Thank you Evolved Psyché for this long and detailed series on the towns of the 16th-19th century Germany. A most excellent lesson for me.
One aspect of local governance that is now pervasive in Europe is the proclaimed illegitimacy of the rule by the rich or, more softly said, the hostility to wealthy individuals being mayors, or presidents of counties and regions. It is overtly said that they would run the community in their favour and against the good of the citizenry. If a local government shows hostility to them, it is praised as being virtuous, fighting for the people. Thus the factory owners and managers, the prominent business owners, the large farmers/landowners, the most successful professionals are effectively barred from local elected office and must regularly confront "populists" that attack them for easy wins.
The consequences are simple. The local elite is separated from the local government and the community is permanently broken. The local elite is incited to stay apart and associate with the local elite of other towns or of the large cities. Staying apart has evolved into not social patterns where the elite does not see ordinary people most days. Then in good times the elite is not incited to invest in the local community; in bad times the elite has no qualms about laying people off or permanently closing down a business. This mindset has set and has deep roots by now. Most people and local elite members see the deleterious consequences but blame each other with no end in sight.
Hi Archangel. Haven't heard from you in a while. That's a very interesting report from the social trenches of Europe. Thank you. I can understand how such an attitude could emerge organically, but I can't help wondering if it may have been helped along by some set of interests, given the outcome that you describe. In either case, populism is a mightily contested signifier these days. I'm doing my best to channel it into what I believe would be more constructive directions. No doubt, that's the managerial class social engineer in me. Still, I think there's value in recovering the history of all these lost populist and pluralist traditions. In that regard, happy to hear you found the Walker series of value. A new, even more ambiguous series about to begin. Thanks for your contribution to the comments.
I wonder if local governments could amend electoral requirements to residents of X number of years only (ideally becoming a lifelong requirement eventually) to achieve the same effect.
I've appreciated this series; it's been well-written, and I'd never learned anything about the towns/cities of the old German Confederation before. Thanks for writing it.
In China (some say this has been changing in recent years with Xi's centralization push, but it's unclear to me in exactly what ways it has been changing, and anyway, there appears to be a large amount of at least somewhat successful pushback to these changes, especially since the COVID Event's silly policy directives), local governments account for two-thirds of all government spending, with regions being the second highest and the national government being the smallest; this is the inverse of what we have in the USA. Crucially, the money is also raised at that level by them; it's theirs. This makes them the primary actors of fiscal policy.
Local governments there wield significant influence (sometimes near complete control) over parts of state-owned companies within their areas, giving them even further economic prerogatives (since it even includes large state banks, this extends, to a point, to monetary policy as well).
They will even engage in acts of local trade protectionism against all outside the city, so even the rest of China. This is far closer to how the old American Republic used to be for economic policy than contemporary America is. And since economic policy is the biggest and most important (for most people) sphere of public policy, well... that says something.
Your reference to the horizontal cross-pollination of "elites" is important, and I dare say a big "just don't do it" for any system that hopes to be genuinely virtuous and long-term effective.
However, your dismissal of democracy may be premature; if the world moves in a better direction, there will be different systems, some democratic ones may work. The Chinese model, in a way, also, counterintuitively, provides evidence in support of the idea that democracy can work. The local parties will make up a sizable share of the population, maybe 10% or so. Typically, over half don't have degrees; many of those that do have what we in the West would dismiss as vocational degrees (and I'm not counting the "Party School" supposed correspondence courses "degrees" many have, lol). It may be tempting to think that it's this small cadre within the local parties wielding effective total control, but that doesn't seem quite true, and it's not just that various sectors of membership are pushing for the interests of their respective societal sectors; they have legit study groups, people learn, read, and debate, and many within these parties will occasionally win debates and even rewrite the details of policy. So, I'm not sure discursiveness can be written off, or that no "shopkeeper or merchant" can "out-talk or out-conceptualize the verbally dexterous agents."
In Massachusetts in the 1980s, we had a governor (who I actually believe to be a morally decent man) who was fully elite-credentialed. He oversaw the design of a health care price control system that was very poorly designed and failed. I was reading about a guy in China, an electrician, who similarly oversaw the design of a healthcare price control system for his city and got the impression that he 1) had spent more time studying the policy area than our governor, 2) knew more about it, and 3) was likely just inherently more intelligent than our governor.
So, well, I don't know, the world's complicated...
