Dreams of Reform

[El Prezidente Kaboom]

For me, the flux capacitor of political philosophy is the realization that poverty is a latent threat to liberty. This point affirmatively bridges the gap between classic liberalism and modern social liberalism. Government should protect liberty, and economic freedom, in fact, precedes physical freedom. Maximum economic freedom is not possible without government. Now what is exactly government? I submit that government is something actually separate from the 'state,' and represented by those whose authority is legitimated by the direct consent of the governed, namely the elected officials who govern the state. The 'state' is actually the bureaucracy established by elected officials, through appointments and legislation. Now, the government and the 'state' effectively merge in the president and vice president, but they are the only officials in the entire bureaucracy directly elected.

For libertarian-socialism, the 'state' is the ultimate problem. The existence of a bureaucracy composed of unelected officials and workers is entirely problematic, whatever its intentions. Ultimately, it represents an illegitimate power source that is highly susceptible to corruption by private tyranny. The answer lay in democratizing the state bureaucracy. Now, I'm not suggesting we elect every official, but I believe in democratically-ran meritocratic public administration, with a mix of elected and indirectly elected bureaucratic leadership. I believe in empowering highly vetted, educated minds with the power to check vertical lines of authority. What this amounts to is democratizing the public workplace. Representatives of 'government' units ought to have the same power that all workers should have, the ability to call-out the tyranny or incompetence of higher ups.

For many, anarchism is synonymous with chaos. This limited view skips over the basic fact that as individuals, the human race is by nature anarchic. Anarchy is very much a part of who we are. Individuality is a fundamental wild-card variable that cannot always be accounted for, and rules are often subverted by ever superior loophole craftsman. Human organization shapes anarchism, often times with coercive instruments, but also with investments in equity and common good arrangements. Fundamentally speaking, human beings, by nature, live in an anarchic state. Human organization shapes this existence by providing individuals with the ability to choose order over chaos. The size and scope of public policy administration is vast and daunting. Democratizing the 'state' is a widely ambitious goal. And it requires more than just providing the lower levels of the bureaucracy with a vote in administrative matters and oversight authority of the higher levels. Indeed, it requires an expansion of the meritocracy to include not only government workers and administrators, but the public as well, and deeper levels of integration between federal, state, and local levels.

Example: Imagine consumer/industry, worker, and municipally owned banks filling out the pyramid of a Federal Reserve System. Think about this....we don't let environmental groups run the EPA, but we are okay with giving authority to private banking power in the Federal Reserve System? Yeah, it does not make a lot of sense. I propose a meritocratic environmental mini-Congress, to take on devolved authority in environmental matters from the current national Congress. States would receive population based, district-seated representation, candidates would have to pass proficiency tests, while the national Congress would retain veto power.