Diversity in a complex system is the best means of survival. In the market place this is called choice. Unfortunately humans tend to think in terms of controlling a resource, and excluding all else. This problem exists over control of the internet.

Rusty Elliot Harold's Cafe Au Lait and Cafe Con Leche have been favourite sites of mine for many years. I love the relevant technical or political quote up the top of the page which changes each day. I have also used one of his books online, and then emailed him saying I would like to pay for him offering that service for free. I thought he should be rewarded for it, as I found it of great value when I needed it quickly. He replied saying donate something to Doctors Without Borders . I did so; donating the cost of the book.

His quote on Cafe Con Leche for the 13th of October is by Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America and is taken from a news.com.com article titled, "Net blackout sparks talk of new rules" ;

There comes a point where some of these functionalities, such as the seamless interoperation of the Internet, are too important to leave to the private interest of businesses. We like to think that people won't do antisocial things, but when push comes to shove they will defend their economic interests even at the expense of the public.

Both the corporate thinking, and the public thinking is of the internet being unitary. Being indivisible. Incapable of replication, modification, renewal, duplication etc etc etc. This is wrong.

There is already an internet2 , developed partly to increase the throughspeeds of decentralised networks, but also because all the riff-raff (read non-academic population) was starting to jump on the internet.

The military and government has their own internet, and manner of interacting with the internet. This is probably why George Bush made a popular gaffe of the saying "the internets". Considering he is probably relatively new to the technology, he probably doesn't understand the nuance of decentralised networks.

There is also an open DNS system that exists outside of InterNIC. The OpenNIC DNS system, others of this type include AlterNic and Pacific Root. To view the internet as unitary is already a mistake.

What we call the internet today will only fragment more. System will be able to see inside each other, and communicate between each other. An example of this is the cell networks able to jump on the internet. A counter example is applications like VoIP being able to use the internet to connect to the phone system.

Networks do not exist in isolation. Their greatest facet is their ability to mix, inter-communicate, and disperse into new networks without losing the ability to talk to existing networks.

The internet is an abundance resource, that is capable of fragmenting in infinite smaller networks. This is its strength. Treating it as a unitary resource is not only wrong, but self-defeating.

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Australia has not produced a Defence White Paper since 2000. I recently argued that we needed a new Defence White Paper as the 2003 Update and Defence Capability Plan were not sufficient enough to determine future defence doctrine. The United States military recently released the Quadrennial Defense Review Report [QDR] which acts as a similar statement on doctrine, capability and force planning as the Defence White Paper does in Australia. Since Australia adheres to the "Great and Powerful Friends" doctrine of foreign policy where Australian forces accept American leadership and the ADF is designed to slot in transparently into US forces, this will have an effect on Australian doctrine as well.

Quadrennial Defense Review

The document opens with a political statement of the military's challenges;

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, our Nation has fought a global war against violent extremists who use terrorism as their weapon of choice, and who seek to destroy our free way of life. Our enemies seek weapons of mass destruction and, if they are successful, will likely attempt to use them in their conflict with free people everywhere. Currently, the struggle is centered in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we will need to be prepared and arranged to successfully defend our Nation and its interests around the globe for years to come. This 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review is submitted in the fifth year of this long war.

The rhetoric of the long war is an indication that the military spending from the Cold War is no longer a state of exception, but now one of permanence . There will be no peace dividend; where money that flowed to the military to contain the Soviet Union can now serve as tax cuts, or be diverted to social programs. The United States is now on a permanent war footing as it was during the Cold War. This reflects Neo-conservative thinking, where political power is an extension of military power, and the military is used as a blunt instrument of political change. The industrial-military complex becomes the political-industrial-military.

September 11th was a case of central planning, one which sends fear through nation-states who are themselves very centralised in control and planning. But since then, rather than big centralised operations, or attempts to blow up dirty bombs in Baltimore, asymmetric warfare has taken a reductionist path, and has not needed to go beyond small bombs strapped to a person, or detonated remotely. Systems disruption which attacks the weaknesses in centralised structures has been sufficient enough to immobilise efforts.

The statement also includes that the military's focus will be global. A war without end and without limits. The statement carries the implication that success of the Nation in this war, and the freedom of the people of the globe, is dependent upon the state. The 2002 Fundamentals in Australian Aerospace Power manual notes the political change as to what determines security;

The concept of national security has changed. It has expanded to incorporate individual security as well as the earlier ideas of national defence.

This fits with the Neo-conservative foreign policy and statist domestic policies of the Bush Administration. The domestic security policies in Australia under the Howard government have followed a similar path. Gary Sauer-Thompson has called this domestic view of security the National Security State .

From Clash Of The Nation-States To ...

A nation's defence doctrine is determined by its vulnerabilities. These can be geographical, natural resources, political, economic or even social. From the document and the list of shifts in emphasis, it appears the Pentagon sees the current military structure of the United States military as a vulnerability. The shifts in emphasis include;

