Loosely Coupled

Some mildly contrarian thoughts about our fixation on national politics.

The Internet was first developed in the late 1960’s as a defense-funded project. The purpose was to implement an information architecture that could continue transmitting data, even if large portions had been physically destroyed by, say, a nuclear bomb. The solution, which we all enjoy to this day, was to create a network-of-networks, each network operating independently. In this way, any individual network might be destroyed, but the network-of-networks could continue to operate by rejiggering the path each network used to transmit data. The designers of the internet realized that a loosely coupled system, one in which components of the system collaborate, but are not dependent on each other to continue functioning, is far more resilient than a system in which the destruction of a single component would cause the entire system to stop working.

When I worked at Amazon, our entire software infrastructure was designed as a service-oriented-architecture. That’s software lingo for saying the system as a whole was comprised of lots of little independently functioning systems called “services”. If any single service went down, the system as a whole could continue operating, even though a specific feature might go missing. So, for example, if the services that produced product reviews or made recommendations went down, you would still be able to see the product page, add things to your cart, and make purchases. Some pieces of information might be missing from the page, but by-and-large people would still be able to shop.

One of the interesting things about the founding of the United States was that it also originally came into existence as a kind of loosely coupled system. It was a nation state comprised of multiple separate states. Each state largely operated independently of the others. The U.S. constitution even goes out of its way to insist that any prerogatives not explicitly assigned to the federal government are reserved to the states and to the people. The ratifiers of the constitution were concerned with preserving the loosely coupled architecture that characterized the United States at its founding.

One of the benefits of loose coupling, where organizing a country is concerned, is that the damage caused by bad governance can be contained. State borders can thus serve as a kind of firewall against political stupidity. A stupid governor, or an incompetent state legislature, may write foolish laws, or impose unjust taxation, but such incompetence and stupidity is confined within the borders of their own state. Other states, which have elected wiser, more capable leaders, can enjoy the benefits of such leadership, notwithstanding the fact that the state they share a border with is governed by idiots. This allows the individual states to serve as a kind of variable testing ground for new ideas. Thus the reason that the loosely coupled design of the United States has been described as a laboratory. States are able pursue their own interests and governing ideas in ways that vary from state to state. In this way, good ideas can be proven, while the damage from bad ideas can be contained.

Whatever the benefits that emerged from the carnage of the American Civil War, and they were numerous, one of the unhappy downsides of that war was the way it diminished the American understanding of the loosely coupled architecture of the nation. Civil War historian Shelby Foote describes how, prior to the Civil War, in talking about their country, Americans would say “the United States are…”. But after the Civil War, Americans started saying “the United States is…”. The imaginarium of Americans - the way we conceive of and think of our country - was shifted away from thinking about America as a loosely coupled collaboration of independent states, and began solidifying around the notion of America as a single, monolithic entity.

The practical effects of this altered imaginarium did not all come crawling out of the woodwork overnight. They are still working themselves out and have been for 160 years. Even now, the country is still legally structured as a loosely coupled nation, though, in practice, more and more of the focus and power is wielded by a monolithic, centralized government. Much of the federal monolith is legalistically unconstitutional. But if you have been paying attention, you probably know that we do not, as a nation, slavishly adhere to the words of the U.S. Constitution. Not even close.

The good news, however, is that the words of the constitution do give states and individuals standing to make an argument in court, and even to act according to those words without first asking the permission of a federal bureaucrat.

Reinvigorating the American imaginarium around existing as a more loosely coupled nation may be a better investment of our imaginations and time than our tendency to fixate on the federal beast. The wisdom of normal Americans is subtly exhibiting itself in the “big sort” currently taking place. Of course, pundits on the left are horrified that people might be moving to states and communities that share more of their own values. But things that horrify left-wing pundits have a high probability of being things that are good for Americans. Besides, horrifying left-wing pundits is fun. The notion that a big sort is ipso facto bad for America is rooted in a total ignorance of the very nature of our loosely coupled form of government.

Monolithic, centralized governments simplify the lives of those who crave power. This is behind all the teeth-gnashing in response to overturning Roe. The recent ruling by the Supremes in no way outlawed abortion. It only returned the question itself to the individual states, allowing for the natural diversity of treatment that would occur in a loosely coupled nation. But that makes the lives of those who love politics and controlling others more difficult. Hence all the whining. As an aside, so-called conservatives who are agitating for a national ban on abortion are doing the left’s work for them. Claiming to be “conservatives”, they are advocating for a notably left-leaning view of the role of the federal monolith in our lives. Like the left wing operatives they claim to abhor, they are operating as if the ends justify almost any means.

The mainstream media and the left, but I repeat myself, are incentivized to create the impression that the federal government is where all the action is. They need and want to fixate all of us on what is happening in Washington. But I have this nagging suspicion that we might be better off applying much more of our creative energy to what is happening locally and regionally. Washington, for all of its narcissistic grandiosity, simply cannot really control the actions of 350 million people who are determined to pursue their own interests in a highly distributed way. Three million federal “workers”, many of whom are incompetent and lazy, simply cannot cope with large-scale non-participation.

What may be preventing a larger devolution of power back to states and localities is the widespread hypnotic belief that all problems must be solved comprehensively at a national scale. It is in the interest of the left for us to think that way. Attending, instead, to the power and pluck of states, counties, cities, school districts, and neighborhoods might be a much better use of our attention. Diffusing our political focus away from Washington would also offer the happy advantage of disconcerting the mainstream pundit class — we would be making their lives more difficult . In fact, it would almost be worth doing solely because we would be making their lives more difficult.