kuttaineh - June 7th, 2006
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06:10 pm
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The future outlook of federal | state government: NULL
I've been thinking a lot about the fictional world Isaac Asimov wrote about throughout the 20th C> It was composed of five geographic economic zones each filled with fairly distributed (Ref: Google Map of Puerto Rico) highly networked townships. Of course the big cities such as New York still existed but most people just live in their little town or village.
Everything is networked: So the idea is you don't need to commute. Travel is reserved to evident necessity and for pleasure. Imagine the majority of the population in your economic zone living in small towns each of which is built out to a human scale; everything from work to shopping to school, church, clubs and community center within walking distance. Each village has its kind of industrial commercial quarters intelligently mixed with its living sectors. Each {tribe, city, town, village, city-state} regardless of trade value is interconnected through a highly available global network; Most of each exists with their standard road, rail, and etc connections to one another as would be expected.
As you can imagine, in such a setup, local government would, more or less, be the major driving interest for the majority of the worlds' concerned citizens. Here is my addition to the vision: If most law, health, social service and utilities can be handled at the local tribe, village, township or city level then for what purpose, other than the maintenance of said network of roads and other transportation systems and for the build out, repair, improvement and extension of that underlying information network would a continuation of the federal, state or perhaps even global regional economic sector serve?
Sure you need a legislature to determine the laws of the land and a policy to maintain the order uniformly across any given region. Those responsibilities currently handled by the federal and state government can, for the greater part, be farmed out as a series of tasks for NGOs [Non Government Organizations]; To regulate and oversee these agencies, a "Greater Good" synod composed of elected members, out of each community body, can be established to keep in touch with others in the open network [publicly observed] synod. This synod would be answerable to their constituency to monitor and make sure no one community or industry does not profit by taking unfair advantage of their own or other communities: This is to make sure profit is not gained at the cost of polluting the environment or short changing generations of populations.
One thing and two people come to mind: 1) Congress 2) John Adams 3) Thomas Jefferson
Congress: Right now the federal government is spending much more money than it is taking in. The United States Government currently costs more to run and operate than it ever has throughout its entire history save for during the height of WWII under FDR.
John Adams: quoted for quipping, "One idle man is a waste, two is a law firm, any more than that and you've got a congress."
Thomas Jefferson: known for his belief that the federal government should be responsible for foreign relations i.e. trade negotiations, the upkeep of a military and the postal system and not much more beyond that.
Of course we don't live in an age that would be satisfied by such a simple solution.
What we do need are social philosophers -- a whole new generation of them, to speak up and publish their ideas and spread them around, so as to effect change and most importantly: inspire public discourse.
The networked world first described by Asimov is growing into its place. Are we prepared to meet and take advantage of it?
Current Location: work
Current Mood: artistic
Current Music: electrical things fueled mainly by coal
Tags: government, public affairs, state politics
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