• From a peacetime tempo - to a wartime sense of urgency.
• From a time of reasonable predictability - to an era of surprise and uncertainty.
• From single-focused threats - to multiple, complex challenges.
• From conducting war against nations - to conducting war in countries we are not at war with (safe havens).
• From "one size fits all" deterrence - to tailored deterrence for rogue powers, terrorist networks and near-peer competitors.
• From responding after a crisis starts (reactive) - to preventive actions so problems do not become crises (proactive).
• From crisis response - to shaping the future.
• From threat-based planning - to capabilities based planning.
• From peacetime planning - to rapid adaptive planning.
• From a focus on kinetics - to a focus on effects.
• From 20th century processes - to 21st century integrated approaches.
• From static defense, garrison forces - to mobile, expeditionary operations.
• From under-resourced, standby forces (hollow units) - to fully-equipped and fully-manned forces (combat ready units).
• From a battle-ready force (peace) - to battlehardened forces (war).
• From large institutional forces (tail) - to more powerful operational capabilities (teeth).
• From major conventional combat operations - to multiple irregular, asymmetric operations.
• From separate military Service concepts of operation - to joint and combined operations.
• From forces that need to deconfl ict - to integrated, interdependent forces.
• From exposed forces forward - to reaching back to CONUS to support expeditionary forces.
• From an emphasis on ships, guns, tanks and planes - to focus on information, knowledge and timely, actionable intelligence.
• From massing forces - to massing effects.
• From set-piece maneuver and mass - to agility and precision.
• From single Service acquisition systems - to joint portfolio management.
• From broad-based industrial mobilization - to targeted commercial solutions.
• From Service and agency intelligence - to truly Joint Information Operations Centers.
• From vertical structures and processes (stovepipes) - to more transparent, horizontal integration (matrix).
• From moving the user to the data - to moving data to the user.
• From fragmented homeland assistance - to integrated homeland security.
• From static alliances - to dynamic partnerships.
• From predetermined force packages - to tailored, flexible forces.
• From the U.S. military performing tasks - to a focus on building partner capabilities.
• From static post-operations analysis - to dynamic diagnostics and real-time lessons learned.
• From focusing on inputs (effort) - to tracking outputs (results).
• From Department of Defense solutions - to interagency approaches.

But the US military has been very effective in combat situations over the last four years. Afghanistan and Iraq were good examples of the dominance of the US Military. The organised insurgency in Afghanistan is now limited to Al Queda and Taliban operatives unable to penetrate far beyond the Afghan-Pakistan border. The limitation there is political, not military.

The US military is already exceptionally mobile. Force projection is rapid and global through the US Carrier fleets. The United States Marine Corp can bring great force to bear on the ground in a quick and sustainable manner. Not to mention the US logistical train which quickly brought 140,000 troops into the Middle East and has sustained that commitment and tempo for over three years. The US military is mobile, rapid and can maintain a large force indefinitely.

The bullet points do contain Neo-conservative thinking in them. For instance the; From crisis response - to shaping the future. This sums up the invasion of Iraq. The military were used as a political instrument. Much of the turgidity and failure of Iraq has been the lack of military goals once the Iraqi military was destroyed as a fighting force. Since then the political goals have moved constantly in response to the domestic American political climate. That is no way to run a military.

Political management of the media may be two-faced, fraught with deception and in perpetual policy motion, but this is not a suitable manner to guide military goals. The task of reconstructing Iraq and ensuring it is a safe and secure democracy is a civil task, not a military one. This is a limitation of Neo-conservative ideology.

Decentralised Strength

The report also notes the vulnerability of civil systems;

Non-state enemies could attempt to attack a wide range of targets including government facilities; commercial and financial systems; cultural and historical landmarks; food, water, and power supplies; and information, transport, and energy networks. They will employ unconventional means to penetrate homeland defenses and exploit the very nature of western societies - their openness - to attack their citizens, economic institutions, physical infrastructure and social fabric.

The main vulnerability is the centralised nature, and interdependence of western systems; energy, water, sewerage etc. These are largely artifacts of the economies of scale achieved in post World War II town planning. These are not military issues, as much of this mis-named war on terror, but instead civil problems.

Source: QDR 2006

There is a lot of science, technology and development of decentralised systems, but this is often thwarted by big centralised government enforcing its demands on the population and town planning. For instance a decentralised water/sewerage/timber system of town planning was envisaged by Sydney-sider P.A. Yeomans in the 1970s. Tasmanian Bill Mollison wrote in detail of decentralised food production in his Permaculture book .Big response statism has also led to the world's dryest continent being dependent on centralised water systems.

Unfortunately the terrorists of September 11th did not use unconventional means to penetrate the United States, or its domestic airline system. They used passports and drivers licenses. This is definitely not a weakness of western openness. Bot documents are a fact of life in participating, rental cars require driver's licenses, drinking requires verification etc etc.

Blunting Asymmetric Warfare

The report sees the increase of Special Forces as a means to defeat terrorism. The number Special Operations Forces will increase by 15% and the Special Forces Battalions by one third. This places them around the fifty thousand mark. Almost double Australia's Army, and approximately ten percent of the US's Army.

Australia has used its Special Forces domestically, one of the recurring images during the Sydney 2000 Olympics was black balaclavad SASR dropping from an Australian Army Blackhawk. The QDR also includes the capability for the military to become involved in domestic security;

To strengthen homeland defense and homeland security, the Department will fund a $1.5 billion initiative over the next five years to develop broad-spectrum medical countermeasures against the threat of genetically engineered bio-terror agents. Additional initiatives will include developing advanced detection and deterrent technologies and facilitating full-scale civil-military exercises to improve interagency planning for complex homeland security contingencies.

I question the utility of this approach. Terrorism is a civil issue, and the terrorist attacks in the last several years could have been stopped with the force that a citizen or policeman can bring to bear. The fourth aircraft on September 11th and the shoe-bomber are good examples of this. Recent catastrophes in the United States have also shown the resilience of the population and civil emergency structures, September 11th, the NY Black-out and Katrina Hurricane did not require a full scale military response.

In Australia's case the separation of civil and military responsibilities is important. Australia has volunteer civil structures like the State Emergency Services and the Bush Fire Brigade. It is far better to train agencies such as these than maintain the knowledge with specialists in the military. Not only is a knowledgeable population one, a ready one, but the volunteer nature means that know-how will disperse through the wider population.

