Decentralization, or localism, is based first on the extended family or household; when grouped with other clans, this became a locality creating laws organically for the benefit of all. On the other hand, centralization occurs when forces far from these self-governing localities use their power and influence to impose their ways on other smaller localities. In such a situation, the former free individuals lose their self-governance and the option to choose from diverse ways of life, therefore becoming tools used to benefit those in power in distant lands under an increasingly conformist policy.
People conceived of governments to benefit them and reflect eternal law, but eventually they become so powerful and efficient they begin to manipulate the people for their own benefit. Democratic states tend to end up centralizing political power in a few oligarchs. The central authority begins to creep in and take over every opposing, competing institution able to impede its progress. They subject local governance, churches, family or tribal ties, local laws, and customs to the majority’s will, imposed by a small minority of powerful government officials. Further, only the largest majority is sovereign. The largest majority at the federal level overrules numerous smaller and more diverse majorities in smaller localities. Democracy inevitably leads to “One Majority to Rule Them All.”
Once power becomes centralized in the majority at the federal level they make super PACs with powerful interest groups. Money and power are transferred between these groups as they increasingly stack the deck in their favor and advertise to the voters they are vital to maintain. For example, pharmaceutical companies and politicians dispose of billions of dollars between them, and they advertise vaccinations and drugs as the eradicator of death and diseases, the saviors of humanity. Your local plumber who provides running water has a more significant impact on your sanitation, health, and lifespan. Still, he lacks advocates in DC so his contribution goes unnoticed. Food, fresh air, and the exercise you get have great importance to your health, but eggs from free-range chickens have no advocate, so pharmaceutical drugs will receive much more praise. They might be great at what they do, costing you considerable sums in “health care” and saving people who are desperately ill. Still, they do not do as well keeping people healthy and preventing them from needing life-saving care in the first place or saving them from the high price going with it.
Through regulations, the oligarchs impede competition from the individual, local authorities, the local shop owner, the farmer, and on down the line. At the same time, they subsidize the more prominent corporations, bankers, politicians, and their allies. Eventually, they manipulate society to fit them to how they can serve the central authority best. Human nature, the mind, and even the soul are all adapted as needed.
In The Demons of Liberal Democracy, Professor of politics Adrian Pabst disdains democracy precisely because it is undemocratic. A small centralized oligarchy dominates political and financial power, their control expanding into totalitarianism. For example, in 2017, 82% of wealth creation was owned by the top 1%. Central power has no competition because it sets the rules for the game. Modern democratic states face no opposition; they dominate the market on governance. If I brought my car to be repaired by the Amish, and they decided to swap out my car for a buggy, it is improbable I would ever return to them for repairs. Yet no matter how poorly the government’s services perform, we are forced to keep returning to the same system; the modern state is the destroyer of diversity. Many Protestants and indeed Catholics, not to mention agnostics and atheists, carry a false idea about Papal Infallibility, believing anything the Pope says is supposed to be infallible. They rightly say this would be a dangerous doctrine. Yet we give this leeway to federal government officials and judges. Anything these secular popes declare becomes legally binding on citizens so long as it is they who pontificate it.
Centralized democracy claims to be for the commoner but is the opposite. The federal is the highest; it dictates to the states, who dictate to the towns and counties, who dictate to the powerless individual. Under kingship, the commoner held the authority when in dispute with his lord; it was up to each citizen and lower lord to decide if the higher levels of the hierarchy had violated his rights.
Further, who gets to decide what the people desire? In reality, it is a small minority of politicians and advocates who decide what the majority desires. If the majority rejects their decision, they utilize propaganda to sway them to conform to their desires over time. The “rule of the majority” is in truth the rule of a small, influential, powerful minority. Christophe Buffin de Chosal observed, “The object of the state is to have the population accept the social, political, and economic system that it imposes…the population conditioned in such a way will spontaneously become disgusted at dissident ideas that the state has designated as enemies of the system in place.” Across the world, Muslim countries produce a devout population desiring Sharia law and secular democracies produce secularists in love with democracy, etc. Every government manipulates the worldview of its people to herd them as it desires.
By having such a vast area to control where the people are not in direct contact, politicians in centralized forms of governance can more easily convince citizens of the virtues of redistributing wealth. In my small town in Vermont it would be challenging to justify forced redistribution because people know each other. They know Dave is a drunk, rarely works, and is horrible with money; they don’t wish to fund or invest in his bad decisions. Likewise, they know Karl works sixty hours a week and is an honest man who gives to the community. They think it is immoral for a politician to provoke Dave to envy by assuring him if he votes for him, he will redistribute Karl’s money. It would be harder for Dave to want to steal from the man he knows who has assisted him in challenging situations. But in a large society, it is much easier to group people into unknown impersonal masses, to vilify and demonize them in order to extract their wealth.
The decentralized Middle Ages provided a democratic and open market approach to governance where true diversity blossomed. Decentralization forces a government to behave and treat its citizens well and avoid corruption, or they risk losing their piggy banks (taxpayers) to another competing realm. In addition, diversity would provide people with a choice and the ability to escape oppression; corrupt governments always seek centralization to avoid the penalty of their corruption.
Further, in a decentralized system, the people can easily remove a tyrant. A king did not have a monopoly on military power like the modern state. Often, his own vassals had more powerful armies than he did. The tyrant was just one man, and a single arrow or drop of poison could remove him. Better yet, he could be ignored. If he attempted to enact oppressive laws, he was by law to be resisted, and the whole of his realm would be against him. A centralized government enacting oppressive laws or exploiting sections of its country often has half the country cheering it on regardless of what it does. Any action taken is declared legal simply by stating it; the rest of the people are powerless in our centralized, hierarchical top-down system.
Political diversity only occurs in a decentralized system. Even today, only Muslims can enter the city of Mecca. I love this. I love it because they take their faith seriously; they believe the city is holy and it should not be tainted by Christians and Jews. I might disagree with their beliefs, but I like their convictions, ability, and freedom to make those decisions.
If we adopted decentralization, so much anger and hatred towards each other would be done away with. We could live with like-minded people governed as we desire. All of “we the people” would benefit. The ones who would suffer would be bureaucrats, and our overlords in Washington DC. Our democratic government pushes us, telling us we need to be more diverse. I think it’s time we tell them to be more diverse; to become more tolerant of different governmental systems and ways of life.
