Reinventing Government: A Wildly Idealistic Proposal

I'm a big fan of Dave Pollard's How to Save the World blog/website, and I strongly recommend reading it. He blends economic and knowledge management expertise with philosophy and environmental issues. I believe he has a very integral perspective, even though I don't 100% agree with everything he says. Check out his most recent post:


Here’s a wacky idea: How about making government a model for natural, responsible, community-based sustainable enterprise? Yes, of course, government is currently bureaucratic, unresponsive, and inefficient. And it’s not especially effective either.

What if we were to reinvent government in a way that would work?

The first thing we would have to do is completely decentralize it. People would self-select themselves into physically contiguous communities of, say, 150-1000 people. This would be the only level of government, and the only authority able to collect money from its members, and it would have the authority to do so in any of a variety of equitable ways, drawing from a set of models predetermined by a representative assembly of people from all communities. It would also have the responsibility to provide all essential services and (if it so chose) some optional additional services for the community members (the lists of which, and standards for which, would also be set by the representative assembly). It would have the option, for each service, of sourcing each service it provided from within the community, or of jointly sourcing the service with adjacent communities from suppliers within that group of communities. So, for example, a community might have its own group of resident family doctors, teachers, its own energy supply co-op, local food co-op, building and road maintenance co-op and community centre, but might jointly contract with neighbouring communities for hospital, long-term care, university, water supply, communications and other services that cannot be effectively provided in every community.

All essential services: food, water, home construction, roads, energy, health care, education, social services, communications, resource stewardship and environmental protection, would be collectively owned, managed and regulated by the community on a not-for-profit basis. People (other than unpaid volunteers) providing these services would have to live in the community or, in the case of jointly sourced services, live in one of the communities contracting jointly for the services.

This is a self-governance model. It precludes the need for national, state and regional governments. It is a model that is based on networks and connection, not hierarchy and power.

Such a model poses several challenges:
It would take practice to make it work. We would have to learn how to participate in the democratic and decision-making processes again. We would have to learn to trust each other. We would have to learn how to build genuine consensus. There are some good examples for this, but it would require a great deal of patience and energy. I think it would be worth it.
It would require a mechanism to deal with people who refuse to comply with the decisions of the community. Consensus is a process that requires essential unanimity, rather than the power-brokering and coercion that occurs in 'voting' systems. And there's someone in every crowd who refuses to work for genuine consensus. A graceful way to give these people space to self-select themselves out of the community would be needed. Examples for this also exist.
It would require the abolition of the concepts of private property and 'ownership' of land, replaced with a collective stewardship model. The current model of acquisition of property encourages personal greed and works against the interests of the collective community. Some sort of transitional grandfathering would be needed (perhaps until the death of current property owners or 25 years, whichever comes first, after which title transfers to the community). Once property belongs to no one, it can be stewarded in the interest of the entire community.
It would require a mechanism to allow people to move easily until they discover a community that works for them. Our current communities are designed for the convenience of the development industry and other corporate interests, not for the coming-together of people with like minds and shared values. It would take at least a generation for communities to re-form around such common interest, and in the interim people need to be able to move easily and inexpensively to communities to discover those they were meant to live with.
It would require a mechanism to address inequity of income within and between communities. I have written before about a tax on 'bads' (pollution, waste and use of non-renewable resources) instead of goods, and a tax on excessive wealth (beyond a certain threshold). These taxes could be used both for environmental remediation and for redistribution of wealth.
It would require a mechanism to facilitate trade in non-essential goods and services between communities. Beyond the provision of essential services and subject to the taxes on 'bads' and excessive wealth, the market should determine what gets produced and distributed to those who want it. But two of those 'bads' are long-distance transportation (which consumes large amounts of non-renewable resources) and (in the case of goods that can reasonably be produced locally) importation (which deprives the local economy of jobs by exploiting a distorted and unequal playing field). So some kind of oversight board would need to monitor and regulate inter-community and international trade.
So there is still a need for a national body to enforce inter-community regulations and to collect and invest the tax on 'bads' and redistribute the tax on excessive wealth. But it would not be a political, law-making organization. As long as we agreed to abide by certain sustainable principles (by which many indigenous peoples have lived for millennia), principles of responsibility, equity and stewardship, we should not need any new laws or regulations once the regime is in place.

Some will argue this is just a re-invention of communism. But this model is, in fact, much closer to anarchism than any other -ism. No one likes big, impersonal, bureaucratic government removed from the problems it promulgates laws for, and largely irresponsible and unresponsive to those who it supposedly serves. This model provides for as little government as is needed for a healthy, sustainable world, but no less. And as much as possible, this little government is as close to the people as possible, so those making the decisions cannot escape their consequences by flying to a distant capital city.

I don't really think it's possible to move from where we are now to this model, though it's fun to ponder. I'm not even sure that model intentional communities that proved how well this model worked would be allowed to secede from existing levels of hierarchical government oversight and go their own collective, networked way.

But just maybe this model might work in the society that remains after civilization's fall. At that point, there will be no government to replace and do battle with. The survivors will be much fewer than we have to contend with today, with much less squabbling over land and other resources made scarce by human overpopulation and wastefulness. They will be looking for a better way to live. This might give them some good ideas how to start.