A writer on Substack is very knowledgeable about the Chinese system of government (he may be a communist) and has a lot of evidence that their system of government is more representative (Democratic) than those of the US or UK. Apparently, China has a robust system of common law, where ideas of the common people can, from the ground up, essentially become law.
1) there's a lot of differences between Washington and Xi; and not just the fact the fact that amongst other things, Washington actually, in real reality on Earth that actually happened, did cross the Delaware (along with a large number of other badass actions over many years) and -- despite there being significant nuances regarding potential constraints against him doing it -- really did choose to relinquish power in a manner that if you dive past layers of often contradicting bullshit suggests that he really did put the Vision, which despite its shortcomings really was a noble one, above himself. (yes, he had many shortcomings, but much of the commonly known about shortcomings are B.S. and the common criticisms of detractors don;t even usually mention his real short comings and in fact even tell the favorably deceitful version of him regarding those in a way that makes ya wonder)
2) this downplays CPC corruption by a large degree. (although, in a way, much of thier corruption is of the sort the USA used to have -- city level, more easily noticeable -- which the USA seemingly traded for a more behind the scenes and sort of "out of sight out of mind" corruption that is actually far more damaging and pernicious)
3) The old American Republic could have carried on if not for naivety and un-watchfulness on behalf the population (and much more than that, but thats a whole writing) who allowed the amazing lessons and -- mostly lost to time (buried on purpose, I suspect) -- intellectual output of the 19th and early 20th centuries to be cold forgotten. But absence that divergence, the American Republic would be a superior form of government.
But, slightly, some large parts of his stack's jist does agree with me.
Thanks for sharing it, I hope all is well with you right now (unless your a bad person., which given me knowing nothing about you I cannot know either way)
Mike. I'd just add regarding point 3, that un-watchfulness on the part of temporals is built into the fabric of the phenotype wars, which is why the playing field slants "left"!
First of all, thanks so much for the thoughtful contribution to the comments section. I used to get lots of such well thought out comments, but they've really thinned out since the substack has become increasingly specialized in its theorizing.
So, I knew nothing about China. That's all very interesting. In the recent book, I compared the Swiss and American federations, showing how the former better sustained its federation with just the kind of balance in taxing/spending that you point to in China. Without a doubt allowing the federal or (in larger countries) national government to grasp and control the spending power makes the kind of pluralism or federalism I've been exploring somewhere between very difficult and impossible. So, that is intriguing; thanks for bringing it to my attention. (Though I'm so backed up, it'll be some time before I get to dig into it.)
As for the democracy stuff: I hope I didn't say "no" shop keeper or merchant could out-talk or out-conceptualize the verbally dexterous agents of the managerial class. If I did, clearly that was an excessive rhetorical flourish. I try, not always successively, to avoid such excesses. Indeed, I dedicated a whole series to how the Polish Solidarity movement managed to win against not only the managerial class of the regime, but against the misguided attempts at cooptation by the dissident elements of Poland's managerial class. So, obviously I don't think such is impossible.
The point of course is more a statistical one. Most of the time, non-managerial class types are going to be at a great disadvantage when battling managerial class types on the field of discursive action. So, if I wasn't sufficiently subtle, please accept my clarification. And, yes, I am quite cynical about democracy (and let's agree that's a pretty shifty signifier), but I'd certainly agree that the smaller the jurisdiction, the better the chance for it to be effective and not coopted by managerial class types. This is something, eventually, I'll be getting back to in more depth on the substack. Though it's going to be some time from now.
I'm pleased that you found the Walker series of value. I do the work confident that many people are feeling so, but it's always nice to hear it. Thanks again for you comment.
Hi, thank you for your response! Ah, I now understand that you included the word "average" when you wrote about shop keepers or merchants trying to "out-talk or out-conceptualize the verbally dexterous agents of the managerial class", and the oversight was mine.
Re Solidarity: Indeed, Solidarity is an interesting case. It's unfortunate that the cynical and self-serving portions of it (which seem to exist with all or at least almost all large groups, unfortunately) such as Radosław Sikorski and Donald Tusk, gained prominence with the assistance of external forces during the establishment of the new system.
Thanks again for the great writing and I hope you have an enjoyable weekend.
Thank you Evolved Psyché for this long and detailed series on the towns of the 16th-19th century Germany. A most excellent lesson for me.
