My current world view is that socialism implemented via central authority ruling over a very large group (i.e. socialistic government of USSR) is not working, because personal relationships connections are broken when helping each other is outsourced to some abstract entity. It is that entity being praised and hated when someone gets help or someone doesn't. The fact that it is neighbors, other region people, etc actually are involved in that is lost. No longer you can shame your neighbor for not helping a neighbor, or when they help - they get no word of appreciation. It is all abstracted away behind "They" - "why They did not fix roads?", "They healed my child from cancer", "They produced enormous GDP". This is the opposite of "my neighbor took my wife to the hospital when her waters broke and my car broke too", "our neighborhood resurfaced our road".
In fact... The same thoughts probably apply to most modern and developed countries, as most of them has a significant amount of socialistic elements already...
This is a very interesting idea. I've been thinking that one of the big problems with government today is that most people do think of it as a 'they' instead of an 'us', but I think the reason is more complex than personal relationships being broken.
At the core, whatever the reason for it, government is not, in fact, a 'they'; it is an 'us.' Many of us insist otherwise, and give many, many different reasons for it, but at it's core government is the mechanism we have for figuring out how to live together.
I don't have proof of this, but I suspect that any other mechanism we come up with is going to inevitably converge towards becoming a government.
I totally agree and trying to point it out all the time when I hear "they". But the reality is - when some person sits looooong away in Washington and makes some rules - they are hardly connected to the people they represent. Smaller and more compact governing bodies I think would resolve the problem, where we would still get a benefit of a dedicated person working on organizing life in the region, and yet not too disconnected to be called "they".
> But the reality is - when some person sits looooong away in Washington and makes some rules - they are hardly connected to the people they represent.
I don't think that is the reality. I think that is the illusion that shelter in. It's easy to see them as completely disconnected, but they're not really. Many times, this is a result of having to deal with much greater complexity the larger the scale, and people not taking the time to understand or appreciate that complexity.
We live in a globally connected world. There is no way to get rid of that complexity. Smaller governing bodies might solve some problems, but they will also create problems when considered at a global scale.
In tech people embrace micro-services despite complexity trying to arrange things to work. We do it because this way we are forced to deal with it, to negotiate between teams and services. We embrace that complexity and uncover it.
In governing we are trying to cover up this complexity with moving decision making into higher levels. Such covering up does not solve complexity, it just makes it look like it is not happening, but it is still out there.
I don't think it makes it look like it's not happening, but it is easier to manage some things at higher levels than others. If you're a business, every single governmental entity you have to deal with adds complexity into the system. You need to keep track of various sales taxes, regulations, etc. Increasing the number of jurisdictions you have to deal with increases the complexity quite a bit.
To reduce that complexity, you might get a lot of jurisdictions to band together and decide 'hey, businesses must interact with us via this standard way we all agree on." Congratulations, they have just created a government.
I think managing this complexity is incredibly difficult, no matter which strategy is used, and I don't think there is any one strategy available that solves these problems.
In some cases, it makes sense to keep the jurisdictions as small as possible. In other cases, the opposite is true, especially when considering things related to the Problem of the Commons and the like.
In fact... The same thoughts probably apply to most modern and developed countries, as most of them has a significant amount of socialistic elements already...