Comment by txrx0000
4 months ago
One step at a time. First the citizens ought to ensure that their own government is actually aligned with them.
4 months ago
One step at a time. First the citizens ought to ensure that their own government is actually aligned with them.
Citizens aren't even aligned with each other.
Citizens don't need to be aligned with eachother, but they should ensure that the government is aligned with the citizenry as a whole. Everyone should have the freedom to polarize in different directions and hold different opinions as each individual sees fit. The government is only supposed to implement the laws that most people want in common, not enforce alignment of opinion in the populace (that's an authoritarian regime). If people are allowed to freely misalign, then they'll be misaligned in different directions, and their conflicting wishes will cancel eachother out like random noise when they vote, leaving only what most people want in common to be written into law.
What is the 'citizenry as a whole'?
As a simple example, Finland's national government just passed a smartphone ban in schools. That's fine by the criteria you brought up, but I think it's utterly moronic.
Not because I disagree with the Finnish people, or their elected representatives on the issue itself: that's for them to decide. I disagree that this should be handled at the national level at all!
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity
> Subsidiarity is a principle of social organization that holds that social and political issues should be dealt with at the most immediate or local level that is consistent with their resolution. The Oxford English Dictionary defines subsidiarity as "the principle that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed at a more local level".[1] The concept is applicable in the fields of government, political science, neuropsychology, cybernetics, management and in military command (mission command). The OED adds that the term "subsidiarity" in English follows the early German usage of "Subsidiarität".[2] More distantly, it is derived from the Latin verb subsidio (to aid or help), and the related noun subsidium (aid or assistance).
In this case, I lack the imagination to see the reason why this issue couldn't have been handled at eg the city level, so that the good people of Oulo get the policy they want, and the good people of Helsinki get the policy they want.
Or even lower: there's no reason to even go as high as the city level, each school individually can decide what they want.
But just to give you the limits of subsidiarity here: I can see why you'd want to have a unified policy per school instead of per teacher or per class: the logistics are easier, and the individual teacher doesn't have to use their own judgement and authority on this. (Of course, individual schools should be free to let the teachers decide, if that's the policy they want.)
You can surely create your own example that cover more familiar territory, eg legal drinking ages in the US (which are ostensibly a matter for the states, but have been hijacked by the central government.)
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