Another reason to ensure a separation of military and civil forces, even in an emergency, is that unscrupulous political leaders will use the military to political advantage. To our near north, Suharto's Indonesia used the military to ensure civil order. Until recently Indonesia did not have a police force, its military supplied nearly half its number toward civil order. KOPASSUS was used as a political instrument domestically, as well as in Malaya, Thailand, East Timor and Irian Jira.

Seven years later the Indonesians are doing everything they can to eradicate the military influence in their government and economy, but remnants of the entwining of military and civil power still remain.

We Love Our Great and Powerful Friends

Australia's relationship with the US gets a mention;

The United States places great value on its unique relationships with the United Kingdom and Australia, whose forces stand with the U.S. military in Iraq, Afghanistan and many other operations. These close military relations are models for the breadth and depth of cooperation that the United States seeks to foster with other allies and partners around the world. Implementation of the QDR's agenda will serve to reinforce these enduring links.

The United States should be ticked off at us. For all our rhetoric, and flag-waving support, we have about 1,000 troops in Iraq. Approximately 0.66% of the American contingent. Richard Woolcott wrote in 2004 that ;

The reality is that Australia's presence, however capable and efficient our forces, can make no meaningful contribution to the two major objectives: the reconstruction of that country [Iraq] and the establishment of a viable democratic government there.

The Great and Powerful Friends doctrine is a passive one - we become dependent upon other nations, and other militaries for our success. We leave ourselves no control over the outcome, whether success or failure. The Australian involvement in Iraq has been no different.

Macro-weaponry

The United States still sees China as its next potential nation-state opponent. This poses projection problems for the United States. The report lays out plans to;

Develop a new land-based, penetrating long range strike capability to be fielded by 2018 while modernizing the current bomber force.

Restructure the Joint Unmanned Combat Air System (J-UCAS) program and develop an unmanned longer-range carrier-based aircraft capable of being air-refueled to provide greater standoff capability, to expand payload and launch options, and to increase naval reach and persistence.

Nearly double UAV coverage capacity by accelerating the acquisition of Predator UAVs and Global Hawk.

The first item is interesting. Australia is retiring its long-range strike bomber early due to maintenance costs but it is leaving us with a drop in projection ability. Australia's geographic vulnerabilities are the North-West shelf, the Timor Sea and the Coral Sea. A land based strike bomber would increase Australia's capability and projection in that area.

If there is a Dreadnought in the US's armoury, it is the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles [UAV]. I do not doubt that this technology will quickly commoditise and become available to all militaries, if not civil operators as well. UAVs actually carry higher operational costs than a standard manned fighter. The pilots rotate in three shifts, which increases labor costs beyond a manned aircraft. In addition the UAV requires all the ground based support that a manned aircraft does. UAVs are an area that Australia can re-establish its aerospace industry. We should pursue domestic development programs for this technology.

Australian technology also gets a mention in the QDR;

Source: QDR 2006

Which begs the question, why aren't our defence industries more involved in developing new technology - rather than just being integrators of American systems.

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One of the arguments in Australia against federalism today is that it was politically necessary in 1901 in order to get the colonies to come under one government - and today that is no longer a political need. Federalism is a form of political organisation that has positive benefits beyond the historical reasons for Australian federation. These include; decentralisation, geographical balance of powers, policy diversity and local autonomy and representation.

This isn't nostalgia for some mythical Australian past; a federalist system is a superior form of constitutional and political organisation.

Benefits

A Unitary Government which sits in Canberra would make policy for the whole country. Someone in Perth would be under the same policy as someone in Sydney. Since they are highly different cities, with one economy getting rich of a resource economy, while the other is prosperous of a services economy, this just does not make sense policy wise. Unitary policy would mean that bad policy affects all at the same time.

A decentralised system where each state has a different policy response is far more robust, and able to route around failure. It also allows policy to be made for local conditions and concerns. Another example here is that Queensland pursues development-state economic programs similar to Asian countries. Where New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia do not.

This has led Queensland to have a mix of a resource and services based economy, which is more balance than the western and eastern economies. A unitary policy from a central government would not have this level of provincialism or local interest.

Another argument for decentralisation is that the form of asymmetric warfare that has appeared with globalisation feeds on centralised structures in order to disrupt and paralyse a political system. A decentralised structure, such as federalism, can limit the damage that a successful and sustained asymmetric attack can have. It is far more resilient a system in this respect than a unitary one.

The Long Path To Centralism

If the benefits of federalism are so obvious, why has the Australian federal government fallen into chronic centralism? Several reasons, the federal government is openly hostile to the states, the constitution is poorly written and doesn't limit federal taxing power or responsibilities; and thirdly, the High Court has aided and abetted the federal government in its hostility toward the states. Greg Craven writes;

For all the constitution's triumphs, the founding fathers were not good accountants. They produced a document which, like a sloppily drawn will, quite unintentionally left the Commonwealth flush with funds and the states destitute.

The federal government brings in nearly seventy five percent of all tax receipts in Australia. Over half the NSW budget is made up of Commonwealth grants and GST revenues where the federal government has written the checks to the states. This is known as a vertical fiscal imbalance. Richard Webb describes this in Australia as;

... the States have relatively large constitutionally-assigned spending responsibilities but few own-revenue sources whilst the reverse is true at the Commonwealth level. The difference between the relative revenue and spending responsibilities of the Commonwealth and States is known as vertical fiscal imbalance (VFI).

On the High Court, Gary Sauer-Thompson writes;

The history of federalism, cooperative or otherwise, has been a history of continual intrusions by a central government in the affairs of the states. That intrusion has been legitimated by the High Court--that keystone of the federal arch. Simply put, the High Court failed to protect the states through the long centralist march.

During World War II the federal government claimed authority over income tax which had previously been the sole domain of the states. This was challenged constitutionally by the states, but the High Court ruled in the federal government's favour. What was an emergency tax at the federal level to pay for WWII, has become the norm. The federal government had no intention of giving up such an important source of revenue once it got its hands on it.

Craven concludes that these have contributed to making sure, "that the states are skint, friendless and without recourse to law."

What to do?

Unfortunately, no original link to the article, but Ken Parish writes of a possible political solution;

The States should all agree to set up a Joint State Tax Office that would levy a uniform state income tax on all Australian individuals and companies. The rate should be set so that it covers all state spending needs, so that the States can afford to tell the Commonwealth to shove its GST revenue and section 96 tied grants where the sun don't shine. The Commonwealth would then be under intolerable pressure to reduce its own tax take back to the level required to fund only it own spending needs. It should be fairly easy for people to see which polity was guilty of greed and duplicity in that situation, and it wouldn't be the States.

The main problem is constitutional. A republic would take care of the constitutional issues by being more explicit where the federal government can tax, just what an excise is, where tied grants can be applied, and duplication of responsibilities (and services) at the federal and state level. Also limit the High Court's ability to decide it is their position to make the constitution a living and breathing document.

Additionally, since it is a federalist system, the states should be more involved, maybe something as simple as the states nominating judges for the high court. This may serve to have the High Court serve their interests rather than the Commonwealths.

Federalism is superior and important. It is being broken through the gaps in a poorly written constitution, an activist High Court and a power drunk federal government who is openly hostile to the states. The fixes are constitutional and political.

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History has a sine-like wave between the extremes of capital intensiveness and commodification. One of the best examples of this is warfare which was capital intensive with the Knights in shining armour before quickly becoming commoditised by gunpowder - which any riff raff could load and aim. The nation-state as an organisational technology proved well suited to the capital and state intensive period of the late 19th and early 20thC. However, now we are in a commoditisation swing and need to re-seek out decentralisation structures.

A great organisational technology is federalism. It strikes an excellent political balance between centralisation and decentralisation. Another benefit is that it places the central authority in permanent tension with the out-lying arms, and hopefully, through a well written constitution, that tension is maintained such that neither centralisation or decentralisation dominate absolutely.

Sadly that didn't happen in Australia and between Canberra, the federal political parties and the High Court - nationalism is now dominating the states such that decentralised autonomy is in sad shape. Other than the benefits of federalism offering an internal free-trade system, which was important to NSW who had tariffs leveraged against them by the protectionist states such as Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland (also Tasmania - in fact NSW was the only free trade state), the national dominance did not bring the capital intensive benefits either.

During the late 19thC and mid 20thC warfare and the state got capital heavy. Blue water projection was first dominated by the Dreadnoughts and then super-carriers. All massive capital works to create and maintain. Only nation-states with their large wealthy populations and efficient (by history standards) tax collecting bureaucracies can afford that kind of thing.

Then we got the welfare state after the depression where governments decided that capital intensive methodology to provide public services. But in Australia most of this was done by the states. For instance education, health etc are the domain of the states. So basically the federal government in Australia centralised the power over policy and money collection but not the actual services.

This is exactly how John Gorton and Gough Whitlam visualised the federalist structure with the policy and receipts dominated by the feds and the administration and disbursement of receipts dominated by the states.

Unfortunately we are in a commoditisation cycle. Mainly because Deming's statistical process control [SPC] made the geographical location of a factory irrelevant, allowing companies to take advantage of decreasing wages without a loss of product quality, and the productivity gains from digitisation. Communications, production, bureaucracy, etc, etc have all been transformed by the microchip.

I was recently at the Udvar-Hazy Center looking at the Enola Gay from a raised platform when I said to myself, "It is so analog!". This is the aircraft which dropped the atomic bomb, yet its cockpit was populated by dial after dial. Not a HUD, CRT or LCD in sight (my car has a HUD). I would not have considered an analog engineering solution like that unusual fifteen years ago - today - I am shocked that people existed with backward technology like that!

I was interested to read Rod Beckstrom's take on federalism :

Q: You say that when our founding fathers sculpted our [USA] Constitution, they put the government in the "sweet spot," between centralized and decentralized. Are we still there?

RB: We've [USA] drifted strongly back toward centralization over time as a country, and of course we wobble back and forth a little bit. One of the biggest examples was after 9/11, when we took all the different police forces and intelligence forces and put them all under Homeland Security. That was a major centralization move, and typical: When a fairly centralized player gets attacked by a decentralized force, like al-Qaeda, the first reaction is to centralize further, and that's usually a strategic mistake.

When asked with what the prescription to the increasing centralisation is, Beckstrom replies:

Q: So how do we get back into the sweet spot?

RB: One way is to push responsibility back to the state governments. In some areas you can decentralize by outsourcing services further. One of the ultimate moves in terms of combating terrorism is to have the government use more Special Operations forces, which tend to be more decentralized, working in small teams that in general are given a high level of autonomy. . . . I gave a presentation at Stanford in 2004 to 50 CEOs from around the world. One CEO took it back to a head of state in a Middle Eastern country to the top levels of government. Based on it they decided to start their own local special operations in a selected city, and found it to be much more effective than their traditional, centralized counter-terrorism operation - at a very small fraction of the cost.

The people living in any community have the best sense of what is really going on in that community. They have local intelligence. The best information is at the edge of a network . . . where people are bringing what they want into the network and taking out what they want, without any centralized control.

It is interesting to see Beckstrom mentioning out-sourcing as a decentralised response though he later adds a caveat that checks and balances and monitoring are essential for that kind of decentralisation.

