Over the past 100 years, we have seen a steady centralization of our governance system.

At the turn of the 20th Century, 80% of state and local taxes were collected at the local level. In 1929, state and local governments raised about $4.50 for every dollar of federal taxes, and there were virtually no dollars transferred from the federal government to lower levels. So, $100 of government revenue was distributed thusly:

Federal government: $18
State government: $16
Local government: $66

By 2007, local share of state and local government taxes was only 40%, and federal share of taxes grew to roughly equal to state and local. So, $100 of government revenue was distributed thusly:

Federal government: $50
State government: $30
Local government: $20

Spending is somewhat different than taxes, because the federal government transfers about 20% of its tax revenues to states, and states transfer about a third of their revenues to localities. Oh, and the federal government spends $1.40 for every dollar of taxes, despite the complaints of those nasty hobbitses.

Anyway, the point is that control of the government moved from over 600,000 local officials to about 8,000 state officials to 536 federal officials.

Centralization and scale are the enemies of good governance. The American system is supposed to be self-governance, where the people actively participate in the decisions that shape the commons, their communities, and their lives.

The problems of centralization and scale are clear: long OODA loops, the administrative state, one-size-fits-all legislation, lousy accounting, a corrupt financial system, no transparency, favoring big business over small, and a disconnect between the political class and the citizenry. As our system of self-governance has been supplanted by the procedural republic, problems have proliferated, becoming more acute and more dangerous.

So, what is the response of both parties to this seemingly intractable problem? They have chosen to further centralize power. To wit:

Since Congress cannot seem to get health care costs under control, they appoint a 15-person IPAB to establish prices and ration health care.

Since Congress cannot seem to get federal spending under control, they appoint a 12-member “Super Committee” to make tough decisions about the budget.

Since the President cannot seem to get things done through cabinet departments, he appoints “czars” who have the authority to drive his agenda through the federal bureaucracy.

Since Congress cannot seem to set up a financial system the keeps big banks and public companies from taking advantage of savers and individual investors, they create a Consumer Advisory Board, and give its director vast powers over financial firms.

These are but a few examples.

The good news is that we can fix our nation’s problems. How? Well, the first step is to reverse this trend toward centralization and scale. We have to stop concentrating power, and start dispersing it. Corruption and regulatory overreach are political pollution, and the solution to pollution is dilution.

And, believe it or not, voters in both parties support the idea of moving decision-making closer to the people. Republicans call this “federalism,” and Democrats call this “local control.”

The media tries to divide us, but we’re really together on the need to move money and decision-making closer to the people. The Ruling Elite don’t want this to happen, of course, so they try to convince us that we are enemies of each other. Don’t believe it.

Yes, we disagree on policy. But we agree on governance, we believe in self-governance, and it is the current governance system that is broken.

There is lots of room for disagreement and political fights. But those fights must be engaged at the local level, because they’re the only level at which we can come to consensus. The problems are literally unsolvable at the federal level.

Over the past few weeks, the Health Care Compact Alliance has been walking door-to-door talking to hard-core Democratic voters in a swing state. These are people who consistently vote in Democratic primaries. Our folks ask them, simply, would they support keeping the money in their state, and letting state officials handle health care regulations, rather than sending taxes to Washington DC and having federal bureaucrats decide? We have been getting 80-90% of these hard-core Democratic voters to sign postcards supporting the Health Care Compact, postcards that are then sent to their representatives.

The American people want to govern themselves. We want to argue with our neighbors over the issues that are important to our communities, not petition the king for a redress of grievances.

So, until we fix our governance system, the problems we face cannot be solved. But if we do fix it, if we devolve power from the federal government to state and local governments, the American people will rise to the occasion, resolve the challenges before us, and unleash our drive, creativity, and energy to restore our nation to health.

That is what we’re doing at the Alliance for Self-Governance, through our Health Care Compact, the Campaign for Primary Accountability (where we will work to defeat entrenched incumbents from both parties in roughly equal numbers), future interstate compacts, and changing the paradigm from Republican vs. Democrat to Ruling Elite vs. the Citizenry.

But no one can save our republic but us. The Ruling Elite has no incentive to change the governance.

After all, it is good to be the king.

L3