I hope Fred wouldn't mind me also pointing to another (more substantial) interesting piece by him:
-------------- Fred Foldvary, "The Completely Decentralized City: The Case for Benefits Based Public Finance," The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 60 No. 1 Pg. 403, 01/01/2001 ABSTRACT. An alternative to centralized top-down city governance is a multi-level bottom-up structure based on small neighborhood contractual communities. This paper analyzes the voting rules and public finances of decentralized, contractual urban governance and the likely outcome of such a constitutional structure, substantially reduced transfer seeking or rent seeking. -------------- At least at first glance, Fred's interesting proposals actually are surprisingly like those proposed by Gus diZerega in his very thought provoking (and, IMO, very Hayekian) book: "Persuasion, Power and Polity: A Theory of Democratic Self-Organization," Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000. He makes a persuasive case for a contractual federalism of citizens' cooperatives. As he pointed out during the recently concluded Hayek-L seminar on the book, the book was published almost twenty years after it was ready for publishing -- as a 1983 Berkeley Phd. But I would highly recommend it to anybody who's interested in instituting relatively non-coercive democratic institutions and a non-coervice society in general. Chirag Kasbekar The Information Comany Pvt. Ltd. New Bombay, India > > The real problem is not how to get money out of politics but how to get > > politics out of money. > > Alex > > For my analysis of how to do this, see "Recalculating Consent" at: > http://www.gmu.edu/jbc/fest/files/foldvary.htm > > Fred Foldvary > ===== > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >
