Competition & Decentralization

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The whole world is so greedy for bathtubs that it has lost the stability necessary to build them, or even turn off the tap. Nothing could be more salutary at this stage than a little healthy contempt for a plethora of material blessings.
— Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, March 1948

Since our consumer world has begun to outwardly head into the ditch in 2007, there as been much said, pontificated, argued and discussed about the reasons for our current muddling economy and direction for the future. Little however, has been articulated regarding the need for economic competition and decentralization, especially federal government decentralization.

Presidential candidate Rick Perry in his book Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington, indicates his focus on the national government, but seems to look at one of the trees but misses the centralization forest. This of course has been the Republican mantra for as long as I can remember as they, along with the Democrats, “progressively” centralize more and more power at the national level.

Agriculture, Education, Environment, Healthcare, Housing, Military, Social Security and Transportation are just a few of the centralized bureaucracies that drive the national agenda. With largesse, contrary to all the rhetoric to the contrary, and essentially by definition, begets a lack of competition.

Centralization however is really the way we humans choose to solve our community and cultural problems throughout recorded history. Since the Tower of Babel in the Old Testament until the passage of ObamaCare in the United States, to the Eurozone attempts to unify distinct nation states, into a financial precursor to another attempt to create the human Babylonian utopia, we believe we are significantly collectively smarter than we are individually.

Tags: Aldo Leopold, competition, decentralization, Natural Law, Collectivist Elitists, Laissez Faire Scoundrels, F A Hayek, Congress