The news is dead. There is no news because the amount of information exceeds the abilities of journalists. Paradigms, or applicable models of reality, change too rapidly for mass market reporters. The fundamental obstacle is that elite Americans, including journalists, have been educated in twentieth century modernism, which emphasizes the importance of scale to economic progress; the morality of displacement of violence to bureaucratic systems (as in socialists' belief that because socialist violence is the work of the state it is non-violent); and the inability of university-trained government experts to understand economic change. Thus, reporters are deferential toward advocates of scale, bureaucracy and rituals of expertise.
Most crucially, journalists cannot or refuse to grasp the causes of the chief phenomena that characterize today's world: inflation; declining real wages; transfer of wealth from productive to elite sectors such as in the "bailout"; and repeated financial and economic scandals such as Enron. Arguably the autism of the American news media is linked to its owners' economic interests, but such interests depend on the nexus of primitive twentieth century ideology with news.
The American news media lives in 1969.
This poses a problem for democratic government, which is impossible on a large scale without mass media. The way American government was re-organized in the early twentieth century coincided with Progressivism and modernism. A post-modern government needs to decentralize. This would reduce the cognitive burden on journalists as well as on government experts. It would imply state sovereignty. The commitment to traditionalism, that is, the ideology of economic conservatism, constrains this progression and should be jettisoned. Current institutions, which were libertarian in the 18th and early nineteenth centuries became increasingly non-libertarian beginning with the Dred Scott decision in the mid 19th decision as the federal government intruded upon the states. In turn, large scale industry could legitimately exploit economies of scale but also gain government subsidy. The gains from laissez-faire were so large that they overwhelmed even the corruption, waste and incompetence associated with the construction of the railroads, the development of large-scale commercial banking, oil company rights of way and Wall Street. But as subsidies to scale proceed, the scope of laissez-faire diminishes, and it is small enough today that innovation has stalled except in specialized technological areas.
Technology and political change go together. American democracy was a development of Medieval decentralization, and decentralization occurred because of the fall of Rome twelve hundred years earlier. Medieval decentralization led to innovation that eventually overcame the loss in economies of scale associated with the end of the Roman slave system. The medieval period was far more innovative than was Rome. By 1300 or so the economic growth from the three field crop system and other agricultural innovation had caused the western Europeans to exceed the economic level of Rome, and in turn led to the invention of the printing press and the discovery of America. As the economy led to increasing education and awareness of rights, kings began to displace local sovereigns in part by energizing the people against local tyranny. The increasing centralization and scale of society led to expansion of markets and economies of scale.
Thus, two forces coincided: the creation of monarchy in the late Middle Ages reflected the centralizing trend while the long pattern resulting from the fall of Rome reflected the decentralizing trend. The Founding Fathers, who were able to establish the United States in a "state of nature" observed the two patterns and arrived at the Federalist system, which involved a balance of scale and decentralization. But republican processes had to permit changing the balance, and subsequent patterns led to increasing centralization well past the point of diminishing returns.
By the late nineteenth century economies of scale still contributed to efficiency but also to claims for government subsidy. In the 1500s the Elizabethan Statutes of Artificers had limited monopoly and this led to limits on labor unions in America, but utilitarian claims as to the advantages of economies of scale led to direct subsidies to business, overcoming the common law. Indeed, privileges for large scale enterprise had been the theory of Mercantilists, Federalists and Whigs. Scale has both positives and negatives with respect to economic change. The positives tend to be shorter term and involve lower cost per unit. The negatives tend to be longer term and involve increased coordination and communication costs and limits on innovation. Subsidization of large scale has short term advantages but long term costs. In today's world communication costs have declined because of technology, but have not been eliminated. In fact, technology may in some ways increase the onus on communication and interpersonal skill. There is no known optimal size of a business that can be theoretically derived, but increasing scale is not by definition increasing efficiency. Rather, the optimal scale can be derived by empirical observation over decades, but where society is set up to subsidize large scale, empirical observation may involve circular logic. The larger the firm the greater the subsidization, so apparently the more efficient. Objective measures like the performance of real hourly wage suggests where the economy is going in general. Gross domestic product does not because it includes considerable waste and economic dislocation. Real hourly wage is the best indicator of how well Americans are faring. According to it, the American economy has not been faring well for nearly 40 years.
