MNY10 - 1/4 - On Political Culture, Home Rule, and the Hierarchy of Government
Notes from MNY10: Introduction to Abundance Politics Week 1
1: How to Build a Better Political Culture:
The first 4 essays of MNY10 focus on political culture. Specifically, how our current political culture is failing to serve us, and how we can use social etiquette in our social circles to fix it.
The anti-politics meme:
By default, people say "politics" like it is a bad word
“Politics” refers only to the negative parts of government, but not what it CAN be. This creates a massive negativity bias toward working in politics at all, leading our most ambitious and patriotic citizens away from doing good politics. This creates a negative feedback loop.
The solution is…
Taking politics seriously:
"Politics" is a domain of knowledge about systems, like "Physics"
There is no reason to think of either Politics OR Physics as inherently negative. They are both entire worlds of systems worth understanding deeply and using for good, deserving decades of serious and considered thinking.
Taking politics seriously requires the same type of optimistic idealism needed to take physics or chemistry seriously.
The anti-concreteness meme:
Anti-concreteness is the avoidance of knowing about anything exactly. It is avoiding actual facts in favor of speculation and impression and “well, I think…”.
The is-ought Political Trap:
the tendency to disproportionately discuss what ought to be true of politics, rather than what is true of politics.
Proper systems engineering can't start until you understand the laws of physics. (you use well-understood laws to engineer systems!)
Similarly, proper politics can't start until you have command of the law. (you use well-understood law to do politics!)
2: Do Cities Govern Themselves?
Not normally, no. So…
What Powers do local (municipal or county) governments have in the United States?
The short answer: NONE, unless they are EXPLICITLY granted that power by the state: "any reasonable doubt by the court as to whether a power has been granted will be ruled against the local government" (Home Rule, Ballotpedia)
But this means complex local governments are extremely weak, making them inefficient, reliant on the state, and preventing self-sufficiency. So how did states solve this?
HOME RULE - when a state grants local governments access to powers without the need for permission from a higher authority.
Think about the inverse concepts of a "blacklist" and "whitelist". (These twin concepts are a recurring theme in government.)
By default (called general law), local municipalities have no power, unless they are listed. This is a whitelist approach. Everything is blocked, except a list of specified affordances.
According to Home Rule, local municipalities have access to self-governance powers unless they are expressly forbidden. This is a blacklist approach. Everything is allowed, except a list of specified affordances.1
3: Higher Powers and The Hierarchy of Authority:
The Law that Governs Me, in one chart:
The law is Fractal (kinda). There are 3 main levels that matter for many Americans: local/city, state, and federal.
There are 4 types of law at each of these levels:
Constitutional Law
Supreme self-authoring law that serves to constitute a new Sovereign Government (note that, though I place the NYC Charter as a form of constitutional law, it is not actually a self-authoring document)
Statutory Law (aka. Legislation + Local Law)
Law passed by a legislative body or referendum.
Administrative Law (aka. "Rules and Regulations”)
Rules set out by Administrative Agencies to carry out the details of Statutory Law, as specified in the Administrative Procedures Act
Case Law (aka. common Law)
Interpretative law based on judicial statements
That’s all! By the end of the class, I’ll also have notes for you on the U.S. Constitution + a number of spaced-repetition decks for some of the basic elements of the class (like memorizing the NYC Charter, Admin Code, and Rules chapters).
The blacklist vs. whitelist architecture choice is a common design consideration in software systems, too. Efficiently engineering the law is a lot like efficiently engineering software projects. And like in software projects, there are similar tradeoffs.
Typically, blacklists are better for flexibility -- they are "permissionless", and therefore much cheaper to maintain or manage in complex, dynamic environments. Meanwhile, whitelists are better for guarantees of safety, but they are more expensive because they require constant maintenance to handle any unexpected circumstances in a changing environment.
If you face a lot of unique situations in a dynamic environment (like, when governing a city), choose blacklists. If you need rigid, deterministic performance in static, determined circumstances, whitelists are good.