Steven Pearlstein has an article in the Washington Post titled, "Aid Recipients Might Have the Best Ideas About Allocation" which covers alternate methods to allocate aid funding to needy states. The article challenges the orthodoxy that a small group of specialists are the best to determine what to do with donor money. Instead, GlobalGiving is using technology and the "wisdom of the crowds" to produce outcomes that are more efficient. This methodology has political implications, especially for models which incorporate ratification and sortition .

GlobalGiving

Dennis Whittle and Mari Kuraishi have set up GlobalGiving to connect individual and institutional donors directly to to projects around the world. They claim this gives higher impact as the donors know where their money is going and it avoids the donors money being lost in bureaucratic overhead of non-profit organisations.

The GlobalGiving site has a Donation Wizard which can identify projects that need funding. it is remarkable how little money some of these projects require. For instance this project in India to provide computer education to the rural poor involves a total cost of $5,000 of which $1,840 has already been donated. Another is the founding of a Women's University in Afghanistan which needs $10,000 of which $3,106 has been donated thus far. There are numerous variations in the projects, from Child journalists in the Congo , lead contamination in Peru or rural micro-credit in Honduras .

GlobalGiving recently conducted an experiment on their website;

On its Web site, GlobalGiving provided brief descriptions of 112 development projects, asking site visitors to rank them on a scale of 1 to 10. About 50,000 individuals generated 200,000 evaluations. Simultaneously, a much smaller group of several hundred aid experts was asked to perform the same task. Of the 12 projects chosen by the experts, nine were also chosen by popular vote.

Part two of the experiment involved allocating $100,000 in prize money among the 12 finalists. Hundreds of wealthy donors at a conference in Palo Alto, Calif., were given five-minute presentations on each project and asked to immediately divide the pot. At the same time, a jury of nine of them was told to spend several hours reaching consensus on how best to allocate the money -- a proxy for the committee-driven process by which most grants are now made. Again, the choices made by the more deliberative jury were strikingly similar to the collective, seat-of-the-pants choices made by the larger group.

This has been called the "wisdom of the crowds" by James Surowiecki. More often this is seen from a market point of view, where decentralised groups, made up of individuals, acting in their interest, and from information they can discern; make more accurate decisions than small groups of knowledgeable specialists. A good example of this is Index Funds beating managed Mutual Funds for returns. Another example is Bryan Palmer and Andrew Leigh checking any polling data against Centrebet .

Surowiecki places some caveats on what makes a crowd smart however;

There are four key qualities that make a crowd smart. It needs to be diverse, so that people are bringing different pieces of information to the table. It needs to be decentralized, so that no one at the top is dictating the crowd's answer. It needs a way of summarizing people's opinions into one collective verdict. And the people in the crowd need to be independent, so that they pay attention mostly to their own information, and not worrying about what everyone around them thinks.

He also sees it important that the crowd not be biased, in Surowiecki's opinion this is why specialists fail as well - they bring their bias with them, that leads to inferior outcome. The groups must be truly decentralised, and genuinely diverse.

Democracy

Political parties are the casting of political bias into the representative system. I have made the comment in the past that people are pretty much the same all over the world, the difference is in the quality of government which runs from bad to suckitude. Part of the reason for government's inferiority is that it is inherently biased by the political parties which inhabit it, entrench themselves in it, gorge themselves at its trough and project their bias onto the people.

To temper this skewing of the system from inferior outcomes, and the bias of political specialists, the wisdom of the crowds can be used instead to make policy decisions. These would be anonymous ratifiers, chosen by sortition for each issue; and casting secret ballots on their policies or ordering of priorities.

This would not exclude the professional politicians, policies would still need to be made, even if ratifiers line item vetoed them, or voted on prioritising different aspects of different policies. This would also not exclude citizens, who could present their own policies and legislation to compete with that of the professional politicians.

Gary Sauer-Thompson asked the question whether the internet had transformative power in the area of democracy. Gary quoted Mark Poster while exploring this issue;

The Internet seems to discourage the endowment of individuals with inflated status. ...If scholarly authority is challenged and reformed by the location and dissemination of texts on the Internet, it is possible that political authorities will be subject to a similar fate.

I would argue that the decentralised data networks will flatten the present system of status entirely, making us all equal, and wiser for it. Gary comments;

If this is so, then it represents a rupture with the old politics of the active expert addressing a passive audience and which only grants the space for the audience to ask a few questions at the end of the speech.

The challenge is to adapt our system of government so that where ratifiers and sortitionists provide superior outcomes to representatives, parties, factions and professional politicians, they are injected into the process. I suspect the present politicians, who enjoy their ability to spray bias at a passive audience from the pinnacle of Australian power will have to be brought kicking and screaming into the new decentralised democratic era.

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Society is the form in which the fact of mutual dependence for the sake of life and nothing else assumes public significance and where the activities connected with sheer survival are permitted to appear in public.

That is a quote from Hannah Arendt in "The Human Condition". I bought the book after seeing Gary Sauer-Thompson constantly post entries on her philosophy.

She is arguing that our transformation to a society of jobholders and labourers has made the economy a government issue. Basically we are dependent on our jobs for survival. As a result we have pushed the issue of our survival into the political realm.

Government's in Australia end up on shakey ground in a recession. Politicians do get held responsible, if not punished, for recession. I think she may have a point.

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The Howard Government has decided that capitalism and globalism erode culture. As a consequence they have decided that establishing culture is the role of government. Sadly their view of what constitutes Australian culture is myopic, and backward looking. It is non-adaptive, and overly nationalistic - an attempt to keep the government and nation-state relevant. Government can encourage culture through reducing the artificial barriers to interaction, innovation and cultural memory.

Switch The Channel

The drive through eastern Pennsylvania is picturesque. Rolling fields of corn are broken by rivers, towns and the occasional city such as Harrisburg and Allentown. The scenery goes through many, and drastic changes. Sadly the music over the radio does not.

Between the major cities such as Washington DC and New York is a deadspot which Clear Channel has moved into. The spectrum is dominated by stations called the Hawk, or the River, or the Eagle. These stations pump out exceedingly soporific and non-challenging music. There is only so much Phil Collins and Bachman Turner Overdrive the mind can take before the select button is left in a permanent state of motion.

Capitalism is brutal toward art, it only rewards profitable art, and mainstream success is dependent upon almost absolute popularity. The cities and populations centers are kinder, the sheer numbers of consumers allow for greater diversity in media. The spectrum around New York is jammed with radio stations for every niche, spanish, metal, rap, hip-hop, book talk, talkback, college radio and so-on.

Eastern Pennsylvania is barren by comparison. I can recall as a teen not being able to pick up 2JJJ on the radio in far western Sydney. This was prior to 2JJJ going national and expanding their broadcast range. As a consequence I was limited to the repetitive mush of 2MMM or 2DAY FM. It wasnt until I moved into Eastern Sydney that I got exposed the underground Sydney music scene. I have been a fan of Sydney pop ever since.

Gary Sauer-Thompson makes the point that capitalism leaves little place for culture, and only tolerates culture if it is profitable, or can be used to leverage a profit. Economic liberty and culture are diametrically opposed. Culture exists despite capitalism, not because of it.

The Howard Government has decided that a unifying culture is important to maintain a nation state's identity and they have been using the power of Government to try and enforce a culture in an environment of social and economic liberty. This will ultimately fail, liberty is stronger than a nation-state, and more persistent than any government.

The Government's intrusion in this area requires a great deal of energy and expense to try and get people to follow their view of an Australian mono-culture. Liberty has a lower energy point, and is a more natural residual interaction point for a society. The Howard Government will undoubtedly be voted out one day, and the constant attention, expense and energy expended on trying to establish the anglo-australian culture will be forgotten, or morphed. It is no replacement for the emergant interactive properties of individuals interacting without interference.

If the Government truly wants to ensure an Australian culture survives, adapts and flourishes under globalisation and economic liberty, then they need to ensure the cost of interaction between individuals is zero. This will mean several artifical barriers which government controls will need to dropped to zero, and the rents extracted from them removed.

One of the greatest inhibitions to culture is the intellectual property laws that have been expanding without end. Copyright should not exist beyond a generation with a renewal being required after ten years. This would enable the majority of unprofitable culture to be shared without cost after a decade, with the highly popular being returned to the culture after a generation. In addition, the copyright cartels need to have their power broken in Australia.

The other area is to drop the cost of communication to near zero. This will mean opening up the spectrum to the public. Instead of cartels of public allocated bandwidth, or treating spectrum as a scarce good through auctioning, the spectrum should be opened to all with minimal regulation. WiFi has seen a boom of innovation, and a rapid dropping of cost. This is because it has been used as an abundant public good, rather than government controlled scarcity.

Thirdly, the government and social conservatives have to trust the people to innovate and advance the culture. Advocating an old, aged, and non-resonant view of Australian culture will not do. Maximum liberty is the only means for a culture to adapt to the constant challenges of society and economy. Government and the nation-state really don't come into it, and to be honest, aren't welcome.

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Most of the governments in Australia at the state and federal level have been in power for near or over a decade. This is too long. Corruption and hubris have a habit of entrenching themselves after approximately eight years. The federal and state governments now openly use tax payer money to push their party policies, abuse is endemic. The Pittwater result is a poor one, not only for Liberals in NSW, but for oppositions in general.

Opposition

It is all through the Australian media. Anyone but Beazley, Independents beating Liberals in a safe seat with a 25% swing, the Victorians Liberals in a similar media reported stoush ;

But far from feeling any pressure at this stage, the Government is sitting back and enjoying the spectacle of its parliamentary opposition self-destructing. After yet another disastrous week, the Victorian Liberal Party appears to be at war with itself. It's caught up in a destructive internal conflict, one based on personalities not policies, which could result in an even worse result for the Opposition at the next election.

Robert Doyle's leadership is the subject of relentless speculation, even though he has no challenger. Ted Baillieu, the man constantly cited as his rival, has repeatedly declared he is not planning a challenge. But the so-called Costello-Kroger faction, which dominates the administrative machine, has alienated a significant minority of the parliamentary party. And with few exceptions, its preselection process has thrown up a largely mediocre group of unknown or recycled defeated MPs.

So we have the media, constantly claiming the oppositions are in turmoil, and without the authority of government to prove their capability, they end up in a permanent pool of illegitimacy. The media loves drama, Howard's so called "Athens deceleration" was nothing, absolutely nothing . Yet the media continues, or attempts to portray it as important ;

The threat had been made by Costello supporters after Howard, in musings in Athens in April, suggested he could beat Kim Beazley a third time. Some backers have recently pushed the timetable out beyond the budget. They accept the impracticality of a transition a month or so before the budget -- or, if Howard was digging in, the bad vibes that would be sent out by the Treasurer acting up at that point.

But an incumbent government is better placed to fight these suggestions off, having access to legislation, tax payer money, and as Gary Sauer-Thompson is fond of saying capable of drip-feeding the media to guide the public discourse for political ends .

Sections of the media have allowed themselves to become conduits for government spin. The journalists are either on the drip feed or they are content to recycle media releases. Either way they become publicity agents for particular politicians. The feeding is all carefully planned and organized.

The opposition hasn't the same access to the power of the civil service, nor the treasury, so can't create policy, it can only fight "small target" elections.

The state Labor governments and the federal Liberal governments have been in power too long, they are on the nose, and openly abusing the parliamentary system. At a time when we need the state Liberals to be stronger, and federal Labor to be stronger, for the sake of democracy and to at least maintain some form of churn rate, we are seeing them be kicked further and further into the dirt.

More

SSR has covered incumbency numerous times;

• Increasing The Churn Rate
• HOWTO: Offset The Power Of Incumbency
• Offsetting The Power Of Incumbency
• Incumbency Issue Again, NSW Legislation
• Statistics On State And Federal Elections

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OZ Conservative has a well written and interesting article on Michael Ignatieff. The differences between the liberal, nationalist and conservative views on citizenship are looked at in detail.

From the article;

Ignatieff is a liberal. As such, he believes that individuals should be self-defined. Therefore he rejects ethnic nationalism (in which national identity is based on a common ancestry, culture, language and so on)

This is the argument that accidents of birth or geography should not define citizenship. Oz Conservative quotes Ignatieff to display that his take on the liberal side of civics, ie Cosmopolitanism is really quite traditional and conservative in its view. Ignatieff is quoted;

It is only too apparent that cosmopolitanism is the privilege of those who can take a secure nation-state for granted ... The cosmopolitanism of the great cities - London, Los Angeles, New York, London - depends critically on the rule-enforcing capacities of the nation state ...

"In this sense, therefore, cosmopolitans like myself are not beyond the nation; and a cosmopolitan, post-nationalist spirit will always depend, in the end, on the capacity of nation-states to provide security and civility for their citizens."

"I am a civic nationalist, someone who believes in the necessity of nations and in the duty of citizens to defend the capacity of nations to provide the security and rights we all need in order to live cosmopolitan lives.

This is where Ignatieff confuses the intrinsic property of a polity and government system with the emergent properties. Civic identity is a result of individuals pursuing their social, cultural and economic identity.

A conservative reading of that social organisation design pattern would see no difference between the intrinsic and emergent properties of society. The government, law and order, society and culture are all one entity. We see this when conservatives make claims that "our legal system is an Australian value".

Gary Sauer-Thompson writes on this;

Conservatism understands that nationality and society are rooted in biological, cultural and historical heritage. The difference between these two concepts becomes particularly obvious when one compares how they visualize history and the structure of the real. Nationalists are proponents of holism.

Nationalists see the individual as a kinsman, sustained by the people and community. which nurtures and protects him, and with which he is proud to identify. The individual's actions represent an act of participation in the life of his people, and freedom of action is very real because, sharing in the values of his associates, the individual will seldom seek to threaten the basic values of the community with which he identifies.

The liberal viewpoint would be that the emergent property of social organisation does not exist. It is utterly defined by the individuals pursuing their interests. This is the dominance of the intrinsic over the emergent, which is why liberalism and nationalism so often come into conflict.

Again Gary Sauer-Thompson has a discussion of that phenomenon;

The essence of modern liberal thought is that order is believed to be able to consolidate itself by means of all-out economic competition, that is, through the battle of all against all, requiring governments to do no more than set certain essential ground rules and provide certain services which the individual alone cannot adequately provide.

I recently discussed this same issue from an Australian Republican perspective. While the absence of privilege may seem a liberal value, which it is, it is the ground work for enabling the creation and interaction of the emergent properties in a complex system that create social cohesion.

This is a systems view of social interaction and cohesion. In a Harpurian manner the highest form of social organisation, and consequently prosperity, can only be achieved through individual members in the system having the liberty to pursue their social, cultural and economic interests.

The point of greatest cohesion, is the one of greatest interaction and interdependence which by default is an intrinsic system of maximum liberty.

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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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From Multitude;

The idea of Republican virtue has from its beginning been aimed against the notion that the ruler, or indeed anyone, stands above the law. Such exception is the basis for tyranny and makes impossible the realisation of freedom, equality and democracy.

I would add prosperity to this list too.

The rule of law is a constant theme on South Sea Republic. For this reason an Australian Republican, as should any Republican, rejects that a state of exception exists when a nation is at peace, at war, or under external pressure of any kind. The rule of law is more precious than the ability of a government to act outside of the law.

The best example of not giving into despotic passions is James Madison in the war of 1812. Despite great pressured to do so, he would not relent his principles or the nations Republican virtue. He was firmly of the belief that doing so would make America and its people weaker. It was only through the embrace of Republican virtue that the American people were stronger than the invading British. History proved him correct.

Western governments faced with the problem of terrorism have quickly cast aside their virtue and plunged headlong into a permanent state of exception. As Giorgio Agamben argues, it has become a governing paradigm, rather than a temporary anomaly as the story of Cincinnatus tells us.

Gary Sauer-Thompson calls this method of governing the national security state as this embrace of security which can jump outside the rule of law allows for externally and internally focused exceptions of law. Government exceptionalism becomes all pervading. Agamben writes;

... the state of exception is not defined as a fullness of powers as pleromatic state of law, as in the dictatorial model, but as a kenomatic state, an emptiness and standstill of the law.