Technology affects economic change but also the intellectual process by which social debate occurs. Technological change has permitted increasing decentralization at limited or no scale costs. Newspapers were necessary because the cost of acquiring information could be spread over many readers. Today, the World Wide Web permits the dissemination across a billion readers without the need for a single source. The problem remains, though, as to divisibility, paying the source of information. Much information can be acquired by local citizens, possibly for free. The problem arises with respect to centralized political power and acquisition of difficult-to- obtain information, such as war news or news arising from monitoring of legislative processes. How, for instance, can the president provide information to the Web?
It would seem that basic citizenship skills need to be updated. Acquisition of information directly from government Websites (e.g., the White House Website) ought to be a form of good citizenship in a Web-dominated world. In turn, bloggers ought to begin to consider obtaining information from public source material. Pressure should be brought to bear on political office holders to hold open press conferences via the Web, open to the public, that is. Public Q&A ought to replace the press conference.
Obtaining on-the-spot news such as concerning crimes and earthquakes can be obtained by bloggers who live near events and can feed to centralized websites. People interested in crime news ought to be able to turn to specialized blogs that rely on independent, local sources. Reporters need not work for a single newspaper but rather could sell stories to pay-based websites. The model of employee-employer can be converted into one of subcontractor. This already exists with respect to the Paparazzi. Reporters who develop relationships with police officials can sell information to commercial websites and blogs. Pricing might facilitate blogger participation in various reporters' news services.
Organization theorists have long considered that market forces might cause the importance and scale of organizations to diminish. Movie companies, for instance, assemble a team of labor that collaborates on a specific film and then disperses. News could follow this model. Assemble a group to report on a specific topic and then disassemble it. Websites specialized in a given form of news, for instance, war news, could put together a team.
With respect to policy issues, it seems evident that newspapers and television news that cater to general audiences are incapable of understanding specialized issues sufficiently to know what is important. Rather, industry- and interest- based organizations are better at disseminating news to their constituents. For example, the National Rifle Association provides excellent updates on anti-Second Amendment legislative proposals. Likewise, organizations that specialize, such as Citizens Against Government Waste, English First, the Manhattan Institute, the Milton Friedman Foundation (which specializes in education issues) and the like can provide ongoing feeds concerning their issues. Reporters can contract with organizations to provide reporting services to their newsletters.
Syndicalism is the idea that government ought to reflect producer interests. Thus, a syndicalist congress would include representatives of farmers, manufacturing, service and similar kinds of interests. William Appleman Williams in his Contours of American History argues that this was the idea that the last Progressive, Herbert Hoover, advocated.
Syndicalism can be applied to news and other excessively centralized organizations. There is no reason, given today's technology, that a single organization ought to provide information about (a) the economy (b) hurricanes (c) war (d) terrorism (e) political debate (f) science and so on. The information burden is too great and this results in the debate becoming too stupid.
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Showing posts with label state sovereignty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label state sovereignty. Show all posts
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Monday, June 8, 2009
De Jouvenal on State Sovereignty
Decentralization is a managerial tool that has proven to be essential to conglomerates and other large organizations. With respect to political entities, it is essential. The managerial state, by which I mean the state that has committed to managing the delivery of services, is governed by the same principles that govern any other organization. The reason for decentralization is the difficulty in understanding problems. The large size of the federal government renders decision making difficult. Smaller size better reflects preferences and tastes. Finding a set of policies that matches people's preferences is exponentially more difficult when larger numbers of people are involved.
De Jouvenal notes that leaders of democratic-authoritarian states, like the United States, dread decentralization. Note that he argues that democracies are by their own nature authoritarian because the unfettered "national will" dispenses with law and views any intermediary unit--the family, firms, unions, hospitals, churches--as subject to its control. The transition from monarchy to democracy changes the historic role of law from that of guide to action and protector of rights to that of expression of the will of power as reflected in the sovereign will of the monarch-turned-legislature. In the United States that transition occurred from 1860 to 1935 and may be called Progressivism.
