Modular Reliance

Us moderns rely on fellow humans to provide what we cannot do so efficiently in two main categories:

1. Government - to protect us, distribute wealth, and plan/regulate large groups for mutual benefit
2. Utilities - semi-private companies, protected from competition while capped on profits so they may provide services which we now rely on heavily for a minimal cost

Neither of these groups follow their roles perfectly.   I'll shoot from hip to say they're 50% efficient at performing their tasks.  This post proposes a way to bring civilization closer to 100% effectiveness with how government serves and spends, and how utilities make technological progress while keeping costs low.  Essentially, this post is about efficiency of public utility  and political systems.

The Problem of Non-Scalabilty

Both political and public utility systems suffer from an inability to scale well.  In general, both systems have established boundaries of service based on space rather than population and perform their service to that space in a hub/spoke model.   To scale well, new  hubs would be need as previous hubs become overloaded, but in our world, there are no new cities being made or water companies added to existing cities.   Mayors water companies simply serve a larger number.  In doing so, the individuals of a population progressively lose their voice (and corresponding sense of importance), while taking on apathy - the big government/companies will deal with it, whatever "it" is.  

Political Representation

Taking California as an example, we may redraw district lines from time to time, but new districts are not made.  New counties are not made.  New cities are not made (with the exception of unincorporated areas becoming cities).  In general, as population grows, representation does not.  In a town of 2,000, I can likely speak directly to the mayor.  In my home town of 10,000, the mayor lived across the street and down one house.  One feels his voice is heard by the decision makers who he is trusting to keep his home safe, useful and affordable.  As populations double, the size of their government may double, but primarily in administrative ways which does not increase voice.  Even if I have a representative in my suburb, he simply reports to the mayor, and the mayor still makes the decisions at his level of government.  In a way, my voice is only heard by an in-between, pushing a voice which contributed to mayoral decisions one tier further from me.  

The point to notice here is that decisions made at a particular tier of government stay the same even if the layers of representation grow.  This always puts the individuals further from the decision maker.   Our reliance on the mayor stays the same as his realm of decisions stays the same, but our distance from him grows along with population.

Utility Centralization

I consider the following to be utilities:

1. Electricity/natural gas
2. Water
3. Sewer
4. Trash collection
5. Gasoline/diesel
6. Internet service
7. Phone service

The first few are regulated - they have caps on their profitability and competition.  The bottom ones have standards of service to live up to, but are uncapped in profits.  

Regulated utilities fail to offer low prices because their profit caps depend on their costs, which they are free to take on more of.  Waste enough money and their costs go up, and those costs are past to the consumer.  In the case of housing outside the service area of a regulated utility, many enjoy a co-op utility company.  In the case of San Diego, those outside SDG&E's service area pay about half for their energy per kWh.  Half.  

A reason we fail to change the system is because we throw good money after bad - we've already invested soooo much into the current system, that it would be ridiculous to lay new power cables just to introduce free market alternatives.   

False.

The Germans have deregulated power companies (and transportation companies).  Yet they all use the same wires (and roads) as before.   How?  Because I can subscribe to Green Power Inc who only uses solar and wind to make it's power, and they pump as many kWh into the existing lines as they have subscribers.  Or, I can pay Coal For Less Power who will burn fossil fuels and pump the appropriate amount of power into the grid as their customers pay for.  

Even so, there is a scaling problem: power plants (and water plants, and disposal yards) are often very large, and then have to transmit or transport their service great distances.   The spokes are very long on their hubs.  I believe this is why the small co-op company can survive on half the sales price.  So many people rely on the one plant, that failure is not an option.  It becomes over regulated - we demand 99.999% up time, and now as more lines/pipes/trucks are added to its inventory, they become exponentially more expensive:  company growth means more regulation to raise the cost of expanding to more customers (and existing customers)

Modularity as a Solution

Imagine a world where your voice was always heard and where utilities bound to populations instead of regions - allowing free market to keep solutions improving and actually implemented.  May I start this conversation by pitching 5 as the magic number:  Each tier of our reliance on a service, whether political or a utility, scales with powers of 5.   With a world population of 7 billion, that makes 14 tiers (5^14 = 7^10) across which to spread the decisions to make. 

A family is roughly of size 5.  It can figure out its own terms of government (perhaps a monarchy or oligarchy, which may change to a democracy as children age).  There shall be a pool of decisions which will always be made at this level:  what to eat, what to wear inside the house, what sports to play, which schools to enroll into. 

