Political Abstraction and the Modular Republic

Abstraction is a concept in computer science known as that allows a user to access the functions of a computer without knowing the details of its inner workings. This allows a programmer to call functions based on behavioral knowledge without needing to know the implementation details of the function, or a computer-illiterate user to use productivity applications without needing to know how to write computer programs. This is similar to a person being capable of driving a car without needing to know anything about how internal combustion engines work.

The important thing to note from the above examples is that the user of any program, function, or automobile need only understand two things: the function of the object, and how to operate it's user interface. The user need know nothing about the inner workings of the object.

A similar concept could be applied to governments to make life easier for every citizen. Most readers are probably familiar with the concept of a federation - a decentralized union of independent states with a central governing body. In the ideal federal republic, domestic affairs are handled by the local governments, while the central government is limited to foreign affairs and arbitrating disputes between its member states.

In most real-world federations, however, the central government handles many of the domestic affairs of its citizens regardless of whether the local governments have similar programs. In many cases, the central government simply orders local governments to implement programs without providing any funding. This often happens slowly; many nations begin as a federation but slowly devolve into a superstate as the central government takes more and more rights and responsibilities away from local governments and individual citizens.

And once a central government has enough power, it is not difficult to go from republic to empire.

This happens because of the way that federalist systems are designed. Though the authors of the systems often try to limit the power of the central government over the individual citizen, they also write clauses that allow the central government to affect individual citizens in some ways - whatever ways are deemed “necessary and proper” for the functioning of the central government (1). This gives central legislators a loophole, a legal foothold that can be used to transform whatever minor powers they were given over individual citizens into much greater powers over the course of time.

There may be an alternative. Imagine what sort of society might exist in a federal republic with the following conditions:

1. The central government has the power to create laws, regulations, and taxes affecting individual states, but is specifically forbidden to create laws, regulations, or taxes that affect individual citizens. The central government exists for three reasons only: to provide a common defense against aggressors, to peacefully resolve disputes between member states, and to protect individual citizens from oppressive states.

2. The congress of states consists only of a Senate, where each individual state has but one vote. There exists no house of legislature where the number of votes is based on the citizen population of the individual states.

3. The executive officers of the federal level are chosen, not by popular poll, but by the senate.

This will all be justified in time. For now, just imagine what kind of system you would have if you put the ideas above together. I will call this system a “modular” republic.

There are many advantages to such a system:

1. Individual citizens would only have to deal with one level of government.

Many people experience frustration at having to deal with two, three, or five different sets of laws and taxes coming from various local and central governments, many of which overlap or even conflict. In a modular republic, individual citizens would never have to deal directly with the central government, instead leaving it to their state governments to do so. In essence, the central government is “abstracted” through the local so that individual citizens need worry about only one set of laws and taxes. (2)

2. Limiting the central government from making laws or taxes that affect individuals would help to protect the rights of individuals and to keep the central government in check.

If the central government is prevented from creating laws that affect individual citizens, then it can pass no laws regarding gun control, drug abuse, crime, welfare, or any other thing that has to do with the needs or behavior of individuals.

Oppression, if any, will come from the local governments rather than from the central government, which makes it much less difficult to fight or flee. This is where the central government's ability to protect individual citizens from oppressive local governments comes in -- if it were illegal for local governments to inhibit emigration by unhappy citizens, then persons who felt that they were being oppressed in their current state could simply move to another which suited them better (3). This is easier than fleeing the entire federation.

States would be forced to compete against one another for talented labor, as those that had unpleasant laws would drive citizens away. This should act as a check against misguided local activism (4). In effect, you have a free market for political systems.

Note that this is a law regarding the behavior of states, not individuals: it forbids states to do something, namely to prohibit freedom of migration, rather than regulating individual citizen behavior. This demonstrates that the central government can protect individuals from oppressive local governments without making laws that regulate individuals, as the citizens can always vote with their feet (5).

