AEER's are Autonomous Economic and Environmental Regions which are at the level of government that people really care about. (more or less a core city and its supporting region.)
- Autonomous in the sense that - each AEER is responsible for its own existence - both financially and environmentally.
Currently we have:
Federal Governments: The are very important to keep us from being invaded by other Federal governments and for printing money, taking most of our money, waving a nice flag, doing important things at the United Nations, making us feel superior to other nations, doing National things, going to space, having large grant programs to large businesses running large losses for long periods of time, and many of the things that most of us aren’t really involved in.
At the opposite end of the spectrum we have - what are quaintly known as “municipalities”
These are the governments that do such inconsequential things as move the snow, fix the potholes, remove the garbage, supply us water, remove our sewage, police our streets, supply public transportation (or not), supply us electricity (in some places), take our money,
and - NOT run our local schools, local hospitals, or make any local decisions
For that we have Provincial (or State) governments - which are holdovers from medieval fiefdoms to small to be countries and too big to be cities.
In Canada (and the US?) these governments have little taxing power, decide everything, beg the Federal governments for money and launder the funds through to the people who actually do things - the municipalities. They also put up trade barriers so that people who want things have to pay more.
We all understand intuitively that the government that really makes a difference to our lives - is the municipal government - or rather the collection of municipal governments that make up the areas we work, shop, entertain ourselves, go to school, hope they have an ER at the hospital, chase the bad guys, persuade business to come to town, and so on. Unfortunately these municipalities are hamstrung by those in the middle whose main role in government is pretending to offer services that the municipality actually provides and laundering and skimming funds from the federal governments - who have claimed for themselves first call on everybody’s income. In fact the whole purpose of higher levels of government sometimes appears to be the collecting of funds for one group of people to re-allocate to different groups of people as they see fit.
However - it is obvious that people who are the federal or provincial (state) governments, actually LIVE in a municipality - although in some cases their role is to control the lives of people in municipalities where they don’t live.
It is suggested that aside from the war thing, and some large scale coordination activities for things like airspace, airwaves and looking good at the UN - the MOST IMPORTANT governments are the collections of villages that make up every municipality - large or small. In fact these should be the SENIOR governments - as they supply all the folks to the other levels anyway.
It is postulated that even for regions that are considered to be wards of the provincial and federal governments - that the money extracted from the citizens is probably more than the sum of the benefits that are so smugly dribbled down to the local area - if only due to the enormous overheads of the upper two levels of government - which in face tend to be municipalities full of civil servants whose job it is to bestow funding on lower levels of hierarchy. Which was obtained by taxing those tiers in the first place.
Consider a government “totally” responsible for its own budgets, the welfare of its own citizens and also for ensuring that it cleans up its own dirt. The natural boundaries for these governments are those determined by geography, transportation and to a lesser degree culture. The “one hour drive” rule is a good starting point - with villages halfway between voting one way or the other - or if they like - paying taxes to both sides.
It is also suggested that from the time a person is born they have an open account with their home AEER in which all of their public expenses accrue until such time as they start paying taxes - which go directly against that account. If they move permanently to a different AEER - that account moves with them. If they use services from a different AEER (such as a hospital visit) that AEER charges those services to their account at a non-resident rate. These accounts must be paid off before one dies - or they won’t be allowed to. (Other policies are possible.)
The stink and dirt and poison that an AEER produces must be dealt with within the boundary of the AEER - eventually. (That’s the Environmental part). For very large cities - credits for pollution (all kinds) must be purchased from neighbouring areas - but this should be limited.
AEER’s which traditionally bleed citizens to other areas once they become taxpayers - will be relieved of the debts of those citizens - while the receiving AEERs not only get a productive taxpayer - but their accumulated debt account as well.
An AEER that is not viable should be allowed to return to nature - with areas too sparse to be serviced be considered wilderness - i.e.you can live there if you want but don’t expect a school bus - or anything else.
lots of room for discussion;
This project is awaiting additional resources.
addendum (old stuff)
This site is organized rather arbitrarily by the author and with no organizing principle other than some structure is better than no structure and the arguments will have to be re-traced time and time again by others – hopefully to arrive at the same conclusions.
So where to first? – it depends upon what catches your eye in the following links;
What is the most “natural” form of government given the level of current information and transpiration technology and infrastructure?
How can smaller communities survive?
Are some cities too large?
How do we get there from here?
Where do the Army bases go?
What is “Wilderness”?
Who pays?
What are “personal accounts”?