One aspect of local governance that is now pervasive in Europe is the proclaimed illegitimacy of the rule by the rich or, more softly said, the hostility to wealthy individuals being mayors, or presidents of counties and regions. It is overtly said that they would run the community in their favour and against the good of the citizenry. If a local government shows hostility to them, it is praised as being virtuous, fighting for the people. Thus the factory owners and managers, the prominent business owners, the large farmers/landowners, the most successful professionals are effectively barred from local elected office and must regularly confront "populists" that attack them for easy wins.
The consequences are simple. The local elite is separated from the local government and the community is permanently broken. The local elite is incited to stay apart and associate with the local elite of other towns or of the large cities. Staying apart has evolved into not social patterns where the elite does not see ordinary people most days. Then in good times the elite is not incited to invest in the local community; in bad times the elite has no qualms about laying people off or permanently closing down a business. This mindset has set and has deep roots by now. Most people and local elite members see the deleterious consequences but blame each other with no end in sight.
Hi Archangel. Haven't heard from you in a while. That's a very interesting report from the social trenches of Europe. Thank you. I can understand how such an attitude could emerge organically, but I can't help wondering if it may have been helped along by some set of interests, given the outcome that you describe. In either case, populism is a mightily contested signifier these days. I'm doing my best to channel it into what I believe would be more constructive directions. No doubt, that's the managerial class social engineer in me. Still, I think there's value in recovering the history of all these lost populist and pluralist traditions. In that regard, happy to hear you found the Walker series of value. A new, even more ambiguous series about to begin. Thanks for your contribution to the comments.
I wonder if local governments could amend electoral requirements to residents of X number of years only (ideally becoming a lifelong requirement eventually) to achieve the same effect.
Somewhere to start.
I've appreciated this series; it's been well-written, and I'd never learned anything about the towns/cities of the old German Confederation before. Thanks for writing it.
In China (some say this has been changing in recent years with Xi's centralization push, but it's unclear to me in exactly what ways it has been changing, and anyway, there appears to be a large amount of at least somewhat successful pushback to these changes, especially since the COVID Event's silly policy directives), local governments account for two-thirds of all government spending, with regions being the second highest and the national government being the smallest; this is the inverse of what we have in the USA. Crucially, the money is also raised at that level by them; it's theirs. This makes them the primary actors of fiscal policy.
Local governments there wield significant influence (sometimes near complete control) over parts of state-owned companies within their areas, giving them even further economic prerogatives (since it even includes large state banks, this extends, to a point, to monetary policy as well).
They will even engage in acts of local trade protectionism against all outside the city, so even the rest of China. This is far closer to how the old American Republic used to be for economic policy than contemporary America is. And since economic policy is the biggest and most important (for most people) sphere of public policy, well... that says something.
Your reference to the horizontal cross-pollination of "elites" is important, and I dare say a big "just don't do it" for any system that hopes to be genuinely virtuous and long-term effective.
However, your dismissal of democracy may be premature; if the world moves in a better direction, there will be different systems, some democratic ones may work. The Chinese model, in a way, also, counterintuitively, provides evidence in support of the idea that democracy can work. The local parties will make up a sizable share of the population, maybe 10% or so. Typically, over half don't have degrees; many of those that do have what we in the West would dismiss as vocational degrees (and I'm not counting the "Party School" supposed correspondence courses "degrees" many have, lol). It may be tempting to think that it's this small cadre within the local parties wielding effective total control, but that doesn't seem quite true, and it's not just that various sectors of membership are pushing for the interests of their respective societal sectors; they have legit study groups, people learn, read, and debate, and many within these parties will occasionally win debates and even rewrite the details of policy. So, I'm not sure discursiveness can be written off, or that no "shopkeeper or merchant" can "out-talk or out-conceptualize the verbally dexterous agents."
In Massachusetts in the 1980s, we had a governor (who I actually believe to be a morally decent man) who was fully elite-credentialed. He oversaw the design of a health care price control system that was very poorly designed and failed. I was reading about a guy in China, an electrician, who similarly oversaw the design of a healthcare price control system for his city and got the impression that he 1) had spent more time studying the policy area than our governor, 2) knew more about it, and 3) was likely just inherently more intelligent than our governor.
So, well, I don't know, the world's complicated...