Our current period of commodification has meant that formerly capital intensive weapon systems are now within the reach of wealthy individuals and groups. For instance a satellite goes for under $20 million these days. Cheap enough for many people and organisations on the planet to afford.

A recent development has been super-yachts that have anti-submarine defence systems and air-to-air armaments. Yet recently a pirate ship fired on a Luxury Liner with an RPG (rocket propelled grenade) which caused consternation with media attention. Another commodity weapon system is the UAV. Rather than $100 million USD on a JSF, an Australian groups of aerospace engineers flew a cheap home-made UAV across the Atlantic, through rain squalls, and landed it on its target for less than a few kilograms in fuel. This is a very cheap, efficient and accurate warhead delivery system.

The final problem with centralisation and capital intensive endeavour is the structures that are required to support them. These becomes points of weakness or failure which can be attacked. John Robb calls this system disruption . A good example of a capital intensive system, operating under political regulation, that is vulnerable in this way is energy delivery .

Australia has under-gone a century of transformation such that modern federalism is not much like the federalism of Samuel Griffiths. There is an argument that the Griffith view of federalism was too restrictive on national autonomy, but over the last century the centralisation has been too great - such that it is a structural weakness in the modern commoditised environment. The states need to decentralise federalism by asserting their own autonomy and diversity.

Canberra likes to talk about the 'national interest'. We are at the point in the commodification cycle that the national interest includes a devolution to state autonomy for the purpose of political strength.

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Australian government does not have any vectors for decentralisation that avoids the abolition of the states.

Outside of the arguments of political parties, ideologies, policies etc; government is predominantly an administrative structure. We would expect government to be relatively fluid as it changes in size, shape, boundaries and structures in order to remain at maximum administrative efficiency. However, government has a monopoly in many areas and civil order doesn't always respond positively to a government darwining itself. So we use technologies such as constitutionalism, representation and liberal democracy to provide fluency and stability.

The two fluid levels of government in Australia have been federal and local government. The federal government has over-taken many of the responsibilities states as well as establish itself as the dominant taxing entity. The federal government does nearly 80% of all taxation and the state governments tend to be reliant upon the federal government for 50% of their expenditures.

Local government has their structures dictated by State legislation or constitutions, however, they have scaled through amalgamations. Brisbane City Council is the example most people trot out though it was created in 1925 through collapsing twenty different councils into one. A more recent example is Penrith City Council which amalgamated five councils in 1949.

Fluidity in Australia has been one way - effectively a vector for centralisation.

Administrative organisation must be fluid in order to respond to external and internal pressures. For a nation-state these pressures are numerous. They can be diplomatic, political, economic, martial etc. These pressures aren't static either. No-one would argue that Billy Hughes in 1919 faced the same pressures, internal and external, that John Howard does in 2006. Technology, society, economy, basically everything moves fast and government has organise itself to take advantage of those changes lest it darwin itself.

The best recent example of a government darwining itself was the Soviet Union. They bet on the wrong horse big time. They chose an inefficient political organisation, an inefficient economic organisation and to top it off - they took an aggressive international stance.

These types of decisions are only possibly with massive amounts of external inputs to prop up the inefficiencies. The Soviet Union ended up collapsing because it ran out of money to maintain its inefficient structures. Iran is currently taking an internationally aggressive stance but they can get away with it due to the demand for their high-priced oil. Same with an increasingly despotic Russia. Without its dominance of European gas supply, Russia would have to compete economically which would mean a different governmental organisation in order to maximise its economic efficiency.

There is a lesson here for Australia. We have already had the "Sheep's back" economy where we got blasé about efficient economic organisation, preferring instead to live off over-priced agricultural commodities. Currently Australia is under-going a resources boom. China, India, Japan and South Korea have an insatiable desire for the dirt we dig up. This boom will likely continue as other nations 'do a China' - such as Indonesia.

This puts Australia in the same position as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia. We can get away with inefficient organisational structures simply because we subsidise those inefficiencies with disproportionate revenues from a single source. Despite the current fashion for a 'three cheers' history of Australia, we are not immune to bad decisions - especially not from government, who have made destructively bad choices in the past.

Globalisation is the current dominant pressure on government - both internally and externally. The sheer speed, scope, reach and democratised nature of modern communications is something new. The governments that adapt to maximise the advantage from globalisation will set their constituents up for continuing achievement.

Globalisation is normally described as having the properties:

• economic interdependence
• transnational communications
• homogenisation of differences
• collapse of chronological time and geographic space (ie world is getting smaller)
• transnational social and political movements
• local action for global causes
• transfer of allegiance away from the state

We are already seeing that the main form of competition between nation-states is becoming economic rather than military. This is not because of US military hegemony but due to the destructive economic nature of warfare. When India and Pakistan were on the brink of war several years ago Indian business leaders went to the Indian government and told them to stop it. The sabre rattling was costing them revenue. American companies that contracted services with them were getting nervous over the stability of India and were taking their business to more stable environs.

Another aspect is the transnational nature of positive and negative political movements. This appears to be the greatest pressure on internal government organisation. Especially heavily centralised ones - which Australia is.

The government supplies a lot of services to keep a modern society and economy humming. Roads, transport, energy, health, education, police, etc etc. Basically all the capital intensive stuff where the government has a constitutional monopoly or market solutions are less than optimal. With munitions being a commodity and the existence of cheap delivery systems, such as strapping a bomb to the chest of a terrorist, the authority of government to provide those services can be challenged easily.

Islamic groups find distinct advantage in an environment where the government has been delegitimised as their organisation is greater than religious unity. It also carries social and judicial services. Where a government leaves a vacuum of authority, well organised Islamic groups can quickly step in to provide security, services and judicial certainty. This is one of the problems the Lebanese government faces, Hezbollah is the second largest employer in the country .

