In a governmental body, where the power lies is the biggest point of question and concern. A more centralized view of power would have any national decisions made by a select few, while a more decentralized view of power separates national decisions to a greater populace. According to Dr. Steve Trost, decentralization holds more value to a nation than pursuing a more centralized government. As it pertains to the United States government, Dr. Trost provides federalism as the answer for a functional decentralized government. Federalism is letting decision making rely on each state, allowing states to compare and contrast between each other. In his presentation, Dr. Trost evaluates the disadvantages of centralized power across the board and the benefits of decentralized power in its place.
Dr. Trost starts by showing the broad problems with centralized thinking. When a government becomes more centralized, its success and failure lie on a singular entity, an extreme of which would be a singular person with less extreme being a group of people, like Congress. Success is now pinned on this small group of people, which means if they fail, the country fails with them. If this group becomes corrupt, there is no protection against them since all the power lies with them. There are no barriers if this group decided to use this power in an abusive nature. Whether freedom is protected relies more on the whims of the leader at the time rather than the laws that were established. Even if this centralized group had no fear of being corrupted, they still can only produce solutions that fit a one-size-fits-all paradigm. Centralized power has a difficult time personalizing solutions. According to Dr. Trost, decentralization of governmental power avoids these problems. As power decentralizes, the responsibility of success and failure begins to spread across the nation. Each state becomes responsible for their own success and failure, with a federalist decentralization view. With separated power, corruption becomes harder to employ. Each state would have to choose corruption. Alongside the expansive resources a party would need to have to try to corrupt a decentralized nation, they would also be faced with the power of other states to refuse the corruption. This refusal would attract populace from out of state to move into this state, lowering the value of the original corrupt state. Abusive power is then limited to the areas of corruption, which are easier to see and stop due to decentralized power. Freedom no longer lies on the whims of the leader but instead stays alive even if one part of the country chooses freedom. Solutions to problems also become more personalized, since each state is dealing with their individual state problems.
As the presentation progressed, Dr. Trost delved into the advantages and disadvantages of decentral and central forms of power in different parts of governmental control. The first subject was the centralization of data. Many companies, like Facebook and Google, have a centralized data collection system. This means that one entity has power over vast amounts of data collected from the populace. The U.S. government collects just as much if not more data from the populace as well. Dr. Trost made his point about the problem with this data collection by asking the question, “What would Joseph Stalin do with if he had this data?” Dr. Trost’s counter to centralization on data was public-key cryptography. Under cryptography, everyone would have the power over their own data, choosing to reveal it only when they would choose to. In a similar vein, Dr. Trost also talked about the media, both mainstream and social. With centralized power over media. Information can be chosen either to put at the forefront or blocked depending on the desires of the owner of the media website. Under a more decentralized form of media sharing, each person would have the responsibility for what they post and do not post. No entity could remove or block their posts against their will. The responsibility of censorship would then be placed on the discretion of the viewer. Currency was another subject which could work in advantage to decentral power. In a centralized currency specifically with the U.S. dollar, government can place a tax on its populace without permission or even knowledge of it. Since the U.S. dollar is no longer backed by gold, it can be printed, which is a common way the U.S. government pays for expenditures, such as government organizations. However, this lowers the value of the U.S. dollar which gives the society as a whole a loss in the value they own. This result is identical to what a tax does to a society. People who are not even U.S. citizens also inadvertently pay this tax if they have their money in U.S dollars. With a decentral currency, a currency were there is no power over the printing or making capabilities of the currency, the value of the dollar stays consistent. Value is protected, and government oversight over purchases is protected since there is no overarching entity over the currency. The last points Dr. Trost talked about were about regulations and exchange, which I think puts a nation at the best advantage if accepted in a decentral mindset. Under a decentralized government, regulations are focused by the state. This is back to the federalistic view of decentralized power. As regulatory power is split between each state, the power of compare and contrast shines. If a state chose to pass a certain regulation, another state could see the benefits or negatives of this passed regulation. That state then could choose whether or not they want to accept this regulation as one of their own. In a central form of power, this can’t be done. Each state is forced to run the same regulation and suffer the same benefits or negatives, even though regulations effect nations differently. With decentral exchange, the power of values lies on the exchangers. If both parties find value out of the exchange, the surrounding society also increases in value (if no fraud was committed). Centralized power interjects in this, using regulations that interrupted exchange. This interrupts society’s growth in value as well. Decentral power allows for the full responsibility over loss and success for the individual.
