Governance Redefined, Part II

GOVERNANCE REDEFINED

 PART II. THE GOVERNMENT OF POSTCAPIA

 Were the writer to claim the invention of an entirely new and presumably improved form of government, the reader would have good reason to question his presumption.  And it would only deepen his skepticism to learn that the author of these alleged revelations boasts so little qualification in his chosen subject-neither a whit of education nor experience in political science much less professional recognition.  But that is not the case.  I make no such claim.  I have invented nothing.

My sole function is that of a copyist in the manner of the Renaissance artists who used the camera obscura to project an optical image of the subject they wished to paint and then selectively trace on paper whichever of its outlines suited their artistic purpose.  Following their example, I have elected to utilize the same apparatus with the same intention of putting something down on paper.  My purpose, however, is different than that of those venerable artists.  Whereas their eventual goal was a fine oil painting, mine is the delineation of a new form of government.

Whereas the Renaissance artists would no doubt have been content with an attractive piece of scenery such as a Roman arch that might have stood a mere few centuries, I needed a subject that was even more beautifully engineered and better time tested-one proven to have survived every imaginable condition over timeless epochs.  Where could such a subject be found?  Rather readily, actually.  It is, in fact, one with which the reader himself is, certainly, already intimately acquainted.  It is, in fact, none other than the form that greets him in the morning mirror and then obliges him to tote it around for the rest of the day.  I am speaking, of course, of that package of miraculous processes that comprise the human body.

With the projection of this wondrous figure at hand, I can now go about tracing whichever of its various parts might be usefully incorporated into a governmental structure.  At this point, the reader, although sharing, perhaps, my admiration for the human body, might still question this choice of subject matter.  At first thought, there would seem to be little resemblance between it and the pompous halls of government.  But I would ask him to think again.  Functionally, the two have much in common, do they not?  The human body gathers external data from all its sensory organs and internal data from all its attached parts, merges the two streams of information, considers alternate courses of action based on that flow of data, selects the most promising solution, instructs the body as to how best execute that action, and then monitors the effectiveness of the solution.  In short, both our body and our government strive to optimally enlist human intelligence in the execution of physical tasks.  Substitute ‘body politic’ for ‘body’ in what I’ve just said and you have my aspiration for an effective government.  From a performance standpoint, then, they are two of a kind, outward appearance notwithstanding.

I would hope that whatever reasonable doubts the reader may have with respect to the author’s expertise do not unreasonably lead him to question that of nature’s.  After all, has she not demonstrated her genius in organizing living things of every size and description-ant colonies, flocks of geese, herds of elephants, and the like-not to mention her success in harmonizing the forces governing quarks and quasars and everything in-between?  Why shouldn’t we then rejoice in finding so close to home a near-perfect model for government in her marriage of intelligence and muscle?  Why not take advantage of the administrative techniques that nature has spent millions of years perfecting?  Why not extrapolate her state-of-the-art system for governing individual human behavior and use it to govern the behavior of groups?

There are limitations to this approach, for we have but an imperfect understanding of how nature’s systems govern the human body.  Nevertheless we can, I believe, greatly profit from those unmistakable features we are familiar with.  Witness the effective medications our scientists have created by copying certain plant and animal characteristics despite having little understanding of their underlying function.

With these observations out of the way, let me get back to my camera obscura, plant a stationary human figure in front of it, and see what can be made from the projected image.  My approach will be to make a cursory study of its prominent features and then take up their individual features in greater detail to create a portrait of the estimable-albeit imaginary-government of Postcapia.

THE INDISPENSIBLE BRAIN

Nature has not only found it necessary to concentrate our species’ mental activity in a single organ, she has devoted extraordinary effort to progressively expand its information gathering and processing powers.  So ardently and effectively has she pursued this endeavor that the human brain might arguably be regarded as her finest masterpiece.

It goes without saying, then, that an organization modeled after the human body must, perforce, contain an instrument analogous to the brain-that is to say, government.  This rules out the possibility of a political system possessed of no brain at all-anarchy, if you will-but it is by no means an argument for an over large one.  True, the brain is absolutely essential for the administration of our bodies, but it is also a form of overhead that saps resources from our working parts such as sensory organs, bone, muscle, etc.  Our evolutionary development has, therefore, been obliged to strike a balance between what can be afforded for intellectual activity and the physical prowess needed for gathering food, self defense, finding a mate, and other survival essentials.  This finely-honed compromise has resulted in a brain that weighs only about three pounds-some two percent of body weight-and consumes no more than eighteen percent of our blood flow.   Compare that with the twenty-five percent plus of the gross national product that’s eaten up by our gargantuan federal government while accomplishing, in makeshift fashion, only a fraction of the brain’s functions.  Needless to add, the Postcapian government faithfully adheres to nature’s guidelines in this regard.

THE IMMOBILIZED BRAIN

In her design of our brains, nature resisted whatever temptation she may have had to incorporate muscles such as those that might tip a male’s hat or flounce a female’s hair.  To wit, she has seen to it that the brain has all the prowess of a bowl of Jello.  Apparently, this was the best way she knew how to achieve a stronger, more competitive body overall.

