a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment

Thinking about Power with Powers, an Analogy

Let's define a CitizenPowerUnit

  CPU = 100^(1/n) 

where

n -> how many governmental levels you have hopped up the chain

n equals 1 -> your local municipal government

This is obviously made up and bullshit, but it does reflect the argument that citizens get absolutely fucked as far as influence as you layer on more levels of government.

Bookchin: d e c e n t e r a l i z e

I've been reading Bookchin this week, which is kinda timely I guess? Basically he argues we move in the opposite direction: a confederacy of municipal governments. I think(? only haflway through my book) that he argues for a structure where policy would be set by municipal councils working in isolation, and then executed by a parallel structure of municipal administrative councils that would mesh together to form blocs as needed to achieve the scale necessary for execute various policies.

On the one hand... also utopian. On the other, it seems fairly in line with developments like crypto currency and open source development. Also kind a cyberpunk, which as we've covered earlier, is cool.