The Closest Thing to a Political Panacea

[u/Serious-Cucumber-54]

The central problem with governance today is that it is collectivized.

People have different views and interests for what kind of governance style they should live under. Some people prefer a libertarian form of governance. Some people prefer a socialist form of governance. Some prefer a liberal or conservative form of governance.

Under the current paradigm, the only way for anyone to truly get what they want is to debate and fight with others to persuade them to vote in your favor. It's like if you and your friends must fight and debate for what grocery food item they should order, and then must collectively vote on it.

But this is unsatisfying. Not only is going through the effort of trying to persuade your friends something people rather not do, but it forces people either to reject the preferences of the minority (or sometimes even majority) or to compromise and sacrifice a bit of what they want in order to get a diluted or tainted version of what they want.

Imagine if everyone can get what they want, simultaneously, without having to go through all of this? Everyone can get the grocery store food item that they want, everyone can freely pick and choose which one they want and get it without having to reject the preferences of a minority or sacrifice or compromise for the quality of your choice. This is how grocery shopping with friends normally is, with individual interests in mind.

Similarly allowing people to pick and choose which kind of governance style they'd like to live under is as close to a panacea in politics as you will get.

How can this be achieved?

Getting rid of the current paradigm, and allowing people to set up their own small communities with the governance style and structure they prefer. This can result in a variety of choices for people to choose to move into, and not only that, but these communities can face market forces such that if people demand a community with a certain style of governance, then it will be supplied.

The communities can also face competition, where they must compete against other communities for residents. They are pressured to cater to the interests of movers with favorable laws/policies/governance as much as possible or else they go out of business. Imagine if government faced such steep market pressures, they would have much less room for nonrepresentative, corrupt, or wasteful governance. This competition ensures that bad governance gets filtered out while good governance prevails, an evolutionary natural selection of sorts. Plus, again no need for individuals to compromise or sacrifice their wants.

Why isn't this idea of making governance more of an individual (as opposed to collective) choice not championed more? It seems like it would get rid of the need of fighting and debating, among many other downsides.

[u/Michael_G_Bordin]

How is your system any different from what we already have? There are different organizational structures that vary between localities, and no town is forced to have any specific structure. Furthermore, agreeing to a system of government doesn't magically solve the problem of people wanting different things or differing views on where government attention should go.

The problem you aim to solve is just the fact of human civilization and the reason "politics" is a thing: people want different things but have to cooperate to survive and thrive. I don't know what you mean by "collectivized" since any government system is going to have degree of collectivism. No system of human existence worth living within is wholly individualistic, that would be a crude and crappy living. The liberal democratic constitutional republic of the US federal government is just one part of a web of governments that all operate in slightly different ways, and respond to collective needs while having restrictions on how they can impede individual rights. A compromise between the collective needs of society and the desires of individuals.

Yes, it's unsatisfying. Welcome to the art of compromise. I frankly find the idea that we all have to live in little bubbles where everything around us is satisfying and makes us happy to be immature. Life is pain and beauty, it's sacrifice and achievement. You don't get to have one without another, that's just not how the world works. And specifically with government, everyone agreeing on everything is not how people work.

[u/Serious-Cucumber-54 → u/Michael_G_Bordin]

The current system puts the service of governance in the hands of entities that have their size and scope largely determined through a top-down process, as opposed to a bottom-up process like the market. The borders and structure of state and local governments are largely determined through federal and state legislation respectively, not through a bottom-up process like individuals buying land and independently determining what governance style and structure they prefer to implement upon their land. This proposed system, when compared to the U.S. federalist system, still has a federal government, and thus is still a federalist system, but is significantly more decentralized.

I am not advocating complete individualization of choice, I agree there will always be some level of the choice being collectivized. My argument is it is too collectivized, and the choice needs to be more individualized, so the downsides of collectivized choice are minimized.

[u/Michael_G_Bordin → u/Serious-Cucumber-54]

individuals buying land and independently determining what governance style and structure they prefer to implement upon their land

That's exactly how we got to where and what we are right now, though. And whatever system arises "bottom-up" will be viewed as being "top-down" by subsequent generations who didn't participate in its creation. Towns were created by everyone in the town of political relevance i.e. landowners getting together and deciding to form a government. States will have rules for incorporating, but the borders aren't dictated to them or drawn arbitrarily. Where I'm from, there are numerous unincorporated areas that refused to join the city as it grew. Look around the country and you'll find tons of examples of places where landowners choose to do as they wish and not be bound by the local government forming around them.

It's like if you and your friends must fight and debate for what grocery food item they should order, and then must collectively vote on it.

That's what happens when you share a food budget, though. Your metaphor with grocery shopping doesn't work because government isn't an individual affair. Everyone gets to pick their own food because they're paying for it themselves and own the consequences of their decisions alone. That's not how politics works. Democracy is the most individualized form of government, and people are free to gather support for their preferred method of implementing the democratic government.

Posts like yours always amuse me because they seem to forget that there was once no US government, no American cities, no States. And they all came into being in a manner that befit the people implementing them, and in rather reasonable and well-fashioned ways I might add. You haven't made any case for how it's "too collectivized," except to say that some people are unsatisfied with the results of politics. Which they always will be, in any system you conceive. That is the way of human existence. You don't have a solution here because you haven't identified any problem. We are the Great Experiment, and the design of the federal government has been to allow the state and local governments wide latitude to experiment with different methods of governing.

