Hm, I was actually thinking that local authorities should be strengthened. But the perspective I'm coming from is being European and seeing all major EU countries have unpopular governments that are seen as ineffective, and contrasting with Switzerland, which has very powerful local government (a president/prime minister/chancellor doesn't even exist, federal government is only in charge of defense and energy), and is extremely successful by every measure you could think of.
Re:How Tech Can Build
by capitalsigma on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @01:45AM
(#22942630)
Note that Switzerland is ~10x smaller than Texas.
No.
This is an outcome of having democracy operable at a local level; the entire outcome of localism is "your local special interests control the system". What that means, in practice, is the people who have time to burn control the system. That is either (1) retired people (2) semi-employed activists or (3) paid lawyers/lobbyists. 3 is often paid by the local big fish.
Add/subtract as your locality changes, but the principle is the same. Kill the hyperdecentralization, and you kill the balkanization.
If you want real change in the US, you have to gut the localism principle comprehensively.
edit: get involved in local politics, even on the margins, and you start seeing that change is very possible, and there are a lot of people passionately invested in not changing. This has nothing - ZERO - to do with US political alignment, BTW.