We do not need a "National Divorce!"
We do not need a "National Divorce!"
Let's rediscover the benefits of good old-fashioned federalism.
Our current political system is undermining progress because it violates many of the concepts within the Five Keys to Progress and How Progress Works. The current American political system:
Concentrates political power into the hands of very liberal Democrats and very conservative Republicans
Makes it very difficult for new parties to be formed and become competitive
Overcentralizes power into the hands of the federal government
Restricts the ability of local and state governments to experiment with different policies
Makes it very difficult to identify and implement policies that actually work.
Many Americans think that the situation has gotten so bad that we need a “National Divorce” (i.e. some sort of split up of the United States up to and including succession).
This is a really bad idea!
We need to come up with a better solution to enable Red America and Blue America to live in peace within our current borders. A far preferable solution would be to decentralize domestic policy (i.e. not foreign policy, the military, foreign trade and immigration) down to the state level wherever possible.
The following is an excerpt from my second book Promoting Progress: A Radical New Agenda to Create Abundance for All. You can order e-books at a discounted price at my website, or you can purchase full-price ebooks, paperback, or hardcovers on Amazon.
Other books in my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:
Dangers of Centralization
Today, the United States and Europe run the risk of undoing a significant amount of progress that came from their earlier decentralization of political power. This centralization of power undermines the ability of state, local governments and non-political institutions to experiment with differing policies and copy what works. Lower levels of local experimentation are undermining progress and upward mobility.
In both North America and Europe, there has been a relentless centralization of political power over the last 60 years. While nowhere near as threatening to progress as earlier agrarian regimes or modern totalitarian regimes, this centralization drastically reduces the diversity of policy-making options that are necessary to foster innovation.
While it is tempting to force the supposed “best” solution onto a large number of people, it is usually far better to allow a great deal of experimentation at the local level. When local governments implement different policies, this gives everyone the ability to assess the outcomes of those policies.
If the policy works well on the local level, then other localities will probably copy it. If the policy fails or causes significant negative side-effects, then other localities will avoid copying it. All that is needed is an open mind, clear metrics, transparency and a willingness to copy the successful policies.
Elites within centralized political institutions have strong personal, financial and ideological interests that bias their decisions. Even when they arrive at the best solution, the situation can change substantially over time, making the solution less than ideal at a later date.
Rapid technological innovation virtually guarantees that most decisions will become obsolete within a generation. But once a policy is enacted, bureaucratic and political forces make it very difficult to modify or eliminate obsolete policies.
Centralization Accentuates Partisan Conflict
An additional result of this relentless centralization over the last century has been ever-increasing partisan conflict in federal politics. In the Promoting Political Competition chapter I discussed the effects of our electoral laws on this partisan conflict. Here, I will focus on the problem of over-centralization.
Relentless, never-ending trench warfare between liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans dominates the federal level. Each party tries to use the federal government to impose the values of a political minority on the entire country. Neither party is successful enough to feel like they have won, but both have been successful enough to enrage the other side. Whereas various sub-national groups within America were once largely allowed to go their own way, now strong federal power makes that impossible.
Both parties know that they are engaged in a permanent zero-sum struggle to impose their will on the entire nation. It has become so commonplace that most people assume that this is the way it has always been. But this is actually a relatively new phenomenon. The overall distribution of governmental power in America was very different in the past.
Our Decentralized Past
Our current over-centralization is a radical departure from the first 150 years of American history. Until 1930, virtually all government took place on the local and state level. Outside of the military and the post office, the federal government played very little day-to-day role in people’s lives.
The American political system was based upon the concept of federalism. Most power resided with state and local governments, and it was expected that they would each experiment with different policies based upon local conditions. When a policy proved successful, it was quite likely that other neighboring districts and states would learn of the results and copy them. Gradually, what worked would spread from state to state and policies that were not perceived to work as well would not.
Reducing the Scope of Federal Government
I believe that the only way to enable the kind of decentralized experimentation that leads to progress is to radically reduce the scope of the federal government in domestic affairs. While this may seem like a radical change today, it is really just restoring what worked in the past.
The U.S. Constitution was supposed to create a fairly clear division between the powers of the states and the powers of the federal government. Article I, Section 8 clearly enumerates the powers of Congress. All other powers were then reserved to the state governments or the people themselves. State governments could delegate power to county and local governments at their discretion. This is effectively how the American government functioned until 1930.
Starting in the 1930s, and then accelerating since the 1960s, the federal government has gradually surpassed state governments in dozens of policy domains. The “necessary and proper” clause of the Constitution has been used to expand the power of the federal government far beyond its original intent. Through a combination of social legislation, aid to states, federal court rulings, mandates and regulations, the federal government now highly constrains the ability of state and local governments to experiment.
The Constitution of 1787 was specifically written to ensure the federal government had the power in external affairs. That dominance should continue, as there is no viable alternative.
However, in order to facilitate state-level policy experimentation, we should radically limit the power of the federal government in domestic affairs. In general, the powers of the federal government should be limited to external affairs or to policy domains that would be very difficult for state governments to administer.
More specifically the federal government should be more clearly enumerated and restricted to the following policy domains:
Military
Declaration of war
Foreign policy
Foreign intelligence
Foreign trade and customs
Immigration and naturalization
Federal courts and prisons
Security for federal installations and personnel
Enforcement of free trade between the states
Coinage/print money and service federal debt
Pensions, benefits, and health care for retirees (Social Security and Medicare) and federal employees
Management of federally-owned lands
Levy taxes to pay for federal spending
Federal aid to state or local governments with below-average per capita GDP or experiencing natural disasters. Such aid should not be contingent upon any change in state or local policies, except to insist that they measure results and transparently publish outcomes.
We should also specifically enumerate a few powers that should remain shared by both the federal and state governments:
Protection from terrorism, violent political movements, and organized crime
Science, research, and technological innovation.
My guess is that there are other lesser powers that it would make sense to leave on the federal level, but this list is a good starting point. The general principle should be that, if a policy domain is domestic in nature and state governments can realistically administer it, they should do so exclusively. This list still encompasses a vast swath of government power, so it will not eliminate the federal government.
All other powers should be transferred to the states, who can delegate those powers to local governments as they choose. Any federal laws, regulations and executive orders in those domains would be null and void unless confirmed by the majority of each state legislature. All federal departments and agencies in other areas, except in the domains listed above, would be transferred to the individual states. State legislatures would have the option of adopting federal policy as their own or creating their own policies.
If federal powers were restricted to these policy domains, this would be a vast shift of political power from the federal government to state governments. Policies in the domains of education, energy, commerce, labor, social welfare, housing, agriculture, drugs, art, urban development, transportation and the environment would all be shifted to the state governments.
Stay tuned for more excerpts!
The above was an excerpt from my second book Promoting Progress: A Radical New Agenda to Create Abundance for All. You can order e-books at a discounted price at my website, or you can purchase full-price ebooks, paperback, or hardcovers on Amazon.
Other books in my “From Poverty to Progress” book series: