In praise of centralisation.
, (approx.).
Most people who know me in the UK would consider me an advocate of extreme decentralisation of government power. By global standards, I am not. I would stop well short of German, US, or Canadian decentralisation. My ambition for a decentralised Britain is beyond where France is today, but not by much.
Within the UK I argue frequently for the centralisation of power to take avantage of its useful properties. But I do so more quietly than I argue for decentralisation. In this post I'll explain part of why that is.
Centralisation is often better.
Failure to centralise and standardise things can be extremely costly. The USA's failure to standardise the length of a foot across its territory causes huge problems in the construction industry. The National Geodetic Survey map of the problem shows how ridiculous it is.
Local freedoms such as city-level banning of vaping in the USA