James Madison was able to reject this vice when he was President of the United States and facing war against the biggest super-power of the time. He was true to his Republican principles. The fall into governing in a state of exception as has happened in Australia and other Western democracies is a perversion.

It is anti-republican and anti-democratic.

The meaning of the word security has changed in the last decade or so. Where once it meant stability in defence from the Hobbesian nature of international relations; it has been turned inward to focus on domestic security. So much so that recent op-eds in the Washington Post have made the claim that a city that is not secure - is a failed one. Where once war was deemed an emergency period, with terrorism, Governments have claimed a permanent domestic emergency. This is at odds with Australian Republicanism.

John Locke is one of the most influential writers of Liberalism. His writings directly influenced the founding of the first post-enlightenment Government in the Unites States of America. At the James Madison's Montpelier , one of the most prominent displays is a glass encased copy of Locke's Two Treatises of Government .

Arbitrary Government and Tyranny

Locke's second book contains sections on tyranny and resistance.

... whenever legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves in a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience, and left to the common refuge, which god has provided for all men, against force and violence.

The keyword in that paragraph is arbitrary . The point of liberal democracy is law and order. Once government acts in an arbitrary manner toward those under its jurisdiction then it has broken the bounds of the constitution which describes the limits of executive and legislative authority.

Tyranny does not need to be absolute to be destructive; it only needs to be insidious to pollute the polity, society and economy. Recent legislation from the Australian government has placed into law the ability for Ministers in the Executive Cabinet to act in an arbitrary manner.

An example is the Migration Act ;

Minister not under duty to consider whether to exercise power

(4) The Minister does not have a duty to consider whether to exercise the power under subsection (2), whether he or she is requested to do so by any person, or in any other circumstances.

Minister to exercise power personally

(5) The power under subsection (2) may only be exercised by the Minister personally.

When that prerogative is exercised we cease to become a nation of laws, and instead become a nation of men. Arbitrary government inevitably leads to tyranny and kleptocracy, the two most destructive forms of social organisation .

If The Constitution Is Breached

Locke writes that if the government succumbs to the negative passions of arbitrary government then resistance is permissible;

by this breach of trust they [legislators] forfeit the power, the people have put into their hands, for quite contrary ends, and it devolves the people, who have a right to ensure their original liberty, and, by the establishment of a new legislative, provide for their own safety and security, which is the end for which they are in society.

In that paragraph he advocates establishing a new legislature as the old one which has fallen into arbitrary government has lost their authority by their actions.

The national security state is an alignment of the executive, legislative and judicial that can act outside of the constitution and normal legal processes when the government believes an emergency exists that threatens the complete political and social order.

Giorgio Agamben has called this homo sacer ; when an individual is reduced to bare life, without legal or civil rights. The Tampa Affair is an Australian example of the national security state and homo sacer combining to produce an inferior and arbitrary outcome.

Refugees were pitched to the electorate as not only an emergency, but also a security issue. The media images conferred with this political portrayal of the event by a five hundred million dollar Australian Navy frigate pulling refugees out of the water.

The threat to Australia's sovereignty by this small number of refugees was so high that we paid large sums to neighbouring nations and islands to keep them outside of Australia. As part of the Pacific Solution in 2002 we payed 48 million to Nauru and 29 million to the PNG.

The refugee issue also led to the Migration Act Amendment which was quoted above in the article describing arbitrary powers being conferred on the minister overseeing immigration.

Australian Republicanism and homo sacer

Australian Republicanism is predicated on legal equity amongst all individuals under the jurisdiction of the government. It does not discriminate between citizens and non-citizens, or minorities and majorities. If you are an individual under the jurisdiction of the government your legal and civil rights are not only secure, but uniform amongst all individuals.

This philosophy can be seen in Avocadia's Australian Bill of Rights ;

I have the right to all rights expressed herein if I am an individual who is a citizen of Australia, if I am an individual within the jurisdiction of Australia, or if I am an individual held by, or in the charge of any individual, group or organisation that is a citizen of Australia, incorporated within Australia, trades within Australia, or is commanded by the Australian government.

