Federalism

[pieces o nine]

Bob!  Why do you hate the Murrican Dollar!   



...oh yeah, I forgot for a momennt: all them other countries would adopt it --  *gratefully*  ...   

[Swatopluk]

I think the standard is that there is both a federal and a local police with different responsibilities.
A world currency would remove the buffer capability of a system of different only partially interdependent currencies.
What if some idiots managed to for example crash the US dollar (not that anything could ever touch the almighty greenback) and there would be no other currency around?
So, I think, no matter how centralistic one is one should keep the local systems strong enough to be able to work as the second line of defence in case of the national (or international) system losing that capability for whatever reason.

A decentralised system has the advantage that a failure can be kept local, while a fully centralised system would immediately affect everything. The other side of the coin is of course that ina decentralised system local rot can fester for a long time because it does not affect the system as a whole.
In the US, the party that has lost the presidency and/or Congress is typically all for states rights while the ruling party in Washington likes to expand the power of the central government. Or historically, China botched its chance of becoming a worldwide empire because a temporary power change in the capital led to the scrapping of all ocean-going capabilities (and the systematic destruction of the know-how iirc). In a decentralised system those capabilities would probaly have been kept somewhere, ready to be re-awakened once the power relations in the capital changed back to normal.
The balance is always delicate. Personally I am for keeping the responsibilities mainly on the level of primary importance (i.e. the level where most of the effects apply) but always keeping the possibility of an emergency override on the higher level (what they call Bundeszwang* over here).

*which is zustimmungspflichtig (cf. earlier post)

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I've seen the failure of both on the same issue back home: for more than a century Colombia had a central bureaucracy that sometimes reached insane proportions (like a central power dictating mayors in cities pretty much as the Spaniards did before them). That changed in '91 when a new constitution mandated de-centralization, allowing public elections of governors and mayors, etc.

With the old constitution the farther you went from the center the worse the conditions were, so while Bogota was a beacon of culture the towns retired from big cities were the stage of complete abandon and subsequent anarchy. With the new constitution you would think things would improve, and perhaps it has improved for some, specially the middle size cities that had enough resources+common sense, but in many cases a central corruption was replaced by a local one; I recall in particular a city that benefits from millions on royalties from oil exploitation which frankly is the same hellhole as it was when there wasn't such source of money, despite locally elected mayor, council, governor, etc.
---
Personally I find my self in conflict over both concepts all the time, if the nutz that want to buy guns and ammo like popcorn, shouldn't they define among themselves if that's what they want and live on a free bullet society? But when those bullets can reach me and those around me that don't want them because the borders are permeable their so called 'freedom' isn't free anymore.

Wasn't the case of federal laws in the US what allowed slavery in certain states while others balked at the idea? Wasn't that permeability what brought up the civil war (more than human decency)?

Wouldn't we prevent most political abuses if there were a central power willing and capable to prevent it (Darfur being the last example)? How would we know that that power wouldn't become a tyranny of the center?

If we then talk about the 'separate but equal' concept of nations, is it OK for Iran or China to target their dissidents or for the US & friends to lock up suspects in a torture hole outside laws?

In essence, with which evil are we prepared to live?

[Swatopluk]

The Chinese (in the distant past) fared well with the principle that no high official was allowed to serve in his home province. There were also term limits, i.e. an offcial would transfer from from one district to another every few years. That seems to have worked quite well as an anti-corruption policy. And then there was that judicial malpractice prevention system: A judge (and his staff) would suffer the same punishment in case of false conviction. Texas offcials would tremble in fear, if something similar was introduced there  .

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Bob!  Why do you hate the Murrican Dollar!   



...oh yeah, I forgot for a momennt: all them other countries would adopt it --  *gratefully*  ...   

Erm....because of corruption at the National level? 

+++++++++++++

... And then there was that judicial malpractice prevention system: A judge (and his staff) would suffer the same punishment in case of false conviction. Texas offcials would tremble in fear, if something similar was introduced there  .

Well, it *would* be one way to achieve Justice over Bushya.... wouldn't it...!

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

Hmmm, mixed feelings here.

Federalism can be a pain in the butt when laws criss-cross each other, like dry counties, states with legalized medical marijuana, and then the over-arching federal laws that get in the way. There's more to the problem than laws being an issue but I have to go dig up my notes unless I want to base this argument off vague memories from high school. As I recall though, the federalist system leads to a lot of competition for money between state and federal entities and both ends of the equation do a lot of things that counteract what the other end is doing.

Centrism has other issues that haven't been mentioned yet. In addition to being rather far from local concerns, when such concerns enter federal awareness they tie up other things. DC shouldn't be worrying about whether my college district will get enough funding. We're huge here in the county (my specific school alone is serving 25,000 students) but we're itsy bitsy in the grand scope of things. Also, they have a limited ability to judge what we need and their guessing is haphazard at best. My elected rep in Washington should be focusing on bigger issues like health care (though I doubt mine is doing so in a positive manner as he's a republican).
Also, I have concerns as to what would happen if the REALLY wrong guy ended up in power in DC. State governments can act independently enough to succeed if some horrible thing happened and we got a psycho for President/other position of power.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

The higher you go the worst you can screw things up (did you forgot dubya already?). Although in theory that's why we have 'checks & balances', but the reality of power is that it's a screwy business regardless of how central or distributed it is.

[Aggie]

As I recall though, the federalist system leads to a lot of competition for money between state and federal entities and both ends of the equation do a lot of things that counteract what the other end is doing.

We have provincial competition to some degree (between provinces), but the federal/provincial jurisdictions are generally fairly clear-cut in Canada.  The provinces squabble for funding with each other, but the system is set up such that the better-to-do provinces actually subsidize the poorer ones in part (regional economics dictate that nobody stays on top all the time, so there's a lot of give and take).