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Society
One role that those who aspire to government think they have a mandate to do is design society in line with their own way of thinking. This is the road to totalitarianism, and totalitarianism has a very bad track record historically.
What these people think is that everyone would just follow the rules they lay down everything will be perfect and thus murdering millions of people is a small price to pay for this utopia.
One would have thought that after centuries of this mode of government the human race would have learnt.
This section describes how Smallism allows individuals, families, communities, cities, county and country to use the power of the crowd, or the power of evolution or the power of statistics depending on your preference to allow evolution, to allow bad ideas to die and good ideas to thrive.
Being that smallism starts at the individual and works up to a national level the totalitarians that are bound to rise are limited in their scope and can never achieve the power they crave.
Notes: As this website is UK based the term 'ward' is used to describe a small community. Small as-in Smallism. Many parts are stronger than the sum of the whole - hence the geodesic dome as our logo.
This section will introduce the Ward as a theoretical model on which we will gradually build up and expand into a practical, national society of self-managed, self-reliant and self-representative Wards in the modern context.
Our initial ward is minimalist and vacuumist with a few dozen or so houses, a farm, butchers, grocers and fresh well water.
Employment is created by the production and distribution of food and products created from the farm (e.g. leather) and families provide the social care structure for the young and old.
Everybody owns their property and our Ward is fully self-sufficient.
Because this ward is isolated, all shared assets within the bounds of the ward belong to the ward and consequently, maintenance and upkeep are the responsibility of the ward.
In our isolated example, there is no other logical possibility. There is no one else to do it.
This Ward produces food and leather; the neighbouring wards produce whatever is appropriate to their resources at the current time and happen to consume the supply of leather from neighbouring wards.
Trade in surplus produce is enabled and encouraged by encouraging a logistics infrastructure to develop that will allow businesses to distribute products throughout the country.
Law and Order In keeping with the self-sufficiency ideals of smallism wards will also have stronger powers to create laws for their area.
This is already happening in the UK and although some argue against the use of these laws giving the power to create them to the people, rather than having a local council or law enforcement agency create them on behalf of the people ensures laws that are wanted are enacted.
If an area has problems with begging, then there should be no reason why an anti-begging law shouldn't be enacted, however, if the people of a Ward are happy with beggars on the street then they would not enact this law.
Legislation in many ways is indicative of a deeper problem and this approach encourages wards to tackle the root cause of the problems rather than creating rafts of new laws.
Of course, some people believe legislation can fix social problems, this is, of course, false and instead of making begging illegal, which helps no one (except the prison and legal industry), the ward may decide instead to create a rehabilitation centre and provide work to the homeless.
Bearing in mind that jobs are now tax-free and free of legislation at a national level this creates a free and easy employment market benefiting both job seekers and employers. A humorous example of what Smallism is aiming to achieve here Ignoring this concept is the fundamental error in our concept of ownership in social systems today.
When we start examining incentives of the workers' ownership of the means of production we find that theory is exactly in line with the results of what is called 'public ownership' through unionised industries.
For example, British Rail and British Coal industries of the 1970's where the left-wing Labour government of the day could not resist the power of the unions, who demanded ever-increasing pay raises and interrupted service provision (by means of strikes) if they didn't get what they wanted.
This is a natural state of incentives when the workers have the power and why the nationalisation of industries always fail to produce at potential levels.
The employees' can hold the government to ransom simply by not working. The government cannot simply sack the workers because in dogma 'the workers own the means of production and the labour party of the day who were (and are) largely funded by the unions and pass laws that protect the power of the unions.
Suppose now we give the customers the ownership of the means of production and now analyse the incentives.
Immediately we jump to the conclusion that the workers will be underpaid, but will it? If workers are underpaid or tools and materials are substandard then the quality of service, and thus productivity reduces, leading to losses and lower share prices and dividends.
This is a double whammy of badness to both the customer who receives substandard products or services and the shareholder as dividend payments are less likely.
As a shareholder-customer group, a balance can be struck between the price that the customers are willing to pay for the quality of service, and the return on the shareholding, on the side of the ownership of means of production.
If the customer requires higher quality they need to provide resources for better employee conditions, better tools or better materials.
This will require a balance between dividend returns and the price of products. If a company does particularly well, then shareholders are rewarded for providing the extra resources through dividend payments BUT, and a move away from the current sole reason from holding shares being to make a profit at the lowest possible cost if the owner-customers decide they would like to lower the cost of the product then dividend payments can be zero and the funds put back into the company.
The way the consumer can ensure they get better service is to ensure that workers are paid well. If the workers are also local, and thus also shareholders this effect is compounded, and thus the incentives are aligned positively for all.
Summary
By having customer ownership of local services the incentives between profit, quality and employee care are better aligned than in the current system where each of these factors competes with each other for resources which drags down the average of all factors.