2min chapter

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Garett Jones on Democracy (More or Less)

Conversations with Tyler

CHAPTER

Is There a Squeaky Wheel in Switzerland?

Switzerland is incredibly democratic, and it's incredibly functional. Is just a sort of swiss national culture that can't be captured as a sort of lightning in a bottle? Or is it something as simple as the fact that so much of their direct democracy is held at the local, decentralized anton level. What about extreme federalism for more places? Is that a good idea? It is logically possible. But i tend to think that increasing returns are a driving a lot of successes and failures around the world.

00:00
Speaker 1
Isn't there the risk that with an executive you
Speaker 2
can then have a highly visible, direct clash with national ments and maybe the whole thing falls apart. And the whole point of the european council system is to make it vague and amorphous and not so transparent, so you can always kick the can down the road and pretend you agree when you don't. And that's what keeps the whole thing held together. Well,
Speaker 1
this is, this the question right right now, that if they're getting rid of the squeakiest wheel through
Speaker 3
breket, that
Speaker 1
strengthens the case for, i'm having a tighter government among the remaining members.
Speaker 2
Scott sumner says, ask garrett about swi land, the world's most democratic nation by far. This
Speaker 1
ust a great question. People have brought this up to me over the ears, right? So, switzerland is incredibly democratic, and it's incredibly functional. And a part of the it's hard to tell, is it just that the swiss are different? Is just a sort of swiss national culture that a can't be o that can't be captured as a sort of lightning in a bottle? Or is it something as simple as the fact that so much of their direct democracy is held at the local, decentralized anton level, right? Sometimes even lower levels, quite a the equivalent of villages levels. So to the extent that itd set that very a low level. That's sounding a lot like the athenian system. And the athenian system of direct democracy working, ok, in groups of five to 20 thousand might be plausible, but that's not the level we're working with. And a, switzerland is not running its national government through direct plebisites in that way. What
Speaker 2
about extreme federalism for more places? Is that a good idea? Right? It is logically possible.
Speaker 4
A, no,
Speaker 1
i tend to think that it's not incredibly desirable for the kind of reasons glenwyle points out that basically, there's a lot of increasing returns in the world, and you want to be able to have a feasible routine government negotiations at the highest level where increasing returns are mattering. And o it's totally plausible to have more federalism, but outside of the problems. I mean, we even see this problems of big cities, right? Where metropolitan statistical areas much better capture the scope of positive and negative externalities. That's where the bargaining should be happening. But yet, we have these city governments and that are much smaller often. And i tend to think that increasing returns are a driving a lot of the successes and failures around the world, positive and negative externalities of human interactions. And so you want to have the the broadest scope possible. Ou you want to have your equivaent of a parliament at the broad scope of negotiation, ecause parliaments are our great cosia negotiation.

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