Why Do Progressives Like Centralization?

The idea: There seems to be something in progressives’ DNA that inclines them to want to centralize, globalize, homogenize. It had its value once, but it’s rarely appropriate any more. And the better answer, helping communities revitalize themselves, with no strings attached, will be hard for progressives to learn to do.

I mentioned last week that, at my recent meeting on community-based renewable energy, one rabble-rouser wanted such projects banned in favour of centrally-managed, efficient ‘wind farms’. Turns out he’s a capital-l Liberal, and a self-professed small-l liberal. Our former alderman wanted to merge our exurban/rural community with Canada’s two fastest growing cities next door to make a super-regional community that would ‘have everything’. This misguided soul was also a self-professed liberal. In one Canadian community, a proposal by a prominent liberal to close all the community centres and replace them with regional Super Wellness Centres has, thankfully, been vetoed by clearer heads. The very pragmatic and progressive Peter Singer, writer of One World, likes the idea of a single, global government replacing the nations whose boundaries are largely historical accident anyway. Socialists have always had a passion for centralized, planned societies. What is it about progressives that makes them so averse to the idea of autonomous, self-managed communities?

In my earlier post on Balkanization I mentioned four reasons why small community political units tend to get supplanted by larger, more centralized regional and state governments:

• Defense: In a heavily populated, resource-constrained world, despots and imperialists will inevitably arise. The easiest way to defend against attacks from these tyrants is through political union. Federation can also work, but it’s harder and more tenuous, since both political will and defense financing must be raised in each member country.
• Economies of Scale: There’s lots of evidence that there is no such thing, especially in today’s connected world, as ‘economies of scale’. Bigger is as likely to mean less efficient as more efficient. But even if such economies are illusory, there remains a consensus that reaching a certain ‘critical mass’ allows delivery of services more cost-effectively per capita, and as long as enough people believe it, it will constrain balkanization. And it is true that the more governments you have involved in projects like transportation, energy, and even social policy and environmental protection, the harder the coordination gets.
• The ‘Once You’re So Big You Might As Well Get Bigger’ Rule: To be truly responsive to individual people’s needs, a government needs to be really small and local. Is a state or provincial government looking after a million people really any closer to the needs of its constituents than a federal government looking after a hundred million? If not, the argument goes, it would make more sense to get rid of state and provincial governments than to devolve most political power to them. If you’re too big to look after a community, you might as well at least exploit your size and get as big as possible. This is the argument for some kind of loose ‘global’ government, and it’s hard to dispute.
• Local Tin-pot Dictators: In the days of hunter-gatherer cultures and even more recently in pioneer settlements, communities were self-selected and their members knew each other intimately. More recently, local governments are often selected to represent disenchanted and politically active minorities, and local power often goes almost by default to those with ruthless ambition, wealth, or a propensity for influence-peddling. The consequence is that the reputation of local government is dreadful — they tend to be even less representative of the people than governments of larger political units, poorly trained and skilled for the job, biased, corrupt, remote and inefficient.

Defense can be handled by coalitions and alliances, rather than political union. But the myth of ‘economies of scale’ continues to have a strong hold on progressives. I think it’s the political creature in all of us: If our community model is wonderful, surely expanding it so it covers more people and more land and more resources would make it even better. We all want our personal models of the right way to do things to thrive, and we want to persuade others that ours are the best models available. This is healthy — it’s how ideas spread and how we learn from each other’s successes and failures. But in today’s networked world it is no longer necessary, or wise, to ‘grow’ infrastructure. We need to resist the impulse to push our ‘best practice’ on others. Every community is capable of designing its own best practices, and if they want help they can take advantage of the astonishing communication and information resources available globally now, to ask for it. But progressives are social creatures, and they like to get together and build stuff, big stuff built on big dreams. Progressives are also compulsive planners — we like to think things through in advance, rather than charging ahead and doing rapid prototyping and learning fast from our mistakes. And we’ve been taught to believe getting together in larger and larger groups and pooling resources is efficient, an economical application of the division of labour.

But just because something is efficient doesn’t mean it’s better. We could all design a better way for plants to produce energy and reproduce, but why? Nature’s extravagant and inefficient way works just fine, and has the advantages of evolution by experimentation, and robustness in the face of sudden change or adversity. Very efficient systems tend to be inflexible, resistant to change, and fragile. So even if there are ‘economies of scale’ (and that’s debatable, but the subject for a different article) doesn’t mean that bigger and ‘more efficient’ is desirable.

