Re: Why Devolution? (mayoral race)
Daniel C. Burton (dan@antispam.autobahn.org)
9 Feb 1998 00:47:42 GMT
Kevin Dempsey Peterson <peterson@autobahn.org> wrote in article
<Pine.LNX.3.96.980203131832.17011A-100000@ferrari.autobahn.org>...
>
> My connection to Berkeley is really slow right now, so I'll just send
this
> from here (which means I can't quote). Seth asked why I don't have a
> problem with local governments doing things that the fed. government
> shouldn't do (and taught me a new word).
>
> In general, it's based on the idea that a city can be regarded as a
> community, while the country is at best a society, or grouping of
> communities. I know Seth recognizes that a voluntary commune is a
> legitimate entity, so I'll start my argument from there. To remain a
> commune, it would have to have some sort of property rights over an area.
> This can be interpretted as private property ownership by the commune
> itself, and management by all the people in the commune; or as ownership
> of some things by the commune, and other things by individuals. For
> example, a commune could own farmland, a solar power grid, and a car for
> community use. Members of the commune would own the houses they live in,
> their clothes, and other things. In return for labor in whatever method
> the commune uses to support itself, they get a portion of the profits.
The European city did originate in the Medieval "commune," but these
communes were not communal or voluntary. They were a right granted by the
royalty to be governed en bloc instead of individually and wealthy
merchants were given the authority to tax and set up a local legal system
in order to protect business transactions. This gave a degree of
uniformity and security in contracts, but it was probably much less of a
free market than before. All labor was heavily regimented and controlled
through guilds controlled by powerful merchants, whereas before it was just
a bunch of serfs who escaped tributes by engaging in trade, because it
wasn't clear how to extract 2/5 of the productivity of a merchant. (They
hadn't yet invented income taxes, and most trade was in barter.)
The Medieval commune is much closer to the cities of today than the
voluntary modern commune, and it's their actual ancestor.
> I would say that the commune can "own" certain rights that go along with
> property rights in the real property owned by the members, like the right
> to decide who to sell it to, though the owner still owns the right to the
> profits from the sale. This implies that the commune "owns" the right to
> "govern" a given area of land.
>
> I think that this same principle can be applied to a city, in that by
> founding a city (on land previously unoccupied), the founders
(government)
> assume the ownership of the right of governance, and when people settle
> there, they can only claim the right to use the land and the right to
> participate in the government. When the land is sold, only those rights
> owned by the "owner" of the land can be transferred, and the right to
> govern it is still controlled by the city government.
But the founders of a city aren't the government! They're individual
homesteaders who settle in a region. The government comes later after they
already own property.... And if this is not the case it should be. The
government should not go claiming large unused tracts of land or other
resources. It should leave those up to individual claims, because when
resources are controlled privately, they're managed in ways that maximize
their value. When they're controlled by government, they aren't.
This really is an inefficient form of organization. Conflicts over things
like neighborhood noise and all the things that make up the local
environment are best handled by the negotiations for rights held by private
parties. The local economy is best left to the free market. Protecting
the unique local values of a community is best left to the people who value
them -- community organizations, etc. If this isn't enough, then these
values are being protected at the expense of other ones worth more to
people.
Okay, one more thing: You say membership in a community is voluntary, but
I didn't choose to be part of this community -- I was born around here.
(Okay, it would be a little clearer if I stayed in Oakland.) I didn't
choose to be born here any more than I chose to be born in the United
States. Sure, I could choose to join another community, but I would only
do so to leave the other community which I didn't voluntarily choose to
join. Ultimately, where ever you end up, it's the result of a chain of
moves to better your situation, starting with one you didn't voluntarily
choose. In other words, choosing to be under a city government is not
because you decided it would be better than a city with no government, but
to leave a city with a worse government. (There are "cities" like
Kensington that aren't incorporated as cities, but they still do have
"government" in general, and there still are laws governing local economic
activity.)
Besides, my real community isn't the people who happen to live in a 3 mile
radius of me. It's a far-flung group of people around the Bay Area with
similar interests and goals as me, and most of them are anarchists of some
sort or another. We may not be geographically contiguous, but why does
that mean we should be denied self-government?