While liberalism defines rights as natural and a component of being human - which they are - they can still suffer under the coercive and corrosive power that government wields with its monopoly on power. Republicanism seeks to formalise the legal and civil rights in not only the constitution but the political framework of government. This is the Madisonian and Harpurian republic at work.

Under Australian Republicanism a failed government is one that;

• does not dictate the rights of all individuals from arbitrary government in the constitution. (See Avocadia's Bill of Rights)
• whose legislative does not stop the executive from acting outside of the constitution.
• whose executive does not stop the legislative from acting outside of the constitution.
• impedes individuals from stopping the legislative and executive acting outside of the constitution.

In all these areas the Australian and State governments are not constructed to provide for these outcomes.

Charles Harpur believed fully in the virtue of humanity and for the faith that is in them . Harpur saw the inequity, kleptocracy and burdens that governments place on the people, banishing them from achieving from their full potential.

For instance in a kleptocracy simply travelling requires paying bribes galore. In an aristocracy there is a tax burden simply to maintain the aristocrats and their non-meritorious social and political structure. Even liberal democracy carries its burdens when implemented inefficiently which we are starting to see with governments acting under an overly-centralised national security state.

The impositions are real and significant.

Australian republicanism believes that political, social, cultural and economic prosperity is achieved at the point of highest interdependence between individuals. That point is maximum liberty.

Australian Republicans seek our political, social and economic structures to align as maximum liberty so individuals can achieve individually or collectively as they choose without harm, imposition or coercion.

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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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The modern Australian Diaspora is exceptionally different to the ghost of the diaspora past. It is one grounded in globalisation, economic rationalism/liberalism and the economic flows between nations. It isn't backpacker based or cultural flight; in fact you would be hard pressed to find any modern Australian Diasporan who considers Australia a cultural backwater. However, the modern diaspora is internationally focused in economics and politics, in these areas the cringe of geopolitical isolation still exists.

As Gary Sauer-Thompson pointed out :

My quick response to [Patrick] West is that Australia's diaspora is composed of professionals working in a global marketplace in jobs that are unavailable in their homeland, rather than elite intellectuals such as the old English standbys of Clive James and Germaine Greer.

That style of cultural cringe is gone; long gone. There is still a cringe though but it is political and economic. In the political sphere Australian politicians still enjoy the appearance of geopolitical isolation and attempt to deny both our geography as well as the increasing claustrophobia of globalisation and telecommunications. Too often politics and economics is grounded in the big state-nationalist policies of the nation-state rather than the modern market-state.

The modern Australian Diaspora, on the other hand, is part of the market-state view of the globe. Most modern diasporans are part of the international labor workforce which flows readily from location to location. Adam is a good example of this effect; in the time that SSR has been up and running he has worked in the UK, China, Australia and Singapore.

The biggest inhibitor for diasporans is big-state nationalism which restricts global labor markets and makes it difficult for diasporans to move from economy to economy in order to gain the greatest remuneration for their skills - not to mention adventure along the way.

The tyranny of distance is largely gone, and is only felt when the body is lugged across oceans; for instance I dread the cross-pacific flight - fourteen hours in the air is hard on the body. However I can stay in quick contact with my family and friends through telecommunications. I have what are effectively conference calls with a mate, his family and kids via google talk.

The modern diaspora, globalisation and telecommunications combine to make the old mercartor projection of a map obsolete. Australia has lost its tyranny of distance and the good old standby excuse of geopolitical isolation. The market-state and its engaged political and economic citizens - no matter where they happen to be living and working - warp the map into a political and economic cartogram .

What this does is relocate Australia - politically and economically. Our policies should reflect that cartogramic view of Australia. This means dumping the big-state nationalist policies of the GAPF and protecting QANTAS 's routes as well as making citizenship and enfranchisement more liberal and republican by changing the relationship between individual and government such that any individual with a political relationship to the state - ie under its jurisidiction - has full political and enfranchisement rights. A market-state is dominated by fluid labor and capital, it cannot afford the inefficiencies of the nation-state which is dominated by accidents of birth.