The European Tribune is a forum for thoughtful dialogue of European and international issues. You are invited to post comments and your own articles.
Please REGISTER to post.
If you want to vest enough power with local warlords that they are able to offer effective protection from malicious central warlords, then you will not have electricity.
Because your local regions won't share the same set of rules and dispute resolution systems which enable trade. Which means you will be unable to draw upon a supply chain (of both commodities and technical specialists that you cannot feasibly train at the local level) robust enough to sustain industrial production. And even if by some miracle you have the raw materials readily at hand, and you are willing to expend a disproportionate amount of effort training specialists, you will not be able to deploy the products of advanced industry into a large enough market to recoup the fixed costs of establishing the industrial production and supply chain.
Now, if you are talking about localism in the sense of the local authority being empowered to support bottom-up initiatives, then that's perfectly fine and proper. But it's not a bottom-up, local system of governance. It's a top-down, centralist system of governance which leaves room for local, bottom-up initiatives.
The key difference, and the way you tell the difference, between the two is that in the latter system the center can kill any local initiative that is deemed seriously contrary or disruptive to the center's planning or interests. (Imagine, if you will, a local authority establishing an excise on non-locally produced products. This is something the center will come down on like a ton of bricks.)
- Jake Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.
by gmoke - Nov 28
by gmoke - Nov 12 7 comments
by Oui - Dec 2
by Oui - Dec 113 comments
by Oui - Dec 14 comments
by gmoke - Nov 303 comments
by Oui - Nov 3012 comments
by Oui - Nov 2838 comments
by Oui - Nov 278 comments
by Oui - Nov 2511 comments
by Oui - Nov 24
by Oui - Nov 221 comment
by Oui - Nov 22
by Oui - Nov 2119 comments
by Oui - Nov 1615 comments
by Oui - Nov 154 comments
by Oui - Nov 1319 comments
by Oui - Nov 1224 comments
by gmoke - Nov 127 comments
by Oui - Nov 1114 comments
by Oui - Nov 10