[EM] Geographical districts

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

James Gilmour wrote:
> Raph Frank > Sent: Friday, September 05, 2008 12:35 PM

>> Also, what is optimal for "Should we use subsidiarity to make
>> decisions?".
> 
> I don't think this question can be answered as you have asked it.
> Perhaps it would be more appropriate to ask "Do we want our 
> decision-making to be based on the principles of subsidiarity (i.e.
> bottom-up)?"  There are also problems with regard to "optimal". A
> benign dictator might make a more "optimal" decision than any
> democratic group, but on the other hand you could say that that could
> never be "optimal" because it was not democratic.  [As Professor Joab
> (BBC Brains Trust - long ago!) might have said: "It all depends on
> what you mean by 'optimal'"!!]

By the standard of freedom, (real) subsidiarity seems only logical. If 
you're an individual and you do something that has no impact on the rest 
of the world, there would appear, by that measure, to be little point 
for the rest of the world to interfere. If we make this more general, 
then if you're a group and you do something that has no impact on anyone 
but your group, then there would be little point for those outside to 
interfere.

There are two problems with this, though. Some may use logic similar to 
the potential way of arguing for a temporary regime of enforced equality 
  of minorities or sexes in an assembly: to interfere, if shortly, with 
the dynamics of the system, one can quickly redirect it towards a 
direction that it would naturally find but that would take significantly 
longer had you not interfered.

The second is that, for some actions, it's not easy to say who will be 
influenced. All may be, because we are social animals. Another argument 
I've heard, regarding public services, is that if you do something that 
would usually only affect yourself, but that you need a public service 
because of this, then that's a concern of all. For instance, in a nation 
with public healthcare, some may argue that if you do risky things, that 
concerns society in general since you could end up getting hurt and need 
the public health service, which the entire society maintains.


In conclusion, it appears that optimization for any given programmatic 
sense of optimality can just as well expose edge or corner cases that 
one didn't think of, as give what was intended. Still, as long as one 
keeps the above in mind, I think subsidiarity is a good idea.