A heavily centralised structure is easy to delegitimise as it carries singular points of weakness. Unfortunately when a government, or large powerful bureaucratic organisation, is faced with decentralised pressures its first instinct is to centralise more. Which is the wrong strategic response.

Australia has issues as it is already heavily centralised and any fluidity the system does contain flow toward centralisation. For instance the national government and High Court have aided the dominance of Canberra over the states, while the states have denied Local Government the chance to write their own charters.

Centralisation does have advantages, it makes for unitary bureaucratic and regulatory regimes. It is also useful in a capital intensive environment - or when faced with a heavy centralised competitor. If we look at the current capital intensive services Australia government provides we can split them up by their national, state and local character:

• National: Diplomatic, Judicial, Defence, Currency, Transport
• State: Police, Judicial, Health, Education, Transport, Water, Sewerage
• Local: Wheelie Bins, Transport, Libraries

By that measure we would expect the States to raise about 60% of all taxation revenues but they don't. Rod Beckstrom described the technology of federalism as a "sweet spot" between centralisation and decentralisation. Bob Carr commented in July last year that Australia is now the most centralised of any federal system . The States are not above criticism, they have restricted local government, while dumping responsibilities on the federal government for political and fiscal reasons.

Yet there are few mechanisms for decentralisation. There has been a successful secessionist referendum in Western Australia, which ended up going nowhere, and an unsuccessful one in NSW to establish the State of New England. There are small secessionist movements around Australia such as in North Queensland. Most plans for the re-ordering of sub-national government and administrative boundaries involve the abolition of the States and the establishment of large regional bodies. A cursory glance at services provided by the levels of government suggests that the federal government should get slashed down to bare metal rather than the States.

Another means to provide local response and shared interest is by recognizing citizen organisations. Australia has a great history in this area with groups such as the Bush Fire Brigade, State Emergency Services and even militia. Those groups draw on the services and knowledge of the citizenry in times of emergency and crisis. Citizens become active, involved and capable of accurately judging and responding immediately to local issues. The government would provide subsidies to the capital intensive components such as training and equipment.

What would a decentralised Australian federal system look like?

It would have a minimal national government, limited to international issues rather the intra-state ones. The main advantage of the national government being that it enforces a mini free-trade zone between the states. The national government's taxation abilities would be limited to financing itself.

The States would become the main form of government in Australia - faced with perpetual competition between each other politically and economically. Local Government would remain the authority on Wheelie Bins which is an under-rated responsibility. There would also be increasing autonomy and recognition of citizen organisations which would probably have to come from the national and state levels of government. These citizen organisations would go a long way to replacing many state based institutions.

Australia has no fluid vector for decentralisation. The methods to achieve decentralisation are generally catastrophic or disruptive which goes against a doctrine of fluent and stable government. This is a weakness in our system.

x-posted at clubtroppo

Organisation is a technology choice. Whether it is political, social or economic organisation. Normally the most efficient form of organisation is chosen to serve a particular purpose. Capital intensive industries tend to adopt heavily centralised structures to support their operations. Commoditised industries can support decentralised structures.

The Navy is a good example of a capital intensive industry. A ship takes a lot of money to design, build, man and maintain. Consequently the Navy needs a massive operation to raise the revenues, to fund the process, and over look the process. Navies largely remain the monopoly of nation-states as they have the infrastructure to raise the money through tax to build and support the bureaucracy a Navy needs.

Publishing has become a commoditised industry. There are numerous competitors supplying both paper and digital publishing services and products. An example of this is SSR which is hosted in a basement but has the same web-presence as the New York Times (but not the same audience).

An organisation that wants to compete in the publishing industry has to have a decentralised structure in order to avoid the high overhead of a centralised bureaucratic structure. Centralisation in a commoditised industry makes the organisational form inefficient.

Government is an organisational form which has to respond to pressures in order to maximise its efficiency. The early 20thC was a capital intensive environment. Warfare was capital intensive and between states. Then there was the rise of the welfare state where governments adopted many of the services that private industry had (or had not) provided. This type of system makes sense to have a supporting centralised organisation.

In the last twenty years out-sourcing has become more common. Many of the technologies that led to nation-state monopolies for capital reasons have commoditised to the point that non-state actors can afford them.

A good example of this is UAVs. Once the domain of nation-states, they have become affordable for private owners in the short space of twenty years. An Australian test recently had a garage built UAV fly from Canada to England, through storms and rain, to land a 5kg payload within five metres of its target in England. That type of precision had been a capital intensive pursuit in the past - not anymore.

In a commoditised environment the government needs to adopt flatter or decentralised structures otherwise they are adding inefficiencies into the system.

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In the days of the silk road, production and manufacturing were a craftsman's era. No two objects were the same and essentially unique. It was art more than production and would fail any modern manufacturing quality control scheme. The industrial era came not too long after the technology of banking was refined - which was fortunate - as industrialism is a capital intensive enterprise. With the digital age we are moving back into a craftsman's era, though this time with the lessons of industrial quality control. How should the tax system change to meet these economic movements?

Big state-nationalism, which Australia still practices, has the majority of its taxing performed at the national level (85% for Au). This is an industrial era response to taxation. Heavily capitalised companies tend to be large and can afford, or better hide through scale, the costs of employing a specialist department for dealing with byzantine tax laws. We commonly call these people accountants and their division the accounting department.

Big-state nationalism has led to many industries that are reliant upon the complexity of national taxation regimes and all the little exceptions, proddings, hand-outs, loopholes and political buy-offs. The tax system is large enough and complex enough that it requires a full time specialist to understand it, and stay on top of it.