De Jouvenal writes (p. 286, On Power):
"Every Power is sure to attack centrifugal tendencies. But the behaviour of democratic Power offers in this respect some peculiar features of a striking kind. It claims its mission to be that of liberating men from the constraints put on him by the old Power, which was the more or less direct descendant of conquest. But that did not stop the Convention from guillotining the Federalists, the English Parliament from wiping out, in some of the bloodiest repressions of history, the separatist nationalism in Ireland, or the government in Washington from launching a war such as Europe had never seen to crush the attempt of the Southern States to form themselves into a separate unity. Another instance would be the action of the Spanish Republic in 1934 in opposing by force the movement to Catalan independence.
"This hostility to the formation of smaller communities is inconsistent with the claim to have inaugurated government of the people by itself, for clearly a government answers more closely to that description in smaller communities than in large. Only in smaller communities can the citizens chose their rulers directly from men whom they know personally. Only in them can justification be found for the encomium pronounced by Montesquieu:
"'The people is well fitted to choose...The people knows well whether a man has often seen active service and what successes he has won: therefore it is well equipped to choose a general. It knows whether a judge attends to his duties; whether most people leave his court satisfied; whether or not he is corrupt; therein is knowledge sufficient for it to elect a praetor. It has been impressed by the magnificence or wealth of a certain citizen; this qualifies it to choose an aedile. These are all facts which make a public square a better informed place than the palace of a king.'
"A further requirement is that there should be a public square or its equivalent, and that the choice of administrators should take place at the municipal level.
"The desire to secure the fullest measure of popular sovereignty possible should logically lead to the same principles being followed in the formation of the higher authorities. At the provincial level the population is already too large and too scattered to be effectively assembled, so that each candidate for a place may be known personally to everyone. For that reason the choice and control of regional administrators should be the work of the representatives of the municipalities. And, for the same reason, the choice and control of national administrators should be the work of representatives of the region.
"A system of this kind would assuredly be best fitted to embody popular sovereignty, especially if the representatives were held in check by imperative mandates, and were liable at any moment to be recalled by their constituents, even as the representatives attending at the Dutch States-General could be recalled by their provinces and the representatives at the States-Regional by their townships.
"But the new men whom the popular voice has made masters of the imperium have never shown any inclination to a regime of that kind. It was distasteful to them, as the heirs of the monarchical authority, to fritter away their estate on subordinating themselves. On the contrary, strong in strength of a new legitimacy, their one aim was to increase it. Against the federalist conception Sieyes was their mouthpiece:
"'A general administration which, starting from a common centre, will reach uniformly to the remotest parts of the Empire--a body of laws which, though its elements are provided by the body of citizens, takes bodily form at as distant a level as that of the National Assembly, to whom alone it belongs to interpret the general wish, that wish which thereafter falls with all the weight of an irresistible force on those very wills which have joined in the formation of it.'"
De Jouvenal notes that leaders of democratic-authoritarian states, like the United States, dread decentralization. Note that he argues that democracies are by their own nature authoritarian because the unfettered "national will" dispenses with law and views any intermediary unit--the family, firms, unions, hospitals, churches--as subject to its control. The transition from monarchy to democracy changes the historic role of law from that of guide to action and protector of rights to that of expression of the will of power as reflected in the sovereign will of the monarch-turned-legislature. In the United States that transition occurred from 1860 to 1935 and may be called Progressivism.
De Jouvenal writes (p. 286, On Power):
"Every Power is sure to attack centrifugal tendencies. But the behaviour of democratic Power offers in this respect some peculiar features of a striking kind. It claims its mission to be that of liberating men from the constraints put on him by the old Power, which was the more or less direct descendant of conquest. But that did not stop the Convention from guillotining the Federalists, the English Parliament from wiping out, in some of the bloodiest repressions of history, the separatist nationalism in Ireland, or the government in Washington from launching a war such as Europe had never seen to crush the attempt of the Southern States to form themselves into a separate unity. Another instance would be the action of the Spanish Republic in 1934 in opposing by force the movement to Catalan independence.
