DECODING THE NEW RULES
THE NEW MATRIX
Having seen how swiftly we are moving away from industrial-style synchronization and standardization, it should surprise no one that we are also rewriting other sections of the social code.
We saw earlier that, while all societies need some measure of both centralization and decentralization, Second Wave civilization was heavily biased toward the former and against the latter. The Great Standardizes who helped build industrialism marched hand in hand with the Great Centralizers, from Hamilton and Lenin down to Roosevelt.
Today a sharp swing in the opposite direction is evident New political parties, new management techniques, and new philosophies are springing up that explicitly attack the centralist premises of the Second Wave. Decentralization has become a hot political issue from California to Kiev.
In Sweden a coalition of largely decentralist small parties drove the centralist Social Democrats from power after 44 years in office. Struggles over decentralization and regionalism have shaken France in recent years, while across the Channel and to the north the Scottish Nationalists now include a wing committed to “radical economic decentralization.” Similar political movements can be identified elsewhere in Western Europe, while in New Zealand a still-small Values Party has sprouted, demanding “an expansion of the functions and autonomy of local and regional government . . . with a consequent reduction in the functions and size of central government.”
In the United States, too, decentralism has picked up support, and supplies at least some of the fuel for the tax revolt that is, for good or for ill, surging across the country. On the municipal level, too, decentralism gains force, with local politicos demanding “neighborhood power.” Activist, neighborhood-based groups are proliferating, from ROBBED (Residents Organized for Better and Beautiful Environmental Development) in San Antonio, to CBBB (Citizens to Bring Broadway Back) in Cleveland and the People’s Firehouse in Brooklyn. Many see the central government in Washington as the source of local ills rather than the potential cure.
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