This is anathema to Republican governance as the individual and state must have a direct relationship where the individual is dominant politically. If the tax system, and laws in general, are so complex that the individual cannot understand them, then they have no hope of following them. The complexity of the state becomes a vehicle for tyranny, intimidation and passive violence.

While Australia has been centralising into Canberra under big-state nationalism the government has been a century behind the time as per usual. Our constitution was befitting of a country founded in the 1600s, but way behind the times of the American and Swiss innovations when it was established in 1901. The crass centralisation of taxation and policy is the same out of date process.

The digital era has removed many of the capital barriers of entry to the market. Because of the low capital and high efficiencies through digitisation we have seen new forms of labor and production emerge - commonly called the IT sector.

These efficiencies have also enabled manufacturing to become more mobile and old-style industrial era factories have moved from Australia, Germany and America to Mexico and then to China. Between TQM and digital media, quality is pretty much universal and the geographic location of the factory does not affect the product.

The low capital nature of IT and the ease with which those working in the industry can become consultants, contractors or do startups for lower capitalisation costs than industrial startups has meant there has been an increase in companies with just a few employees. The digital era and its efficiencies have meant that many other service industry professions have found new efficiencies from going it alone as well.

So while Canberra is becoming the kind of government for a BHP-QANTAS-Telecom type economy, the realities of the economy are going the other way. Our government is establishing itself in such a way that it will enforce inefficiencies on Australian competitiveness.

Increase in the pages in the Tax Assessment Act. Source: Inspector-General of Taxation Issues paper .

My personal software philosophy is that if the software does not match the business model exactly, then the software is adding inefficiencies into the business process and effectively adding cost and overhead to the business.

Government must be viewed in the same light, where its laws, regulations, practices and structure, including constitutional structure, are out of phase with the how people conduct their affairs socially, culturally, politically and economically; then government is adding inefficiencies to national and human achievement. It is adding cost, overhead, and directly retarding, Australian achievement and progress.

The tax system is a prime candidate for devolution. The states should take back their right to tax income and then start innovating in ways so that the small businesses, consultants and contractors have their economic life simplified by a simple and knowable tax system.

The federal government doing 85% of taxation is an inefficiency. As an example, I recently payed a business license fee to the town and a property tax to the county. Took me a total of 15 minutes. I am now wading through federal forms, which are complex enough, and I am unsure enough about, that I will have to go to an accountant to make sure I don't get it wrong. There was a state form for "Combined Registration" which I tried to fill out online, but was complex that I could not go any further on it online (the form stopped me) as I did not know the answer to one of its questions.

Devolution is simpler.

Federal government tends to be made of career politicians who are estranged from small business. Even the two private industry cabinet freshmen, Malcolm Turnball and Peter Garrett - both successful entrepreneurs - comes from heavily capitalised industries. Local politicians are often small business folks, or work for small and medium sized businesses, so are closer to the complexities from the state and federal governments.

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Any political philosophy has to deal with the issue of violence and be able to explain its current forms, as well as the institutions and natural patterns which cause and inflame it. Hobbes wrote Leviathan partly in a response to the constant civil warring in England. Many of his points of unitary sovereignty are related to those events (a kingdom divided cannot stand). Republicanism is a technology for dispersing sovereignty into the people and restricting state violence as the state has a habit of seeing any violence what-so-ever as a threat to its monopoly on force; which then produces such things as sedition laws which are not intended to end or deal with the violence, but prop up the current political order.

There is also the issue of states of emergency which are also used in a similar manner to sedition laws. An overwhelming threat to the states monopoly on force is pointed out, and the executive moves into a state where it adopts much of the legislative and judicial functions, if only by selectively applying the force of law. This, along with sedition, can be recognised as executive tyranny - which is a form of state violence.

More recently we have seen the rise of disruptive violence which piggybacks the integrated nature of globalisation and modern communications systems. While there effect still largely remains local, such as in Iraq, small groups have the ability to paralyse states. The wider groups which conduct this form of violence often exist as a state within a state and only paralyse the state with attacks when it is in their political interest to do so.

Hezbollah and Hamas are good example of this as both supply many of the normal nation-state welfare to citizenry where the state is not able to reach. This makes a natural political consistency, yet Hezbollah operates without the overhead of liberal democracy and the state bureaucracy. This makes it hard for nation-states to compete and extend their monopoly on force as the nation-state gets most of its legitimacy from its ability to distribute welfare to special interests - especially electoral interests.

We have seen throughout history the spontaneous rise of public spaces which minimise violence. A good example if the Gaullish towns of Roman times. They were all located on the top of hills. This is because the Gauls were a decentralised people who warred between tribes, rather than states. The Romans were heavily centralised and once they conquered a region they established their towns and forts near lines of communication. Which is in the valleys by the roads and rivers. The towns of the Gauls moved down into the valleys as that was where the trade was and the violence of the public space had moved under Roman rule to predominantly the judicial system and road banditry.

Another example is the closed in mall. Though North America required some way to facilitate year round shopping during heavy winters, and the ubiquitous nature of the motor car, combined to make malls possible; it is a re-arranging of the public space. Since a mall operator has vested interest in keeping their renters happy, and the renters want consumers to feel safe and secure, malls now have full time security staff dedicated to the mall's environment. Police, due to the breadth of their responsibilities, cannot be so focused, certainly not to the requirements of the mall owner, store operators and consumers in the space.

From Iraq, this comment gives the appearance that jersey barriers are being used to make it difficult for car bombers to come into crowded areas:

"That's part of the concrete caterpillar," Petraeus said, pointing out a barrier going up in a neighborhood in west Baghdad. "That market was shut completely down when I took command -- now it has 200 shops," he said.