"This hostility to the formation of smaller communities is inconsistent with the claim to have inaugurated government of the people by itself, for clearly a government answers more closely to that description in smaller communities than in large. Only in smaller communities can the citizens chose their rulers directly from men whom they know personally. Only in them can justification be found for the encomium pronounced by Montesquieu:
"'The people is well fitted to choose...The people knows well whether a man has often seen active service and what successes he has won: therefore it is well equipped to choose a general. It knows whether a judge attends to his duties; whether most people leave his court satisfied; whether or not he is corrupt; therein is knowledge sufficient for it to elect a praetor. It has been impressed by the magnificence or wealth of a certain citizen; this qualifies it to choose an aedile. These are all facts which make a public square a better informed place than the palace of a king.'
"A further requirement is that there should be a public square or its equivalent, and that the choice of administrators should take place at the municipal level.
"The desire to secure the fullest measure of popular sovereignty possible should logically lead to the same principles being followed in the formation of the higher authorities. At the provincial level the population is already too large and too scattered to be effectively assembled, so that each candidate for a place may be known personally to everyone. For that reason the choice and control of regional administrators should be the work of the representatives of the municipalities. And, for the same reason, the choice and control of national administrators should be the work of representatives of the region.
"A system of this kind would assuredly be best fitted to embody popular sovereignty, especially if the representatives were held in check by imperative mandates, and were liable at any moment to be recalled by their constituents, even as the representatives attending at the Dutch States-General could be recalled by their provinces and the representatives at the States-Regional by their townships.
"But the new men whom the popular voice has made masters of the imperium have never shown any inclination to a regime of that kind. It was distasteful to them, as the heirs of the monarchical authority, to fritter away their estate on subordinating themselves. On the contrary, strong in strength of a new legitimacy, their one aim was to increase it. Against the federalist conception Sieyes was their mouthpiece:
"'A general administration which, starting from a common centre, will reach uniformly to the remotest parts of the Empire--a body of laws which, though its elements are provided by the body of citizens, takes bodily form at as distant a level as that of the National Assembly, to whom alone it belongs to interpret the general wish, that wish which thereafter falls with all the weight of an irresistible force on those very wills which have joined in the formation of it.'"
Friday, April 17, 2009
Letter to Geraldo Rivera Re Gov. Rick Perry's Call for State Sovereignty
Dear Mr. Rivera: I chanced to see your appearance on the O'Reilly Factor while at a friend's house. I was disappointed in your reaction to Gov. Rick Perry's position on state sovereignty and I also disagree with you about Mayor Bloomberg, on whose campaign I worked in 2001 and 2005. In particular, you resorted to name calling, saying that Perry had resorted to a "fringe" position.
The question of centralization and decentralization ought to be placed in the context not only of American political debate but also of the development of managerial knowledge. The trend toward centralization began with William Jennings Bryan's candidacy, or perhaps with Abraham Lincoln, was carried forward during the Wilson admininstration, amplified during the FD Roosevelt administration and amplified further since the 1960s. By the 1920s managers of large businesses realized that decentralization is a more efffective managerial strategy than centralization. The fact that Republicans like T Roosevelt and Democrats like FDR pushed for centralization at the very time that leading managers like Alfred Sloan were recognizing the advantages of decentralization was a function of fallacies of the Progressive and New Deal ideology. We know that centralization is wrong because conglomerates that are well run have almost all resorted to decentralization. The federal government, where mismanagement is the rule, has insisted on centralization because of an awkward political inheritance that equates decentralization with racism. Your reference to this legacy was a sorry non-sequitor.
The tragic results of the centralizing strategic error that occurred in the 20th century have been manifold. They range from a bloated, ineffective federal government, to inflation due to the Federal Reserve Bank, to failed public benefit plans like Social Security and Medicare. I do not think it is "fringe" or "extreme" to judge that the increase in Social Security benefits in the early 1970s was ill considered and harmful to subsequent generations. It resulted from incompetent political decision making processes (i.e., overly centralized democracy resulting in transfer from later to earlier generations) and was harmful to future generations of an entire nation rather than of a single state. In contrast, the depredations on inner cities caused by urban renewal in the postwar era was more localized because it occurred on a state by state basis. Had Robert Moses taken his wrecking ball to the entire nation, the entire nation would have gone bankrupt in the 1970s instead of just New York City.
