as individuals exist in overlapping pools. We need some treatments that can be generalized to a large portion of the population, and can thus benefit from economy of scale, and need some more unique treatment as well.
This applies to most public policies, not just healthcare. If you have a giant oven, you can cook a lot of turkeys at the same time. But if you need to cook turkeys, and chicken, and pot roast, and bake some bread, and bake some apple pies, you can't do it all at once because they all require different temperatures and cooking times. Economy of scale can't apply there.
It's just one more reason why socialism will always fail. Human beings are not products on an assembly line. Mass produced decisions do not work for us. They might work for groups large enough to lobby policy makers, but those special interests will benefit at the expense of the rest of us. And there is really no way to change that other than just getting the government out of it."
Quickie: Diseconomies of Scale
"Do you that there was such a thing as diseconomies of scale? Probably not, since politicians really don't want you to know that these exist. There are disadvantages that both firms and governments accure when they get too big, and this results in increasing per-unit costs. Economies of scale will be a benefit up to a point, but beyond that, you just get too big.
One reason is the difficulty of a large number of people communicating efficiently. If you remember the handshake problem from the last quickie, you know that this increases geometrically as you get more and more people involved. At some point, the difficulty of all of them communicating will counter any advantages that you get from your big size. You also get a lot of duplication of effort. With a small firm, this really isn't an issue. But once you get thousands of employees, you end up with people and even entire departments working on different solutions to the same problem, unaware that someone else in the firm is doing the same thing.
There's also something called the Ringelmann effect, where individual members of a group become less productive as the size of a group increases. Also, things just get topheavy as you need more managers and bureaucrats to try and keep control of everything. This will be good up to a point, but beyond that you are just spending so much on managers, you're not getting as much production out of the deal.
We've seen plenty of cases where governments and large corporations have been unable to change with the times, trying to keep the inertia of their old business model going becuase it's just too difficult to shift to the new way of doing things. Politicians and pundits only want you to know about economies of scale, both for how they can supposedly manage the economy and also how larger companies will supposedly dominate a free market and prevent compitition. But neither of those are true. There just comes a point where you get too big and try to do too much. So universal healthcare will never be efficient, and no big multinational corporation will be able to compete with a smaller company that's more efficient. Economy of scale only works up to a point. "
Some European countries do have some form of localized police. Germany is a Federal Republic, though state's powers are intended to prevent dictatorships rather than give the states local autonomy, but I still consider this to be a step in the right direction.
The best example is Switzerland. The cantons do have their own courts and armed police, and municipalities can have their own armed police.
When it comes to defense, a federation can have the central/federal government handle military matters as is the case for the United States and the United Kingdom with her overseas territories. Members of a federation may raise their own military forces, as in the case of State National Guards and State Defense Forces in the United States, Home Defense Units of British Overseas Territories, and State Military Police and Firefighters Corps in Brazil. Countries can also form relationships for military alliances and standardization, such as in the case of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, and have trade and customs agreements, such as the Schengen Area.
I think that Euroskeptic types may relate to this more, as that someone from Bister, Switzerland or Planken, Liechtenstein identifies with their own local community and nation in contrast to cosmopolitans in Stockholm, Sweden or London, United Kingdom, who view themselves more akin to being world citizens.
Some people think that America would be better off under a unitary government like their own country. Actually, America is a big and diverse place, more like the whole of Europe than a single European country.
American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard
Somewhere vs anywhere divide. Not the same as, but directly related to the urban-rural divide.
A big reason why the America is so socially conservative and tribal is due to being more rural than continental Europe and being geographically isolated, sharing only 2 real land borders with other countries. If you look at any socially liberal place in the world, chances are they are urbanized metropolitan areas, and if not, they are probably on the coast. The most socially conservative and tribal parts of the world are outside of these areas and especially in mountains, such as Afghanistan.