This is an argument against large central governments.
If the system gets too large to effectively govern with understandable rules, then will be captured by special interests, which are the groups with the strongest incentives to create / understand these complex rules and use them to their advantage. This is called regulatory capture and the larger and more complex a system is, the more likely it will be captured.
This can be avoided by governing as close to the local level as possible (the subsidiary principle) so that you never have the complexity of governance grow to the point it gets captured.
Unfortunately strong central governments don't like their power being taken from them, and they are more powerful than any political organization within their territory, so in practice you have power move from local to national and rarely the other way around.
Central governance is, in some ways, a response to complexity. If you extend the "governing as close to the local level as possible" too far, you risk an unnuanced understanding because the local level can't be an expert on every system they interface with. For example, do you have the knowledge to accurately assess the risk when you take a flight? If you're like most people, you probably don't know enough about aircraft maintenance, or avionics, or pilot training etc. I know libertarians may disagree but don't think a mish-mash of localities helps in this case either, at least not in the short-to-medium term when you risk a lot of bad days before everyone agrees on a set of standards. This is exacerbated because of a lot of cognitive biases regarding how we perceive risk. Particularly with big systems with lots of complicated interfaces, the lowest level of effective governance may start looking an awful lot like a centralized government.
I would argue it could be better improved with fundamentally refocusing politicians attention. When half their time is spent campaigning, it obviously constrains their ability to craft policy.
If the system gets too large to effectively govern with understandable rules, then will be captured by special interests, which are the groups with the strongest incentives to create / understand these complex rules and use them to their advantage. This is called regulatory capture and the larger and more complex a system is, the more likely it will be captured.
This can be avoided by governing as close to the local level as possible (the subsidiary principle) so that you never have the complexity of governance grow to the point it gets captured.
Unfortunately strong central governments don't like their power being taken from them, and they are more powerful than any political organization within their territory, so in practice you have power move from local to national and rarely the other way around.
reply