I don't expect you to be familiar with the range of managerial literature that emphasizes the benefits of decentralization, but such an idea is very much within the tradition of pragmatism. Sadly, the majority "consensus" of Democrats and Republicans that has emphasized a rigid and ill considered policy of centralization and reduction in state power over many decades might be better considered to be an "extremist" or "fringe" viewpoint. Majorities have been wrong many times, and this is one of them. In any case, calling people who disagree with you names like "extremists" is not a sign of clear thinking. It is a tactic in which the centralizers have long engaged, at least since Theodore Roosevelt. This sort of behavior might silence opponents, but it does a bad job of uncovering the facts.
I would add that your love of Mayor Michael Bloomberg is also ill considered. His association with the Independence Party from whom he recruited hapless "volunteers"; his failure to cut or improve New York City's government; his failure to attract new business to New York when times were good on Wall Street; his failure to reform the corrupt construction codes; and his indifference to the plight of small business people in New York, whom he has harrassed in a variety of ways, speak to a second or third rate mayor, not one to extol.
Sincerely
Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.
The question of centralization and decentralization ought to be placed in the context not only of American political debate but also of the development of managerial knowledge. The trend toward centralization began with William Jennings Bryan's candidacy, or perhaps with Abraham Lincoln, was carried forward during the Wilson admininstration, amplified during the FD Roosevelt administration and amplified further since the 1960s. By the 1920s managers of large businesses realized that decentralization is a more efffective managerial strategy than centralization. The fact that Republicans like T Roosevelt and Democrats like FDR pushed for centralization at the very time that leading managers like Alfred Sloan were recognizing the advantages of decentralization was a function of fallacies of the Progressive and New Deal ideology. We know that centralization is wrong because conglomerates that are well run have almost all resorted to decentralization. The federal government, where mismanagement is the rule, has insisted on centralization because of an awkward political inheritance that equates decentralization with racism. Your reference to this legacy was a sorry non-sequitor.
The tragic results of the centralizing strategic error that occurred in the 20th century have been manifold. They range from a bloated, ineffective federal government, to inflation due to the Federal Reserve Bank, to failed public benefit plans like Social Security and Medicare. I do not think it is "fringe" or "extreme" to judge that the increase in Social Security benefits in the early 1970s was ill considered and harmful to subsequent generations. It resulted from incompetent political decision making processes (i.e., overly centralized democracy resulting in transfer from later to earlier generations) and was harmful to future generations of an entire nation rather than of a single state. In contrast, the depredations on inner cities caused by urban renewal in the postwar era was more localized because it occurred on a state by state basis. Had Robert Moses taken his wrecking ball to the entire nation, the entire nation would have gone bankrupt in the 1970s instead of just New York City.
I don't expect you to be familiar with the range of managerial literature that emphasizes the benefits of decentralization, but such an idea is very much within the tradition of pragmatism. Sadly, the majority "consensus" of Democrats and Republicans that has emphasized a rigid and ill considered policy of centralization and reduction in state power over many decades might be better considered to be an "extremist" or "fringe" viewpoint. Majorities have been wrong many times, and this is one of them. In any case, calling people who disagree with you names like "extremists" is not a sign of clear thinking. It is a tactic in which the centralizers have long engaged, at least since Theodore Roosevelt. This sort of behavior might silence opponents, but it does a bad job of uncovering the facts.
I would add that your love of Mayor Michael Bloomberg is also ill considered. His association with the Independence Party from whom he recruited hapless "volunteers"; his failure to cut or improve New York City's government; his failure to attract new business to New York when times were good on Wall Street; his failure to reform the corrupt construction codes; and his indifference to the plight of small business people in New York, whom he has harrassed in a variety of ways, speak to a second or third rate mayor, not one to extol.
Sincerely
Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.
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