Gather 5 families to get 25 people - the next level of government.  Perhaps they can decide things like how to decorate their houses, keep their yards, or even place speed bumps in front of their houses to protect their kids.  

The next level up is 125, then 625.  To make number easy, and to give meaningful names to the groups, I suggest:

1. Families of ~5
2. Neighbors of ~25
3. Hamlets of ~100
4. Villages of ~600
5. Towns of ~3000
6. Townships of ~15k
7. Boroughs of ~80k
8. Cities of ~390k
9. Metropolises of ~2M
10. Counties of ~10M
11. States of ~50M
12. Countries of ~240M
13. Unions of ~12B
14. World of ~6B

Scaling

Let's assume that it makes sense for Townships to have their own garbage disposal service, Boroughs to have their own power plants, and Cities to have their own water companies.  Perhaps metropolises have their own rail ways, counties have their own highways and so on.  

Each neighboring unit of the same tier can easily interface resources to account for backup (ie neighboring Boroughs could have a power junction to share power if one plant were to go out).  However, the main principle is to make each utility and level of political decision making match a population size, and not a geographical region.  As a City doubles in size, it will much earlier have Hamlets which have doubled, thus creating new Hamlets, and on to new Villages, Towns etc.  During that process of the sub-groups splitting first, new utility companies will have come into existence along with new government components to offload services/works of the group which getting large enough to split.  

As populations don't exist in perfect powers of 5, a splitting rule could be that once a group (say, a Village) grows to double its original size (ie contains 10 Hamlets instead of 5), then the Village will split into two, each with 3 Hamlets.  This scheme is important as it allows simple majority voting to happen with an odd number of sub-groups.

Voting and Representation

Voting is an individuals primary power to express his political voice.  To maintain a constant "volume" of one's voice, the size of group he impacts must stay the same.  This implies that as populations grow, groups quantities must also grow.  

All decisions of a particular tier of government will be made by a simple majority of sub-groups.  For example, the group of Neighbors will make decisions by one vote coming from each member Family.  Each Family will have a representative take their collective vote (perhaps done by democracy at the Family level, or perhaps by trusting their representative to vote on their behalf) to the Neighbors and if a simple majority (minimum 3 votes) are for a motion to pass, then it passes.  

Note that in this scheme, a "simple majority" ends up meaning 60% or 3/5 majority.   Note that the level at which voting starts may be different that the level at which a decision being voting on is made.  This is much like our electoral college:  We vote at individual levels, but the decision is made at the electoral college level.   In this modular model of government, a given group can chose to defer it's voting voice to the next level larger.  For example, a Borough may be deciding to change their power plant from coal to geothermal.  To approve, they need 3/5 of the Townships to agree.  This particular Borough makes power plant decisions with votes happening at the Family level (not quite as granular as an Individual, but not as distanced from Individuals as Towns).   As each Family casts their votes, the Neighbors collectively a single vote on to the Hamlet according to the majority vote at the Neighbor tier.  Similarly, the Hamlets gather votes from all 5 Neighbor groups, and pass on a single vote to the town based on a "simple" 3/5 majority.  This happens all the way up to the Borough who then only has 5 votes to collect and tally.  

As all decisions pass with a 3/5 majority, the majority is more clear than a true simple majority of 50% + 1.   In this way, decisions are more clear, and gripes on splitting hairs are minimized.  Note too that even as a population expands, a voter will always have the same strength of voting voice in power plant decisions.

If a particular group wishes to defer it's voting up a level, then there will need to have been a representative at the upper level.  For example, each Neighbor group must have a representative to vote on behalf of all its Families for such matters the Families have chosen to defer.  Similarly, if all Neighbors in a Hamlet chose to defer decisions upwards, then the Hamlet must have a representative to vote on behalf of all the Neighbors.  Such decisions of deferment should be able to be modified at any regular meeting.  To prevent a given tier from efficiently re-claiming its voting rights, the deferment power shall be limited to only go up a single level.  For example, Families may defer their Power Plant voting rights up to the Neighbors, but the Neighbors cannot further defer that voting right up to a Hamlet - for if a Family wanted to initiate reclaiming the right to vote on Power Plants, he would have to rally 3/5 of not only Families in his Neighbor group, but now also Families in 3/5 of the other Neighbors making up his Hamlet.  This exponentially increases the amount of work one has to do to regain his voice once he's deferred it.  The 1-level deferment rule keeps the work required to defer a vote equal to the work required to re-claim a voting right.