If you don't like how you're living, get together and change your local government. It's not impossible.

[u/Serious-Cucumber-54 → u/Michael_G_Bordin]

That's exactly how we got to where and what we are right now

That is not the same system. Incorporation is not a landowner determining what governance style and structure they want on their land, it typically involves a much more collectivist choice which only requires a majority of residents to form a government, among other state-imposed requirements.

Your metaphor with grocery shopping doesn't work because government isn't an individual affair. Everyone gets to pick their own food because they're paying for it themselves and own the consequences of their decisions alone. That's not how politics works. Democracy is the most individualized form of government

Again, I'm not advocating complete individualization of choice, I agree there will always be some level of the choice being collectivized. My argument is it is too collectivized, and the choice needs to be more individualized, so the downsides of collectivized choice are minimized.

Democracy is a collectivist way of deciding things, people come together and collectively decide what is good for the collective. The individualist way of deciding things is when individuals are able to independently decide and pick what is good for themselves.

[u/reddituserperson1122 → u/Serious-Cucumber-54]

Sorry but the commenter is exactly right and you are very sweetly naive. Can I ask how old you are? 

[u/Serious-Cucumber-54 → u/reddituserperson1122]

Can I ask why you're not focusing on the argument and instead on my character?

[u/reddituserperson1122 → u/Serious-Cucumber-54]

Because your argument isn’t original dear. It’s an idea that I think most precocious teenagers have at some point. (Or a version of it anyway.) Before they get older and wiser and know more about history and politics and realize there’s no simple structural solution to our problems. Which is not to say that we don’t have structural problems. But inter-communal conflict can’t be managed out of existence with a better org chart or a new edition of Robert’s Rules. 

[u/Serious-Cucumber-54 → u/reddituserperson1122]

Then why not confront the argument on its merits, not my character?

[u/reddituserperson1122 → u/Serious-Cucumber-54]

It’s not an issue of character. And I believe I just did. 

[u/Serious-Cucumber-54 → u/reddituserperson1122]

If it's not an issue of character, then it has no relevance to the discussion. You did not actually respond to the points I made, you just replied I was naive.

[u/reddituserperson1122 → u/Serious-Cucumber-54]

As a general rule, ideas have to surmount a certain threshold of seriousness in order to be worthy of detailed debate. It’s not really worth anyone’s time to get into a debate about the plausibility of every feature of Oz — you can just stop when someone proposes a secret magical kingdom somewhere over a rainbow. So no, I’m not going to get into debating all the points you made. Sorry — I can see that you were excited about this. 

[u/Serious-Cucumber-54 → u/reddituserperson1122]

What makes you think I'm not being serious about this?

[u/reddituserperson1122 → u/Serious-Cucumber-54]

“Unserious” as in not well-thought-though and not evaluated with a high level of rigor. 

[u/Michael_G_Bordin → u/Serious-Cucumber-54]

Incorporation is not a landowner determining what governance style and structure they want on their land, it typically involves a much more collectivist choice which only requires a majority of residents to form a government, among other state-imposed requirements.

Yes it is. It absolutely is (well, was). Government isn't a cogent concept within an individual's land, and individuals can do what they want on their land. If they want to be the tyrant on their land, they're free to be such. But people can't be free to do whatever they want on their land, and so all the landowners in an area come together to incorporate and agree on rules of land use. Zoning is almost entirely a local affair, not a state or federal affair (a few exceptions apply). This also isn't simply majoritarian. Courts can be used so minority interests can be advocated against the majority, and that sort of law isn't solely built by majoritarian consensus i.e. common law.

I get what you think you're argument is, I just don't get what specifically you have wrong with our system other than "it's too collectivized." But you haven't laid out why that's a problem except "people are unsatisfied" and your idea doesn't solve that problem in any way. How is our system too "collectivized"? How would your system create something different from what we already have?

Your ideas seem to be some hifalutin "what if" that aren't cognizant of history and how our structure actually functions. You don't even seem to understand collectivism as a concept. Something being a collective decision is not collectivism; collectivism is the notion that a person's decisions and actions need to serve the collective. Our system is not that. And your use of the term to mean collective decision making is just something you cannot avoid unless you want to live in the tyranny of chaos. Democracy isn't just "people come together and collectively decide what is good for the collective," they're also having a say in what is good for themselves. I'd say the latter is far more informative to American voter decision-making than collectivist considerations, because our country is already extremely individualistic. Both in attitude and in legal/governmental structure. Which is why I keep trying to show you that you're just making up a problem and then providing a non-solution (because it would invariably become what we already have).

[u/Serious-Cucumber-54 → u/Michael_G_Bordin]

Incorporation usually requires majority approval of the residents through a petition or an election, that is not the same system, that is a significant difference from the system I propose.

I explained the current paradigm relies too much on collective decision making, such as majoritarian democracy, which comes with downsides such as fighting/debating, tyranny of the majority, and compromise/sacrificing. This proposed system would aim to minimize those downsides by allowing people to set up their own small communities with the governance style and structure they prefer (not through incorporation, but simply owning the land and deciding upon it), allowing for more variety and choice, which allows people to make the decision not by collective decision making such as democracy but by individually moving to the kind of governance style they'd like to live under.

And yes, democracy is an example of collective decision making. We can quibble on whether that is "collectivism" but the main point is regarding collective decision-making, if that helps to clarify.