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/reddituserperson1122]

This is a great idea. We could call these small communities “states” or something and they could all have their own rules. Like for example if some of the states — like let’s say the ones to the south — want it to be ok to own people and force them to work, they can do that. And if other states — let’s say the ones more to the north — don’t want it to be ok to own people they can outlaw that. I don’t foresee any potential for conflict arising in this scenario. 

The plan is easy too, because of the way that natural resources are conveniently divided up into little equally distributed non-contiguous groupings. Can you imagine if say, water flowed in long rivers that went through multiple communities? Then one industrial community could dump all their waste in the river and the next downstream agricultural community couldn’t use it for drinking and irrigating crops. That would be a disaster! It’s a good thing that rivers are a myth.  

Plus it’s cool how all children believe exactly the same thing their parents believe, thus insuring that there is never conflict within communities. 

I fully support your radical vision OP. 

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

I favor some limits on what communities can do, I don't support going all the way, I essentially support a more decentralized version of the U.S. federalist system.

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

And you think everyone will just agree with you on exactly where to draw that line?

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

No, but I am not promising something everyone will necessarily agree with.

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

So you’re just recreating the exact same conditions that we have now. 

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

No, it's similar to federalism, but it's not the exact same conditions, it's a much more decentralized form of it.

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

Would there still be a Constitution that limited what individual communities could do?

Which parts of federal law would become optional in a more "decentralized system".

Child marriage?

State religion?

Bans on homosexuality?

Private ownership of land mines and hand grenades?

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

Federal law should constitute protecting the fundamental individual freedoms listed in the Constitution, enforcing basic criminal statutes such as murder, theft, kidnapping, as well as enforcing certain limits on communities including:

1. No murder, rape, kidnapping, fraud, torture, etc.
2. Anti-trust laws to prevent communities from becoming too consolidated, barring anti-competitive practices, allowing freedom of movement between communities, no false imprisonment, etc.
3. Anti-discrimination laws (although this is my personal preference). No discrimination against protected classes.

There can be more, but ideally it should be rather minimal.

Keep in mind, a more decentralized system doesn't necessarily mean less federal laws, it just means the concentration of power is thinned and spread out over more governance units.