A centralised
administration
refers to the concept of managing all of the affairs of the country
from the level of the federal government. That is, there are no
regional (i.e. state) or local (i.e. town/city/shire) governments.
There are only regional and local branches of the federal government and federal portfolios/departments
within each region and town. However, a centralised administration
does not mean that there won't be any variety or different ideas
(often locally generated) being tried out in different towns and
regions, and even in different workplaces, preschools, schools,
and universities. Nor does it mean that certain laws and policies
will not vary from place to place, and nor does it means that
various issues can't be voted upon locally or regionally. The beauty of a centralised administration is that it can be as flexible as is
required.
Also note that the AEM does not regard a
centralised administration as something that should be set in stone
(at this stage), and we welcome debate on the issue. However, the AEM
does at this stage, consider
that a centralised administration is probably unavoidable in the beginning.
The AEM sees that
a centralised administration
....
- Stops the squabbling between national,
regional, and local governments about who is to pay for what,
and who is to blame.
With a centralised administration, the buck always stops at the
feet of the federal government. Any problem, and any social problem
is the federal government's problem, and any mismanagement is
the federal government's responsibility to correct. There is no
one else to blame, and this also makes the process of demanding
action much easier for the citizens.
- Allows us to better
and more equally manage environmental
restoration and our land and water resources.
- Reduces
irresponsible actions that are motivated by the sibling rivalry between the various regional
and local governments. With regional and local governments, there is the tendency to measure
one's performance against other, often neighbouring regional and
local governments' performances.
While this may not end entirely, with a centralised administration overseeing the process, it can't be converted into irresponsible action
in an attempt to look as impressive, or more impressive than
other
regional
and local governments.
- Allows us to keep better statistics, and
more uniformity in the way that statistics are produced.
- Reduces conflicts of power. Currently,
winning local, regional, or national government is all about winning
power to influence law and policy-making, and each leader of each
government usually hopes to exploits this power to change the society in
accordance to their own desires and philosophies and/or those
of the people that their political party represents. And because the elected heads of regions and towns are
relatively autonomous by definition, they may be able to undermine
the culture and constitution that the federal AEM government it trying
to install and manage. The federal government could even find
itself pleading for the cooperation or permission from these local
and regional heads in order to enact these social changes (as is
often the case currently). In other words, a centralised
administration is more logical, and it helps to keep everyone on
the same side, going in the same direction, and working together
(Our contemporary power-seeking political system serves to keep
people on different sides and inhibiting the actions of each
other).
- Allows for more representation of ideas
and philosophies in the policy, law, and decision-making
processes. Just as there are many conflicting
ideas and desires going on within one person's mind, so too will
there be representation of many conflicting ideas, philosophies,
and desires
within the centralised administration of the nation (and much
more than we have now, because in our current political system,
we usually only have a few viewpoints being represented, and usually
only the viewpoints of the two major political parties receive
media attention, which is why the public's perception on any issue
is extremely limited). Unfortunately, in both capitalist and
Egalitarianist societies, it is too impractical to provide a diverse representation of different
viewpoints within each regional and local territory, and it is
unnecessary when it can be provided for the whole society at the
federal level.
- Because being a member of a regional or
local government within an Egalitarian society (if we had them)
cannot be exploited for material or social gain, most power-seeking
people will see no point for their existence, and neither does
the AEM. That is, when we take power and wealth out of the
equation, it's hard to find any advantage or any problem that is
overcome by having regional and local governments. It's just another way
of becoming a big fish in a smaller pond.
- Serves to prevent
governmental corruption. In the AEM's version of Egalitarianism,
the potential for corruption is decreased significantly because
all transfers of capital go through, and are monitored by the
federal treasury, which allows us to focus our attention when monitoring for corruption. This makes
corruption an much easier to prevent, forever. When the
control of money is divided up into regional and local
governments, there are now thousands of places where corruption
can occur, and this make the task of monitoring and preventing
corruption much more demanding and doomed to fail regularly.
- Allows for high flexibility. If you
have not read it yet, the AEM intends to offer workers the opportunity to vary
their
working week or day into two or more different occupations. For the majority
of people entering the workforce, it will be a normal occurrence
to divide the working week or day into physical and non-physical
work. While this will undoubtedly be organised at
a local level, many other cultural work programs will involve
higher levels of organisation because many workers will move to
different locations at different times of the year. For example,
we may need construction workers in rural areas, but because of
the heat, we may decide to concentrate this construction work
during the winter months, while reducing construction work in
the cities. Such a cultural program requires much higher levels
of organisation to coordinate residential and occupational movements
throughout the whole country. Another issue associated with flexibility
is that a centralised administration allows us to cater more to
the needs of people better. For example, many young people between
the ages of 13 and 21 find themselves stranded in small rural
towns. The AEM regards this age period as an important time for
social development, and will try to move these young people to
more populated towns for this reason (for at least half of the
time), although we understand that not everybody will desire such
a service. And depending upon whether the young person lives with
his/her parents, is a school student, or works, we will try to
provide a range of alternatives to cater to this human need (unlike
your contemporary leaders are capable of, or would even dream
of doing). We could even move whole families around on a
seasonal basis. Once again, such a cultural program requires much higher
levels of organisation to coordinate residential and occupational
movements throughout the whole country.
- Radically reduces all the
problems associated
with democracy (which we briefly detail in our 'The
Democratic and Undemocratic Nature of the AEM's Egalitarian
Society' web page), which are multiplied a few
thousand times due to the number of local and regional democratically
elected governments.
- Important
information about people is not restricted to regional or local
centres, but becomes available throughout Australia.
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