On American Unity

It’s hard not to have strong feelings about politics in the United States right now. And while I try not to be a “monitoring the situation” guy, both for my own mental health and to avoid falling for some narrative fallacy, I still can’t help viewing, chatting about, or even being directly affected by politics.

From all this, there seem to be two related conclusions. Whether it be the federal government shutdown, the OMB funding freezes, or requiring corporations to sue the federal government to be paid back for illegal tariffs, there is 1) a drive to privatize previously public services and 2) a push to rely on state or local governments for public services, both due to mistrust of the federal government.

An example where I end up seeing this a bit more firsthand is through my roommate’s startup, Starlight. Starlight is like TurboTax (another potentially great example) for government benefits. Their north-star metric is increasing the percentage of people who receive the benefits they qualify for. Through a bit of information osmosis, I saw what happened to the benefits situation when the federal government shut down: fragmented benefits systems among state governments, local food drives, and private companies like Starlight stepping into new niches, e.g. food drive aggregation.

The Virtues of Localism

Looking at this from a libertarian perspective, one could see a silver lining in this shift. The federal government is so big that it’s not hard to imagine why so many people are apathetic toward it and why a local or state solution could inspire more enthusiasm. Similarly, large bureaucratic organizations don’t have the same incentive structure as private companies; e.g. a bureaucrat in the State Department isn’t likely to face consequences when something goes wrong, but a private company will react to a change in the market when something goes wrong. Put differently, private companies can have skin in the game in ways large bureaucratic organizations do not. All this being said, what I’ll call the “shake-up” going on in the federal government right now could mean better, cheaper, and more agile services for citizens if local and state governments capitalize on the opportunity. Centralized systems can be fragile, so in theory there’s some benefit to delegating things.

JOIN, or DIE

Clearly, though, there’s some benefit to unity and centralization; otherwise, we wouldn’t have fought a civil war over it. So let’s unpack the pros. While the cost of living varies depending on where you live, it makes a lot of sense to have a national floor in cases like minimum wage, Social Security, SNAP, etc. States trying to incentivize businesses to move there (e.g. Texas incentivizing California companies/startups) can’t lower minimum wages below the national standard to do so, just like they can’t go below workplace safety standards, i.e. OSHA. This, in part, goes into creating an “American” identity. Part of that identity is what the United States exports around the world. Americans can work internationally and expect similar standards, and vice versa.

I would argue the above is secondary, though, to the main motivator for a strong, unified, unfucked national government: security. And I don’t just mean protection from external military threats. Looking at Europe, the European Union struggles to regulate and control large multinational corporations, whether they be American or otherwise. Germany or Spain can try to regulate companies like Google or Apple, but other than USB-C ports, it’s an uphill battle. Armin Ronacher wrote about some of Europe’s problems, and I think it’s worth considering his arguments from the perspective of an American who does not want their country to fall into the same trap (e.g. multinational Chinese corporations terrorizing Virginia or California without proper resistance). Basically, unity isn’t about agreeing with everyone’s politics; it’s about acknowledging that the “United” part of the USA is the thing keeping the “States” relevant.

The Ugly

While the debate between equity and federalism, and between centralized and decentralized power, is very real and has valid arguments on either side, there are current administrative decisions and execution strategies that are unarguably bad. For example, forcing companies to sue for tariff reimbursements, rather than issuing automatic reimbursements, and then suing every law firm that offers to help ruins any confidence in the rule of law. Uneven or poor enforcement of a law is worse than not having a law at all. This is a well-documented sin:

The executive branch’s job is to execute and enforce laws, and while there are plenty of ways to interpret laws, there ought to be an extremely low tolerance for uneven enforcement. There is plenty of precedent in US history for presidents delegating and decentralizing issues to the states without ruining the national government. Midterms are coming up; perhaps we can shake things up.