A writer on Substack is very knowledgeable about the Chinese system of government (he may be a communist) and has a lot of evidence that their system of government is more representative (Democratic) than those of the US or UK. Apparently, China has a robust system of common law, where ideas of the common people can, from the ground up, essentially become law.
https://jerrygrey2002.substack.com/p/china-is-more-democratic-than-the
He has a YouTube video on the subject also. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBqNnGhiHMc
Thanks. I really have to explore this whole China thing more closely. At some point. *add frowning face*
Hmmm, I would be off vector from his stack.
1) there's a lot of differences between Washington and Xi; and not just the fact the fact that amongst other things, Washington actually, in real reality on Earth that actually happened, did cross the Delaware (along with a large number of other badass actions over many years) and -- despite there being significant nuances regarding potential constraints against him doing it -- really did choose to relinquish power in a manner that if you dive past layers of often contradicting bullshit suggests that he really did put the Vision, which despite its shortcomings really was a noble one, above himself. (yes, he had many shortcomings, but much of the commonly known about shortcomings are B.S. and the common criticisms of detractors don;t even usually mention his real short comings and in fact even tell the favorably deceitful version of him regarding those in a way that makes ya wonder)
2) this downplays CPC corruption by a large degree. (although, in a way, much of thier corruption is of the sort the USA used to have -- city level, more easily noticeable -- which the USA seemingly traded for a more behind the scenes and sort of "out of sight out of mind" corruption that is actually far more damaging and pernicious)
3) The old American Republic could have carried on if not for naivety and un-watchfulness on behalf the population (and much more than that, but thats a whole writing) who allowed the amazing lessons and -- mostly lost to time (buried on purpose, I suspect) -- intellectual output of the 19th and early 20th centuries to be cold forgotten. But absence that divergence, the American Republic would be a superior form of government.
But, slightly, some large parts of his stack's jist does agree with me.
Thanks for sharing it, I hope all is well with you right now (unless your a bad person., which given me knowing nothing about you I cannot know either way)
---Mike
Mike. I'd just add regarding point 3, that un-watchfulness on the part of temporals is built into the fabric of the phenotype wars, which is why the playing field slants "left"!
Thanks. Ciao.
First of all, thanks so much for the thoughtful contribution to the comments section. I used to get lots of such well thought out comments, but they've really thinned out since the substack has become increasingly specialized in its theorizing.
So, I knew nothing about China. That's all very interesting. In the recent book, I compared the Swiss and American federations, showing how the former better sustained its federation with just the kind of balance in taxing/spending that you point to in China. Without a doubt allowing the federal or (in larger countries) national government to grasp and control the spending power makes the kind of pluralism or federalism I've been exploring somewhere between very difficult and impossible. So, that is intriguing; thanks for bringing it to my attention. (Though I'm so backed up, it'll be some time before I get to dig into it.)
As for the democracy stuff: I hope I didn't say "no" shop keeper or merchant could out-talk or out-conceptualize the verbally dexterous agents of the managerial class. If I did, clearly that was an excessive rhetorical flourish. I try, not always successively, to avoid such excesses. Indeed, I dedicated a whole series to how the Polish Solidarity movement managed to win against not only the managerial class of the regime, but against the misguided attempts at cooptation by the dissident elements of Poland's managerial class. So, obviously I don't think such is impossible.
The point of course is more a statistical one. Most of the time, non-managerial class types are going to be at a great disadvantage when battling managerial class types on the field of discursive action. So, if I wasn't sufficiently subtle, please accept my clarification. And, yes, I am quite cynical about democracy (and let's agree that's a pretty shifty signifier), but I'd certainly agree that the smaller the jurisdiction, the better the chance for it to be effective and not coopted by managerial class types. This is something, eventually, I'll be getting back to in more depth on the substack. Though it's going to be some time from now.
I'm pleased that you found the Walker series of value. I do the work confident that many people are feeling so, but it's always nice to hear it. Thanks again for you comment.
Hi, thank you for your response! Ah, I now understand that you included the word "average" when you wrote about shop keepers or merchants trying to "out-talk or out-conceptualize the verbally dexterous agents of the managerial class", and the oversight was mine.
Re Solidarity: Indeed, Solidarity is an interesting case. It's unfortunate that the cynical and self-serving portions of it (which seem to exist with all or at least almost all large groups, unfortunately) such as Radosław Sikorski and Donald Tusk, gained prominence with the assistance of external forces during the establishment of the new system.
Thanks again for the great writing and I hope you have an enjoyable weekend.
---Mike