Subsidiarity
Political ·Thursday April 30, 2009 @ 23:10 EDT (link)
Subsidiarity is a great principle. The dictionary definition is just "of secondary importance" but as a legal and political principle it means that "matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority" (also). I found it in one of Murray's books; probably the one I'm (paused in the middle of) reading now: In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government*. It's a great handle for a very good idea: everything should be as localized or decentralized as possible, but no more so. I had cause to use it in this infinitely long Facebook thread with Tom about my Taxation is theft status.
* I was copying some of the links for this post from Google, and it kept inserting an extra level of redirection through Google (even though the status bar had the original link, copying had the Google cruft). Fortunately, GreaseMonkey to the rescue: there's a script to fix it: Fix links in personalized search.
Books finished: The Game-Players of Titan.DVDs finished: Saw V.