All governments need funding, and the most common method of acquiring this is through taxation. In a modular republic, however, the central government is prohibited from taxing individual citizens. How, then, does it acquire funding?

Simple - it taxes the treasuries of its member states. Individual citizens will only have to pay the taxes of whatever particular state they happen to reside in, without having to worry about paying taxes to the central government. In this way, taxation is “abstracted” through the local government.

Under this system, the central government is likely to have a lot less funding than most modern central governments. If it can only tax states, not individuals, then it gets only a percentage of a percentage. For example: if the average tax rate of members states was ten percent, and the central government’s tax rate was also ten percent, then the central government would receive only ten percent of ten percent - one percent - of individual citizen incomes. This should be sufficient to perform the duties of foreign policy, yet prevent the central government from having enough money to take domestic policy away from the individual states. Even if the central government raised it's tax rate to one hundred percent, it would only receive ten percent of individual citizen's incomes.

3. Having local governments handle all domestic issues leads to a wide variety of communities, which leads to more diversity and choice for individual citizens of the republic and more varied experimentation with domestic policies.

The real conflict in the political world is not between liberals and conservatives, communists and capitalists, or individualists and fascists. There is no reason why all of the above could not live side-by-side peacefully, even profitably. No, the truly fundamental conflict over authority in the world is between the federalists and the anti-federalists -- between those who believe that their vision of government is the right and only way for every person in existence, and those who are content to live and let live.

If domestic issues are handled at the local level, different solutions will be tried in every state. Not only will this make for a grand social experiment to determine which policies are truly effective, but it also means that individuals who find themselves unhappy with the government in their current state of residence can easily find another that is more to their liking. Even if they are determined to stay where they are, they are better off; changing the policies of a local government is much easier than changing those of a large central power.

Here are some justifications of things mentioned earlier.

I. Why a Senate, but no House of Representatives?

1. State representation based on size or population gives larger communities more power than smaller ones. This is something that a modular republic is designed to avoid. The idea is that each community should be independent and self-determining. National representation based on numbers tends to devolve into national populism.

2. Having one vote per community might encourage larger communities to divide themselves up into smaller ones in an attempt to gain more of a voice on the national level. A larger number of smaller communities means a greater variety of political systems throughout the republic, which means more diversity and choice for everyone. The primary idea behind the modular republic is that a large collection of small governments serves humankind much better than a small collection of huge governments.

II. Why should the executive officers of a modular republic be chosen by the congress, rather than by popular poll? Isn't this government without representation?

The election of the executives by the Senate rather than by a nationwide popular vote ensures that each community has an equal voice in deciding who leads the nation. How each individual member state casts its ballot is dependent upon the state in particular; there is no guideline for determining how a state Senator casts votes, whether in the election of the Chief Executive (if such a position even existed) or any other vote. State Constitutions could rule that every Senate vote should be decided by a popular ballot within that state, or they could leave it entirely to the discretion of the chosen representative.

The important thing is that each community gets only one one vote in any central government decision, whether the decision is as pedestrian as an appropriations bill or as important as a chief executive. This is to necessary to prevent large, populous communities from dominating the smaller ones.

Notes:

1. In the United States Constitution, the corrupting factors are the existence of the House of Representatives, the Federal Government's ability to tax individual citizens, and the infamous Interstate Commerce Clause. The latter is mostly a victim of misuse, but the House explicitly allows for a national majoritarianism detrimental to a federal form of government.

2. Unless, of course, their particular state is subdivided into even smaller regions. There is no reason why there could not be a modular republic within a modular republic.

3. This is much different than the situation that currently exists in the United States, where most oppression comes from the top and there is really no better place to go.

4. An economic check - perhaps a more powerful deterrent than the legal threats of force set up as checks and balances in the U.S. Constitution.

5. In fact, a "freedom of migration" clause should probably be present in whatever Declaration of Rights serves as the highest law of the land.