Being true to its model, Postcapia’s government is likewise incapacitated.  It has none of the operative divisions that burden our political apparatus such as police and fire de­partments, educational facilities, highways, national parks, water and sanitation projects, not to mention mili­tary and foreign ser­vice estab­lish­ments.  Likewise dispensed with are what we label “programs” such as farm subsidies, mortgage purchases, health ser­vices, student loans, so­cial ser­vices, and banking deposit insurance.  In sum, Postcapia’s government is solely devoted to data processing, decision mak­ing, regulating, and creative thinking.  And, as in the case of the human body, the end result is an overall organization that is vastly more economical, more manageable, more flexible, and more effective.

Less obvious, but important as well, is the ability of Postcapia’s government to self-correct.  It is obvious that a government such as ours cannot engage in operations and, at the same time, be expected to impartially monitor those same operations.  Consider what would happen in the event a bridge, built under our government’s direct auspices, were to collapse.  One certain outcome would be that a contentious and interminable series of investigative panels and law suits would arise between federal highway engineers, the state testing agency, private contractors, county inspectors, and the material suppliers-all blaming one another for the disaster.  Finally, a scapegoat would be identified, some cosmetic re­form introduced, and the governmental entities involved not only al­lowed to continue to operate as before, but in all likelihood, rewarded with larger appropriations.  What most certainly would not happen would be a genuine improvement in public safety.  Not so in Postcapia.  Expert analysis by impartial government engineers would determine the cause of the bridge failure, identify the malefactors, and leave it up to the private sector to sort things out.

The argument could be raised by some in this country that operations such as policing, fire protection, and the military services are simply too essential to consign to anything but governmental control.  Postcapians would respond by saying that literally every prod­uct and service in an integrated economy can rightfully be construed as “essential,” but, if so, that is the best reason for keeping them out of the hands of government-demonstrably the worst of all man­agers.

THE DIFFERENTIATED BRAIN

The determination of Postcapians to mimic the human brain led them to introduce other changes to their government that we would consider novel.  Of special interest to them was the brain’s division into specialized areas, particularly the  fundamental demarcation between its lower and upper parts-that is to say, between the parts devoted to voluntary activities (reasoning, invention, sensory perception, initiation of action, etc.) and those associated only with its autonomic functions (regulation of body temperature, heart rate, blood chemistry, etc.).

Applying the brain’s segmentation to their governmental organization, the Postcapians cleaved it into two distinct halves: one, they call the “Autonoment,” involved exclusively with the routine administration of governmental services (regulation of utilities, highway planning, flood control, law enforcement, etc.)  and the other, the “Volitionment,” exclusively engaged with voluntary matters (planning, drafting of new legislation, etc.)

THE LEADERLESS BRAIN

A final observation is in order before we wheel away our optical device.  No where to be seen in the projected image of the brain, however intensely it is scrutinized,  is a presidential cell exercising its authority over cells or, for that matter, a group of legislative cells promulgating instructions hither and yon.  Somehow the brain is capable of decision making without these contrivances.  It does so by linking ad hoc groups of cells together which then pass on information to other linkages until a determination is reached.

Following the dictates of their parsimonious model, the founders of Postcapia’s government likewise disposed of what we would consider to be the very core of governmental apparatus-its administration and legislature.  In doing so, they were further motivated by their distrust of centralized authority whether circumscribed by a presumed balance-of-power arrangement or no-noting that, time and time again throughout history supposedly legalized authority managed to acquire autocratic illegal powers with always grim consequences.  In lieu of a deliberative body, the Postcapian founders followed the brain’s deliberative methodology by allowing anyone to initiate a proposal for a new law and then passing the proposal around for comment and resolution.

THE PERIPHERAL BRAIN

The human brain does not connect directly to either the autonomic or voluntary functions it controls.  Instead its messages are funneled through a series of specialized bundles of nerves that, in turn, issue the actual orders that operate the body’s machinery.

Whereas Postcapia’s government cannot begin to match the sophistication of the network that nature has endowed us with, it does its best to match the network’s basic design-that of interposing teams that intercept “bottom-up” information and convert it into actionable orders to the private sector.  As will be seen, the intermediate bodies for the Autonoment and the Volitionment are not at all alike in composition but their function is much the same.

FINAL WORD

Before leaving this brief description of Postcapia’s government, it might be well to remind the reader that it is but one element in Postcapia’s grand design modeled after nature’s crowning achievement-a system that embraces all her disparate inventions and allows them to work together harmoniously.  Emulating nature in this regard, the Postcapians have adopted a set of metarules covering an overarching coherent system-a consilience, if you will-in which the economy meshes smoothly with government, government with religion, religion with the social sciences, the social sciences with the economy, and so on.  In short, their government should be appreciated not so much as a free standing entity but rather as but one more piece in their cultural framework.

Now let’s see how the rudimentary features of the brain we have discussed have asserted themselves when incorporated in the working machinery of Postcapia’s government.