The Instinctual WHY of big Centralized government explained:

GraceG

[GraceG]

Why is there always such a push towards "federal programs to solve local problems"?

Many of the Federal programs that are touted to solve programs affecting individuals should be on the state level or local level and not the federal level.

The money is more "accountable" that way.

The big lie about small L "libertarian" is that they're only for anarchy govt, when in actuality they are more for "Distributed Government"

Why is this?

That is because a lot of localities are no longer vested in local control of their own government as there is a constant human nature to "appeal to a higher power" in order to shirk local responsibility to force a higher level on the hierarchy to "solve their problems"

This slowly devolves any form of government that has power distributed through it eventually to a more centralized control model where local politicians are just powerless bureaucrats and all real power is shifted to a group of national level un-vested un-elected bureaucrats.

The more this happens the faster it accelerates until all the centralized power is a bloated, unaware, and very inefficient.

Suddenly more money is needed for only marginal results and the machine must feed on more and more of the citizen's productivity.

Those initial problems that would like they would be easily solved by a small amount of money and time soon become eternal institutions that must be staffed with lots of paperwork to be shuffled daily.

It's not long before these institutions look for more "problems" to "solve".

The more problems the more job security there is to be had, the more incentive to expand their mission statement while the original problem is only dealt with around the edges, only making enough progress to justify existence and most importantly justify asking for more resources.

It's not purely a Democrat/Republican problem it is a human problem & what happens when any amount of power distributed, it will work for a generation or two, then it will slowly then quickly begin to stack up on the highest tier of the established hierarchy.

Why is man in his nature prone to such behavior?

When man was living in small tribes they would appeal to village elder to solve problems they could not solve themselves.

When the village elder could not solve those problems they would appeal to the "spirits" of nature ( A higher authority ).

Because humans are tribal there is an instinct to appeal to the alpha male for guidance/solutions.

This pattern repeats all through history, let's take a look at our own government's history:

When this country was founded, most affairs that directly affected a person where handled locally. People knew who their local administrators were and would always be able to engage them concerning problems that were directly affecting them. There was no sense of helplessness as they could appeal directly to the town magistrate, county administrator, state representative and any issues usually stopped with the State's Governor if they ever even got that far.etc...

Today, a very disappointing fact is that most people could not even tell you who their city council members are but they can tell you who their Federal Senator or President is and those are the people who actually pay attention to the news! When it comes to spending money, local issues are always included in spending bills passed by federal congress.

Let's take a look at the role of the president through history:

Originally the president's role was seen more as an "chief ambassador" to the rest of the world.

Today his role is seen more as "Chief Administrator" and executive orders are always whipped out to deal with local catastrophes or other issues that were never meant to be dealt with by the office.

It is the federal government's own interest to wrest more power from local, and people deep down feel this and after a while they feel "Why bother if it is going to be overruled federally anyways?"

So as the local power is reduced, local apathy grows to match and the whole trend accelerates. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised at some point if there isn;t a movement to dissolve the states and local municipalities and place them under the direct control of some centralized authority.... for the "sake of the people" who have been so demoralized and apathetic that their only appeal is to the "spirits" of rulers so far above them, they are literally a mythical entity.

[Starboard]

I believe our people are addicted to govt gravy and it will take a catastrophic event to change this.

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I think you are right. Nothing changes hearts and minds like fear and pain (e.g., a painful national economic event, an international conflict, etc.). The proverbial wake up call if you will.