Forum Post: Change Must Come From a Strong Federal Government, Not Just Local Governments

As a 'democratic republican' in the most traditional sense -- someone who believes that political liberty means freedom from arbitrary power, where arbitrariness increases to the degree that democratic input decreases -- I am very sympathetic to the idea that freedom in the full sense is only possible at the local level, where government is small enough to hear the voice of ordinary citizens. (By the way, this means that I strongly disagree that "all governments are inherently evil;" I firmly believe that truly democratic government is just.)

However, as a proud member of the reality-based community, I am very wary of proposals to weaken the federal government and hand all that power over to local governments. Local politicians are cheaper to buy, and they can be bought wholesale (the fact that there are more of them doesn't impress me as a reason why corporations would have a harder time buying them). While it requires fewer votes to remove local representatives from office, that doesn't make up for two deeper problems with local government: (a) the opposing candidates can be bought too, perhaps even more cheaply than incumbents, and (b) most people are even more ignorant about their local officials than about their representatives in Washington. For these reasons, I'm very skeptical that local government can be made to run better than Washington. Indeed, just look at how things are run in Albany and you'll see how false it is that local is intrinsically better.

Moreover, even if local government could be rid of corruption, that would get us nowhere with respect to the main problem we're facing and what the Occupy Wall Street movement is all about: multinational corporations have too much power and too little accountability. Just imagine what would happen if your local government, cleaned up so it was now corruption-free, passed some great laws regulating the markets and committed to prosecuting anyone who broke these laws, regardless of title or income. Well, the big corporations might have a hard time carrying on business as usual in your hometown at first. But what would keep them from operating as they do now in the next town over? Your local government's laws wouldn't govern their conduct there, and your local courts wouldn't have jurisdiction over them. What's more is, the next town over might give some of these corporations a break and build them a new mall or a fancy office building and grant them special tax exemptions. Then these corporations will be able to offer their products and services at prices so low that even the good folks in your hometown will be driving over across the town limit so that they can save a couple dollars. Soon enough, your hometown will be losing money and jobs while the corporations will be carrying on unharmed. In the end, your local government may just realize that their great laws were great in theory but economically devastating in practice, and vote to repeal them, reverting to square one.

This is not some fictional myth I made up; it's happening all over America today. Local governments are too small and easy to bypass to really stand up to big corporations in a way that matters. What's more is that they don't have the cash flow to support the institutions necessary for regulating and overseeing multinational corporations. That's why we need a strong federal government. Only the federal government has jurisdiction over the whole country, so its laws cannot be bypassed by anyone interested in the American market. Only the federal government has the cash flow to support the institutions necessary for the regulation and oversight of big corporations, and for the prosecution of corporate crime. The Founding Fathers recognized this; that's why they gave congress the power to regulate commerce. Right now, because of the power of corporate money in Washington, the government is unwilling to use that power. That's why we need stronger anti-lobbying laws and campaign finance reform; then we can finally get government working for the people again.

That said, I do also support reforming local government to the greatest extent possible. We need more citizens involved in the democratic process, informing themselves about the issues and participating in local government to ensure that the land we live in is truly free. This is not opposed to reforming Washington as well, but just part of a larger project of ridding the corruptive influence of corporate money from government at all levels.

If it turns out that we make better progress on this anti-corruption program at the local level than at the federal level, then I'm open to empowering communities to do what the federal government refuses to do itself. But that's a contingency plan to be worked out after we assess this movement's successes and failures in the years to come. Right now we need to push for Plan A: strong laws regulating lobbying and campaign finance so that we can finally have the strong democratic government we need if we're going to hold Wall Street accountable.