So not all responses to violence require state intervention, it may be as simple as neutering the worst effects of violence by re-ordering public spaces. It could be argued that the British deployment of cameras throughout London is part of this re-ordering, but a republican system must seek maximum liberty and minimise the intrusion of the state, perpetual and constant surveillance is repugnant, as it is guaranteed that eventually the state will use the capability for political, not judicial, purposes.

Liberal democracy is good in removing the thirst for absolute rule that any dynastic political system has. Representative government replaces violence and civil war with pluralistic contention and competition. The greater the political competition, the healthier a liberal political system is. Which is another reason why a state of emergency is damaging, as it places effective unitary control of the branches of government in the executive, making the political non-liberal and unrepublican. In a state of emergency the system is not a liberal democracy even if it has the appearance of being one.

But what of civil violence, which has political goals which are mainly to destabilise the state and force over-lapping sovereignty. Like what we see in Iraq where there is a mish-mash of militia, local government, central government, the US military and warlords fighting it out to see who can both paralyse and supply civil services. The fight is over who has the greatest stability or security to supply essential services for modern life, and hence modern economic life, such as water, electricity and access to the economic marketplace.

Several of the groups involved, in a similar manner to Hezbollah, have no interest in adopting the trappings of state and the inherent overhead of governance. Their goal is to destabilise so that nation-state force cannot reach into their local fiefdom, effectively allowing them to operate without state interference.

What response does Australian Republicanism have to that? Central to republicanism is the power of decentralisation and local innovation. Solutions to group that are perpetuating violence without care for governing may be simple re-orderings of the local public space. These are not solutions that can come through a centralised government who order universal edicts without care for local conditions.

The political structure needs to be ordered such that localities can be invigorated to supply their own civil solutions to violence within the bounds of liberal democracy - this requires local consensus - not central consensus. This also means that the rate determining step for innovation is at the lowest levels, not the national one.

There is a lesson here for the anti-federalism that is being practiced in Australia where more and more authority (and revenue) is in Canberra. This is a sign of weakness should violence in Australia become similar to what is being practised in the Middle East.

The other aspect is that this is a civil violence issue, not a military one. While nation-states exist and the potential for expansion and state aggression are real, then a strong military will be required for defence. However their role must be focused on the destruction of a rival state's ability to make war and project force. Not the suppression of local civil violence.

The Iraqi violence is best served by local police; who know the locality, have a vested interest in the locality and community as well as its stability, and also have a communal attachment to the area. The military is too blunt a solution in such an environment and ineffective.

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When Canberra cherry-picks responsibilities from the states it is anti-federalism. When the states take from the local councils there is no real name for it other than centralisation. Tasmanian Councils are defending their authority and responsibility over sewerage and water. It is a familiar pattern, a crisis appears, and a central authority uses that crisis or emergency to covet new powers. It has been a dominant force in Australian politics.

The issue is the State Government of Tasmania wanting to take over the power of water and sewerage; as the water crisis demands that the local councils can't be trusted with the responsibility in a time of emergency. Which isn't true. Decentralisation is a strength; especially in politics.

One of the reasons a representative democracy is stronger than a monarchy or dictatorship is because it decentralises political power. The opposing force is the desire of the executive to collapse all power into themselves - which leads to a monarchy or dictatorship, so representative democracy is maintained at a cost.

There was an op-ed in The Canberra Times by Greg Barns recently that argued for separation of service delivery between the feds, states and councils. One of the reasons a market economy is seen as superior to public sector service delivery is that it promotes overlapping services and products. We commonly call that consumer choice.

Yet we view overlapping public sector service delivery as waste. I would argue that the road system is an example of overlapping responsibilities providing a good outcome; Australia has federal, state, local and private roads. These go through all sorts of political boundaries and their overlapping regulations and laws. Probably the only way roads could be provided is through that method.

Barns writes:

And what of local government? Why is it, that there are, for example, 144 local councils in Western Australia, 68 in South Australia and 29 in Tasmania, when the total population for these states is just over three million people?

Again; decentralisation is a sign of political strength. In a modern state innovation bubbles up from the most innovative areas; rather than the capital intensive industrialised nation-state who spends on the slow areas with capital accrued centrally in order for them to catch up to the faster areas. Australia is a good example of the capital intensive centre - the federal government does 85% of all taxation.

There has been a gas pipeblast in Mexico which local rebels have claimed responsibility for. These are examples of John Robb's global guerillas. Because the cost of warfare has decreased so much, the heavily centralised political, urban and economic structures are unnecessarily exposed to shock and delivery failure. Energy is one of those susceptible systems.

Australia is uniquely situated to decentralise two very susceptible systems; water and energy. Because Australia periodically goes through water failure where the big central systems such as dams cannot meet demand; then there needs to be a decentralised approach. Rain tanks and conservation being the obvious.

This decentralisation has obvious advantages; one it reduces the cost of local government as water becomes primarily a household responsibility, two, conservation becomes one of personal responsibility, and three, it isolates the water supply from a centralised disruption such as drought, salination, poisoning, terrorism, etc.

Energy is another where Australia is well situated. The sun is a massive producer of energy we just have not worked out to harvest it efficiently and cost effectively yet. However, if we start seeing centralised failure of energy delivery systems, it will become cost effect quickly. There will be the same advantages from a decentralised (and networked) approach to energy as there is to communications and water.

The same goes for our political structures. Australia unfortunately has moved to a heavily centralised federal government. It dominates taxation, policy and revenue. This is a structural weakness in the current environment. Like water and energy, decentralised political structures protect against shocks and central failure.

Australian politics need to decentralise and remove power from the national government in order to increase the health and robustness of the Australian political system.