Governing forces and scale
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In two previous articles we have covered forces that govern the commons presenting a diagram summarising these (what we called power flower) and a large list of examples how to use the diagram. We'll end this segment with a short note on scale.
On Scale
Society functions on different scales of abstraction – a housing association, municipality, state, regional arrangements like European Union, global agreements and global institutions.
The forces arrangement is almost invariably different on different level. This would imply that decision makers need to take different approach on different levels of scale. People seldom do this because they feel they have to be true to their political ideology. Thus, they lock their mind on one approach and supporting ideas that may work on some scale but do certainly do not work across all scales. Thus they end up hurting everyone affected.
For example, on EU level the right to propose new legislation is in the European Commission that is not elected by EU member state citizens but through a complex process where heads of the largest member states have a lot of influence. This reduces the skin-in-the game factor for elected members. Right or wrong approach, this is how stuff works today.
Thus, it would be rational for all to support rather liberalistic view where member states have a lot of power in their own affairs. On national level it then makes sense to follow own idealogical home and be either for strong or weak government depending on own affiliation. A more sensible approach would naturally be to take each matter separately and agree for example that natural monopolies should be publicly handled (strong state) but most others let for individuals (weak state). And on municipal level own view might again be something else depending on how the chips fall.