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Musings Report 2021-35 8-28-21 If I Were Emperor
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For those who are new to the Musings reports: they're a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
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If I Were Emperor
A friend recently asked: what would your solutions be if you were emperor? This is a classic question because it strips away all the real-world complexities of persuading others to agree with your proposal and the inevitable compromises made to reach consensus to reach the distilled version of: how would you fix what's broken?
My answer to the majority of pressing problems is always the same: distribute power (which I define as control of resources, capital and agency) down to the lowest level of democratic / participatory governance, as this is where the elected representatives are closest to (and thus most responsive to) the citizenry and where problems are most likely to be solved.
The role of the central state (federal government) is to provide national goals and rules to maintain a level playing field, i.e. maintain open competition, transparency, variability/dissent, feedback/responsiveness and accountability.
For example, the national goal might be "improve local food security by increasing production of locally grown food and eliminating food deserts," neighborhoods with limited options to buy / grow fresh produce.
How each city, town and county accomplished these goals would be up to the local citizenry and their elected representatives, academic centers, major enterprises, community groups, etc.
There are over 3,000 counties in the U.S. (as well as several hundred "county equivalents"), about 1,500 small cities (10,000 to 25,000 residents), 1,200 medium-sized cities (25,000 to $100,000) and about 300 major cities (100,000 and up).
The problem is centralized, concentrated power, be it in private-sector monopolies or cartels or concentrations of power in government.
For example, a handful of people in the Federal Reserve have issued about $7 trillion in U.S. currency since 2009 in ways that have greatly increased the wealth of the top 0.1% at the expense of the bottom 90%.
If currency was not created at the top of the pyramid (one central bank) but in 3,000+ local county banks that could only issue currency to meet local scarcities, it would be much more difficult to special interests to corrupt and control the issuance of currency to their exclusive benefit.
In terms of problem-solving, it's rather obvious that a centralized state hierarchy under the influence of cartels and other concentrations of private wealth cannot possibly conjure solutions that work equally well in all 3,000 counties and all 3,000 cities in the U.S.
Even the most cursory glance at America's demographic and regional diversity would suggest that federal lawmakers approving thousands of pages of arcane regulations -- largely composed or edited by lobbyists of special interests -- cannot possibly provide the most effective and efficient solutions for America's thousands of communities.
This top-down centralized management costs a fortune and fails to provide solutions on the ground. Rather, this top-down power structure benefits those with influence in the center of power while ignoring what might work to benefit the bottom 99.5% of the citizenry.
Every county and city has a unique mix of people, cultures, history, community assets, capital, enterprises, resources and infrastructure. Those closest to the problems are the likeliest source of solutions to those problems, and they are also those with the most skin in the game and the most to gain from solutions that are under local control and that are faster, better and cheaper.
We all know the problem: emperors and others holding power are rarely eager to relinquish their power to the bottom of the pyramid.
Rather, those holding concentrated power are remarkably adept at rationalizing their unique qualifications to serve their own interests under the guise of "serving the public."
James M. Buchanan’s work in public choice theory (that earned him the 1986 Nobel prize in Economics) found that the private interests of those in power trump those of the public when decisions are made.
The one systemic change that would be consequential would be to radically decentralize power, capital and agency (having a say in public decisions) so that private interests are limited not by moral or legal constraints but by the constraints of power itself: if power is distributed rather than concentrated, it's much more difficult for special interests to gain control of power and cloak their influence.
So appoint me emperor and my first act will be to distribute all my power to America's 6,000 cities and counties. After that, my role will be entirely ceremonial, attending the celebrations of local solutions which tend to be consensus-based, incremental, pragmatic and limited in scope.
Highlights of the Blog
Podcast:
Charles Hugh Smith on Secular Inflation (host Richard Bonugli, 31 minutes)
Posts:
Fed Up with the Fed's Abuse of Power 8/27/21
How to Identify a Bubble: Wall Street Says It's Not a Bubble 8/25/21
The Upside of a Stock Market Crash 8/21/21
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Two best things this week: after losing touch with a longtime correspondent-friend, I did an online search for his current email or contact info and came up blank. This concerned me, and so I was overjoyed when he contacted me this week, explaining the potentially fatal chronic medical condition he's now dealing with, and how the spiritual foundation he's acquired over the decades is maintaining his joie de vivre and gratitude. It's unbelievably great to hear from you, Bill. Thank you for reaching out to me.
Secondly, my musical mentor and I worked through a representative portion of his electric guitar collection in a multi-hour free-form jam: we switched off playing six different guitars: a vintage Gibson SG, an SG copy, a classic white Fender Stratocaster, a PRC, an Ibanez hollow-body and a Les Paul-style Yamaha. Playing music was another activity that fell by the wayside in being burned out, and this was a revival of a missing part of my life. Having a vintage SG in your hands is inspirational, even to a mediocre amateur like me.
From Left Field
The sugar conspiracy (Guardian.com, via Patrick S.) -- a few years old but an important overview of how the narrative about diet was shifted from sugar being bad to fat being bad... which happened to be wrong....
Wind Turbine Graveyard-- maybe steel wind turbine blades can be recycled after they're worn out in 14 years, but fiberglass blades end up as trash in the landfill...
The Coronavirus Is Here Forever. This Is How We Live With It.
Climate Change: What is the Worst that can Happen?
Digital Addictions Are Drowning Us in Dopamine (wsj.com)
How the Enlightenment Ends -- Kissinger on AI...
These 15 Billionaires Own America's News Media Companies (forbes.com)
The Myth of The "Energy Transition"
The Pandemic’s Hidden Toll Is Revealed in Excess Death Counts
The Physics and Hype of Hypersonic Weapons
(scientificamerican.com) --like so many other supposed "technological breakthroughs," the constraints of physics cannot be overcome with hype....
Mutation rate of COVID-19 virus is at least 50 percent higher than previously thought (phys.org)
More Than 80 Cultures Still Speak in Whistles: Dozens of traditional cultures use a whistled form of their native language for long-distance communication.
"The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse." Edmund Burke
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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