Working from Home - Day 25

Today I have spent my entire time working on a application that runs on Azure. I had to work with DevOps on my previous project and learned to detest the numerous rough edges. The underlying web services are not any better. It is billable work, I just cannot see why anyone would want to use the platform by choice. Given Microsoft’s excellent sales force it does not surprise me that so many businesses are using it.

Yesterday Ohio joined Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin joined together to develop a regional plan to re-establish commerce. Earlier this week California, Oregon, and Washington announced that they would form a regional unit and Connecticut, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, New Jersey and New York are also working as a regional unit. A confederation I suppose. I hear that the three coalitions represent more than fifty percent of economic activity in the United States.

I have been fascinated by an alternative political organization of the United States ever since I read The United City-States of America. A regional government may be a good first step towards a more representative government. I think the main reason that the Nordic countries can make a democratic economy work is their homogeneity. If you believe that your neighbors are the same as you, you can allow them more liberty. Frankly we need to be way more inclusive of the people we consider the same as us. I have noticed that living in relative proximity is a surrogate for identifying with others.

I need to re-read the Federalist Papers. These men had a very large job ahead of them, and even with four months of effort, they pulled one helluva of an all nighter. The states, at the time, were a good segregation of resources as they existed. Let us side step the issue of slavery, it was among the sins of the early United States. The eradication of indigenous people were another. I want to stay on a single glide path here, happy to write about the other issues with the nation’s founding in another post.

How do we live together? I suppose I am really looking at how do we live together in an economic sense? We need to share a common belief in our common outcome. You and I need to provide for ourselves and our families. I do not know how you define your family. Mine consists of my spouse (loaded, I know), our children, and what is left of our parents and brothers and sisters. We also consider our extended families, cousins and such as our extended family. There are also elements of extended family. Lifelong friends, the friends that result of friends. Let us call this extended family a tribe. (Not an anthropologist, give me some latitude.)

I really do not want to see the actual implementation of a confederacy. The "alliance between persons, parties, states, etc., for some purpose" sounds very open to a radicalization platform. How do we allow people to organize locally while also allowing people to get out of an area with conflicting organizations? I think the federal oversight is useful to prevent the suppression of people when they differ from their local norms. Maybe the intermediate ground is an absolute freedom of the press. This implies that we have a freedom to publish and randomly access content. Actually, now that I consider this, I am beyond my pay grade to consider the effect.

Tomorrow’s reading is Federalist Papers.

These were real men. Constitutional Convention.