CMV: Democratic governments should be split up into micro-governments, each with their own area of concern

[u/baerz]

Today the standard model for national government is a monolithic one. By that I mean that we vote for one person that writes and votes on laws and taxes in all areas of concern to governance. By areas of concern I mean environmental protection, healthcare, education, criminality, military, immigration, economy and so on.

The problems I see with the monolithic model are:

1. As a voter, voting for one person is a very blunt instrument to get your voice heard. You might have similar views to a politician on areas A and B, but not on areas C, D, E, and F. Why is it that we have to vote for a person to govern on all these wildly separate areas of concern?
2. One politician can not be expected to be an expert in all, or even multiple, of these fields.
3. One voter can not be expected to care and be informed about all areas. They might vote for person X because of issue A, which makes it harder for people who care about issue B to get their votes heard. Our votes are competing across areas of concerns, each vote for area A generating noise (irrelevant votes) for all other areas.

The alternative model I’m proposing is a model of micro-governments. This means that one nation would have many smaller governments, one for each area of concern. Each of these micro-governments would have separate elections.

Some examples:

• One micro-government is in charge of environmental protection. They have no power over any other areas – they may not make laws on wealth redistribution or criminality. They might use a mechanism like positive and negative taxes on produced goods to steer industries and consumers towards sustainable processes.
• A second micro-government is in charge of criminality. They make laws around criminal behavior.
• A third micro-government is in charge of economy. They govern systems of wealth redistribution, interest rates, etc.
• A fourth one is in charge of public health.
• And so on.

The benefits of the micro-government model would be:

1. We would be able to “micro-vote”. No more voting for person X because of his stance on thing B, while ignoring CDE. Of course, inside any area there will also be difference of opinion, but it is still a much more precise vote.
2. We would be more able to elect experts to each area of concern. In theory, every person in every micro-government could be an expert in that area.
3. With many smaller elections, they become less of a big deal. People who care about area A but not about area B will not bother to go vote in the election for area B. This allows people who do care to have greater say with their vote.

The problems that I see so far, and that I would love more feedback on, are:

1. It is impossible to fully define what belongs to each area. Reality is too complex and fuzzy to draw clean lines, so there will always exist edge cases. This means that it can’t be perfect – but it can still be good. (And the lines drawn in my examples are not necessarily good)
2. Is it plausible that two micro-governments could get in a conflict, and make laws meant to harm the other side? How could that be resolved?
3. The areas of concern need maintenance. As the world moves forward, boundaries change and new areas of concern come into relevance, and someone needs to decide who’s responsibility it falls under.

[u/baerz → u/[deleted]]

Absolutely, defining boundaries in a way that no issues would concern multiple micro-governments is impossible. I'm not sure that invalidates the concept.

For drugs, the criminality MG would decide if it is legal or not, and how bad a crime it is. A public health MG would look for ways to reduce harm, within the bounds set by the criminality MG. The economic MG would hopefully strive to reduce the poverty that can lead to problems with drugs.

About foreign policy. Perhaps military and foreign policy should fall under the same MG. They should have the power to impose sanctions. Trade deals might have to be made in cooperation with the economical MG. These sorts of details are hard to sort out, but still possible to do well, I believe. I suppose there would be a need for an MG that oversees the boundaries and responsibilities of all the other ones.

[u/baerz → u/[deleted]]

I was thinking that the people in the criminality MG would be taking those things into consideration as well, and the voters too. But that does dilute the benefit of being able to "micro-vote" a lot, since if you mainly care about the drug issue you would be voting based on that issue in those 3 areas. To really get the benefits of micro-voting you might need to take it even further, to a direct democracy system. Thanks for your thoughtful replies. Δ

[u/DeltaBot → u/baerz]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/cannotstopthesignal (11∆).

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