Why decentralize power back to the states? What is it about the states that make them the right level to delegate power to?
A large point of what I took from the article is that states are simultaneously too large (because they encompass metro areas and rural areas that often have little in common, both in terms of economic and social outlook) and too small (because they encourage race to the bottom competition between states who in many ways have common interests).
When you devolve power to a lower body, you are doing a form of central planning because you're determining what those lower bodies should be. So we should do it right. That might mean that states aren't the only body to consider.
>> They are the result of ... the political processes we already had in place
You can't assign this causality with certainty. They may have also arisen despite the political processes we have in place.
I agree that "decentralize back to states" is no solution. States have, for the most part, shown themselves to be poor stewards of power. Achieving the right balance of power at each level is the challenge.
No more than any other level of government left unchecked. The pendulum has now swung the other way, and there's probably an optimal Goldilocks zone somewhere in the middle. You're right that it's about balancing the authority of government at different levels against each other.
For one, the Constitution already has a legal framework for decentralization, and that is the states. Also, states already have governments etc, so from a pragmatic standpoint transferring power to them can potentially be done without setting up new centers of power that overlap existing structures. Unfortunately the Constitution prohibits breaking up states without their consent, so short of a Constitutional amendment it seems unlikely that these advantages could be obtained with entities smaller than the existing states.
I agree with your premise (I think); personally I prefer the ninth amendment to the tenth. Certainly however, I would favor d?evolving power to the states instead of pushing power up the totem pole through regionalism.
> When you devolve power to a lower body, you are doing a form of central planning because you're determining what those lower bodies should be. So wee should do it right. That might mean that states aren't the only body to consider.
In software development, we've moved power from a Big Design Up Front (aka waterfall) planned by a few to a series of teams, each with core specialties, areas of control, and many degrees of freedom but still have interfaces, agreements, and goals to tie them all together.
It's because we know that the waterfall process can't have all the information up front, can't see all the risks and opportunities, and can only be as good as the experience and foresight (sometimes guessing) of the few in charge who also happen to be the furthest from the problem.
Why is it bizarre to consider a similar approach to a much more complex system?
I don't think it is bizarre. What makes you think I do?
I agree that it's a great idea to delegate powers to lower bodies. But you have to decide what those lower bodies should be. I'm just arguing that the states (as currently formed and defined) might not be the best bodies.
And yet our most reliable systems are all effectively Big Design Up Front (aka waterfall).
And, in fact, the poster child for "agile" was the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation which was a gigantic FAILURE precisely because of all the complexity which "agile" never handled.
Complexity doesn't magically go away just because you break things into smaller pieces.
C3 was a failure for whom? All of the planners and senior engineers went on to spectacularly successful careers as Agile "thought leaders". Sounds like a rousing success to me. :D
I, too, find it funny that people whose main large-project experience is C3 use it as evidence that they should be trusted with anything.
> It is perfect, as perfect as human beings have achieved. Consider these stats : the last three versions of the program — each 420,000 lines long-had just one error each. The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors. Commercial programs of equivalent complexity would have 5,000 errors.
> The product is only as good as the plan for the product.
> Take the upgrade of the software ... a change that involves just 1.5% of the program, or 6,366 lines of code. The specs for that one change run 2,500 pages, a volume thicker than a phone book. The specs for the current program fill 30 volumes and run 40,000 pages.
> Don't just fix the mistakes — fix whatever permitted the mistake in the first place.
> Ten years ago the ... group was considered world-class. Since then, it has cut its own error rate by 90%.
Not every piece of software needs such an obsessive approach - but, there are pieces of software that absolutely do need such an obsessive approach!
In other words, there isn't a single binary correct answer for every choice. There are some things that are best decided at the neighborhood level, there are some things that are best decided at the global level, and there are are many things that are best decided at levels in between.
It seems to me a national approach, with significant input from the states, seems like a very appropriate level for something like an interstate road system. Particularly given our already successful history with the National Highway System [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System].
Why is it bizarre to consider an approach that is logical and has already been demonstrated to be effective?
Without the end-user involved in the entire development process, with no BA, it is still waterfall aka 'fake agile'. Creating a division in software development creates a gap. Shouldn't even be sitting in a separate office / section of office / in that state of mind.
It is not "in software development." It is product development.
This is a good analogy, but I think your takeaway is wrong.
In software development, we change the team structure if we find that multiple teams do the same thing for the same customers. So, in this case, redraw the state boundaries.
Because it was/is a good balance. You can take your logic all the way down to a city or all the way up to a nation and delegate or not. Having vastly different states from one another gives a citizen of a nation the freedom to easily move to somewhere else where the prospects are better and or where it aligns with your way of life more.
All you've done is state that "my idea is good because my idea is good."
A better response would be to devolve power to CSA - combined statistical areas. These are geographic units defined by economic interactions (measured in part by commuting distances).
See, CSA's make sense because they have a rationale based in recent experience. State boundaries from over a century ago do not.
Sure. But why these states in particular? You don't think it's possible that there might be a better configuration of borders/regions? It seems improbable to me that by chance we landed on the optimal structure as these borders were defined in the years spanning from colonization to the early 20th century.
You can't just 'redraw' state boundaries though. The core fallacy in this kind of thinking is that the existing political geography is all the result of some top-down design and thus subject to top-down revision. The 'United States' is more than just a name, it's a literal description. The US Federal Government is essentially a super-national body that is the product of a treaty process not too unlike that which we've more recently witnessed in the founding of the European Union. The vesting of partial sovereignty from the constituent states into the federal state does not negate the sovereignty that is retained by the constituent states. They are not mere administrative divisions subject to the redistricting whims of some legislative body.
The smaller the project/team, the easier it is to recognize mistakes and change direction. At the federal level, competing interests make that nearly impossible.
I didn't quibble with that part. I omitted it for clarity because I only intended to address the other part. I don't think that's controversial practice when quoting.
Why decentralize power back to the states? What is it about the states that make them the right level to delegate power to?
A large point of what I took from the article is that states are simultaneously too large (because they encompass metro areas and rural areas that often have little in common, both in terms of economic and social outlook) and too small (because they encourage race to the bottom competition between states who in many ways have common interests).
When you devolve power to a lower body, you are doing a form of central planning because you're determining what those lower bodies should be. So we should do it right. That might mean that states aren't the only body to consider.
>> They are the result of ... the political processes we already had in place
You can't assign this causality with certainty. They may have also arisen despite the political processes we have in place.