The ‘Once You’re So Big You Might As Well Get Bigger’ argument is perfectly valid, but defeatist. It assumes we simply will be unable to make community-based political and economic structures work. It’s the argument for a strong UN, and it’s a compelling one, but it’s settling for second best. As Singer says in giving qualified support for a global super-government:

He’s right, but it’s a challenge that so far has been beyond the best minds on our planet to solve. The reality is that increasing size inexorably makes management harder, coordination more difficult. Why work so hard for one extreme — a global state — when the other extreme — a world of autonomous networked tiny communities — is easier and better?

One pervasive progressive argument for centralization is that larger political and economic entities can compensate for inequities between communities. Is it fair if one community is affluent and healthy and egalitarian, and the one next door poor, full of despair and disease, and repressive and intolerant? Here is where the progressive ideology gets most perverse. Progressives tend to be egalitarian and accept responsibility for those less fortunate outside their communities. The outpouring of support for tsunami victims reflects the preponderance of such progressive thinking throughout the world. But as humanitarian groups have pointed out, more children die from inexpensively preventable diseases every week than died in the tsunami. Where are the progressives in addressing this much greater, and simpler, need? Well, the thinking goes, there’s only so much we can do for other communities. To some extent, unlike the victims of natural disasters, the victims of chronic disease and violence should be taking more responsibility in their own communities, and if we just give them everything they’ll never learn to look after themselves, it will be a black hole sucking the resources out of us until we’re all poor and deprived. But these people do not have political power, they do not have education, they live in ecological disaster areas and what resources they do have are being stolen to repay their governments’ negligent or criminal debts to other nations. They are no more able to do anything about their situation than the tsunami victims.

Progressives need to learn to do intelligent triage with their generosity of time and resources. We need to acknowledge that some parts of the world, like Kerala, India, are going to do well even if we leave them entirely to their own resources. We need to acknowledge that some parts of the world, like Haiti and Afghanistan, are not going to do well no matter what we try to do for them. We should only be throwing money and energy at them when and if the rest of the world is doing well. What we need to do is focus on the middle group, the areas, both inside and outside our own countries, where investment of time and money will make all the difference in the world.

And then we need to focus even more, and choose among the alternative ways we can help this middle group of areas. Some methods, like bombing the country senseless to oust its leader, building giant prisons as the ‘answer’ to crime, and even airlifting food, are short-term solutions that are of dubious long-term effect or value. The most valuable assistance we can provide to most areas is education and expertise. But a great deal of our expertise is not given, but sold to the third world by Western corporations, which merely replaces a knowledge deficit with a financial deficit. We should be requiring corporations, as a condition of their corporate charters, to donate without strings attached a small percentage of their time and profits to teach and train and build infrastructure in any impoverished area, domestic or international, of their choosing. Meanwhile, as progressives, we should lobby governments to provide a tax credit to individuals equal to out-of-pocket costs plus say, a flat $50/hour for pure (non-religious, non-partisan, no strings attached) volunteer activities to areas in need. Not a tax deduction just for cash donations, which is worth much more to the rich and worth nothing to the unemployed — a tax credit that reduces taxes payable and can be carried forward or even claimed as a refund, worth exactly the same amount per hour spent and per dollar contributed regardless of the donor’s tax bracket or income.

This won’t by itself make communities that are currently under-skilled, under-resourced, dependent and poor into self-sufficient communities, but it will be a step in the right direction, where current efforts and energies and strings-attached ‘investments’ are not. Our current physical communities are not ideal: they were mostly selected for us by brokers, or singled out because of proximity to good schools, or because it was the best we could afford, or picked for some other reason that has nothing to do with the like-mindedness of the other community residents. But you have to start somewhere. We should build some Model Intentional Communities to show people what is possible with a completely decentralized, self-selected and self-reliant, sustainable community-based economy and society. But then we need to start applying our learning and our energies to helping today’s helpless and dysfunctional communities transform themselves into something close to that model ideal.

One step at a time. Learning from their many mistakes. Doing things their own way. Horrendously inefficiently. Showing hands-on. Providing examples and role-models. Failing and then getting up and trying again. Answering the difficult questions. And when our work there is done, when they’re doing it for themselves, leaving them alone and moving on to the next community. For progressives, this hands-dirty, painstakingly slow process will be agonizing. But it’s the only way to undo the millennia of dependence, ignorance, subjugation and hopelessness that have left broken, ecologically devastated, economically and psychologically depressed communities bereft of ability and racked by scarcity, where once stood proud and diverse and capable and independent communities amidst astonishing affluence.

It’s the only way that works.

Image: Part of a community of snow geese in flight, from photographer TeeKay.