Non-Emergent

Emergence is a subject that warps the mind and changes one's perspective on everything. It offers a valuable perspective on the sorry state of American politics. The founders were ahead of their times in countless ways (and of course, behind them in many). It's not hard to mount an argument that they were the first discoverers of an emergent process management model. The Reader's Digest version of Emergence is that it is a system in which complex things emerge from repeated iterations generated from a rather simple set of forms and rules. The element that often never gets enough attention is the role of locality. In reading the political scene from this perspective, that becomes the key, and the founders insistence that the rule in government should be to localize all issues except the ones that cannot be localized seems noble and sober.

So where are we now? There is no locality left. We have federalized everything. And even worse than that, we've instituted a system in which the whole representative system is now subservient to being overridden by this federal dependency (that was hard to foresee), as was seen repeatedly when referenda were passed that the feds did not approve of and they threatened withdrawal of funding for other programs. This process of the states having to go and beg for their own money back probably is best epitomized (probably did not start with but certainly went elliptical on) by the relationship between FDR and La Guardia. Of course, the winner is the one who puts two chips in the pot and is able to convince the pot handlers to give him three back. Begs a few questions: is it not just preposterous to argue that states rights has any meaning anymore? without states rights, can we be considered free in the same ways? are we not a soviet?

Some of the reasons this can lead nowhere good is:

a. Democracy (we know we don't have) and even a representative government, requires participation. We are at the Grand Inquisitor stage in that regard, having cast off our freedom, willfully, and we cannot blame the government for that. (They're coming for more than that next.) Without participation, how can we claim to be free? What we are is captive. Our real rulers simply craft 'concensus' in a rhetorical vacuum and then tag their results. (How often have you heard people in our free society say that if a vote goes the wrong way, it is because their message did not get through?)

b. Federalizations of issues fall in the class of problems illustrated by a scrambled egg: simple to do, impossible to undo.

Now, for the rather bizarre predictions: this is the source of the identity crisis in the two parties for the following reasons:

Republicans - Even the Reagan Revolution was based on defederalization. Nothing happened, moment is so passed, in short retrospect it looks like an artifact from the 1880s. The Republicans are sticking, beyond all reason, to the argument that the market can solve all problems (and yet, they are spending more money than the last two Democrat regimes). This formulation is an emergent notion, without the emergence; it is a headless, rudderless gambit that requires almost unfathomable denial (and/or ignorance). Energy, the ozone, drugs. These problems are not going to solve themselves. The Republicans are like the security people who were on the PA on 9/11 telling people to go back to their desks.

Democrats - Their argument has likewise reached a situation that could be flattered with the word intractable. The Clintonian, failed Gore follow-on argument is the 'we can manage these problems, and do it better, more efficiently.' Emergence tells us that this is almost as insane a position as the Republicans. The problems are too complex, the management abilities too feeble. As the Liberterians are fond of saying: fifty years of government agencies later (FDA, EPA, ATF, etc.) do we have cleaner water, safer food, less drugs?

Unfortunately, the Liberterians seem also a tad absurd. No government at any level, just let people be, they will solve their own problems. No, the market will not solve these problems and furthermore, the solutions to some of these problems are going to start to reach a state that looks to at least threaten terminal consequences.

Ultimately, patronage ends up looking more like an emergent and progressive approach to some of these intractable problems. The idea that the government should not patronize anything is appealing. But then localized patronage would have to emerge and it seems incredible that perhaps now that might happen. Certainly the conditions are there. A million serious patron projects could be spawned from the trash bin of this dysfunctional gorgon we call our government.