Citizens face a financial crisis triggered by:
• Federal Agencies creating an over supply of cheap money, and
• Failure of federal Agencies to carry out their responsibility to protect citizens – and the market economy – from wild, irrational exuberance – specifically the creation of speculative “investment opportunities”
What is the proposed solution?
Create a new federal Agency and spend another $700-Billion dollars primarily to bail out those who caused the problem by making bad decisions.
This solution will not build rational scaled dwellings in functional and sustainable locations.
This solution will not create durable and sustainable infrastructure.
This solution will only put off for a short while the day when citizens must face the need for Fundamental Transformation is human settlement patterns and Fundamental Transformation in governance structure. These Transformations are necessary if civilization is to achieve a sustainable trajectory.
The current crisis has been in the making for 60 years. Nearly everyone has “benefitted” in some way from the profligate squandering of natural capital, degrading the environment, putting the balance of nature at risk and creating dysfunctional human settlement patterns.
However, just a few have really profited from what we term the orgy of Mass OverConsumption that exceeds the wildest dreams of any prior society. Now they will get bailed out while all suffer, none more than those at the bottom of the economic Ziggurat.
The core responsibility of governance is the manage society and the current management strategy is not working. There must be Fundamental Transformation.
Recently a colleague who reads our work said: “You say ‘There must be Fundamental Transformation of governance structure’ but I am not sure what you mean.” It turns out we needed just such a summary statement for a chapter in TRILO-G and so here it is:
(Sunday is a slow day on the Blog and so I am putting it all here. Jim Bacon can move it to a separate jump page if that seems like a better idea to him.)
FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION IN GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE
The key to understanding the need for Fundamental Transformation in governance structure is to recognize that:
A contemporary democracy with a market economy relies on educated citizens. A contemporary democracy cannot function long with quasi-citizens who are “Running As Hard As They Can” and are “represented” by a few who occupy positions of power in political Institutions.
These governance practitioners have worked themselves up in the political party duopoly and in practitioner elites to the point that they claim – and really believe – that they know what is best for their constituents, in spite of that citizens may believe. These governance practitioners have also perfected strategies to line their own pockets, cover their own tails / trails and – most importantly – how to blame someone from the other party if something goes wrong – which it always does.
Three key principles for the evolution of functional governance are:
• The level of authority / control / action must be at the level of impact. That is true for land use and land management, and it is also for education, public health, public safety, infrastructure – including transport, communications – and everything else that Agencies do to insure the health, safety and welfare of citizens.
• There must be a functional level of governance for each of the organic components of human settlement. If there are impacts of Agency actions at multiple levels – and there almost always is multi-scale impact – then there must be shared responsibility. Functional governance does not occur in a system where the “highest” – and the most remote – level of governance always controls. Currently, there is no governance structure at most of the levels – or scales – of impact with whom to share responsibility. For example, there is not yet a single New Urban Region-scale governance structure in the US of A.
• The basic building block of contemporary civilization is the New Urban Region. For this reason, Regions – New Urban Regions (NUR) and Urban Support Regions (USR) – are the most important components in the evolution of functional governance structures. At the same time the evolution of the primary components of Regions – Alpha Communities – are also critical. In most cases, the existing municipalities (and counties) are not coterminous with any organic component of human settlement – especially Alpha Communities. In addition, the organic components of Alpha Communities are very important. This is true not just because of the need for functional governance at those scales of human activity. It is critical because citizens will not allow / tolerate functional Regional Agencies to evolve until they are very comfortable with the role and function of Cluster-, Neighborhood- and Village-scale governance structures.
The current system of governance was created before contemporary economic, social and physical structures were even imagined. From the perspective of human settlement pattern the most important components of the existing governance structure are the Declaration of Independence (1775), The Northwest Ordinance (1787) and the Constitution (1789). The 1775 / 1787 / 1789 structure of governance was crafted for an emerging nation-state where five percent of the population was urban and ninety-five percent of the population was agrarian. It was also a society with slaves, no women’s suffrage and the vast majority of the citizens were illiterate. Add to this the fact that the Industrial Revolution was in its infancy and the importance of trade, technology and communication taken for granted today would have been incomprehensible to citizens and their leaders in 1790.
The 1775 / 1787 / 1789 governance structure, as amended to date, is in many ways irrelevant to a society where:
• Nine-five percent of the population is urban and only five percent is agrarian
• Communication is instantaneous
• Universal education and universal suffrage are overarching goals
The federal constitution provides for protection of critical, overarching rights and responsibilities. However, the powers reserved to the states allows state governance structures to play an ever more damaging dog-in-the-manger role in governance structure.
Even though the state as a level of governance grows less relevant with each passing day, states continue to avoid the absolute necessity of Fundamental Transformation of governance structure. This is especially true for those states that straddle one or more Regional (NUR or USR) boundaries. Almost all of the ‘Lower 48″ states straddle Regional boundaries. Seven states include parts of Regions that fall in more than one nation-state.
Caught between:
• Municipal (including county) governance practitioners who believe it is in their best interest to thwart the evolution of functional governance at and below the Alpha Community scale; and
• State governance practitioners who believe it is in their best interest to thwart the evolution of functional governance at and above the Alpha Community scale – especially at the New Urban Region scale; and
• Federal governance practitioners who believe it is in their best interest to thwart the evolution of functional governance at all scales;
Citizens have no current voice or leverage to secure Fundamental Transformation of governance structure.
Inspired by the impact of two World Wars fought over resources and territory, the citizens of the EU are SLOWLY evolving a mor
e functional governance structure both “UP” from the nation-state level and “DOWN” from the nation-state level. They have a long way to go, but at least they have started.
EMR
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