cam, 194 words, 1 comment, Solar, Energy, Decentralisation, Nanosolar, Solar Cells

Nanosolar now has their $1 per 1W cells in production. Their first eighteen months of output is already spoken for.

They have made the advances through manufacturing process improvements rather than solar technology itself. Nothing wrong with that. Through microprocessors our cars have become more efficient and safer. Most of the advances in batteries in the last decades have been because of improvements in manufacturing rather than chemical technology. (more)

cam, 286 words, 0 comments, Energy, Water, Decentralisation, Mexico

There has been a gas pipeblast in Mexico which local rebels have claimed responsibility for. These are examples of John Robb's global guerillas. Because the cost of warfare has decreased so much, the heavily centralised political, urban and economic structures are unnecessarily exposed to shock and delivery failure. Energy is one of those susceptible systems. (more)

cam, 398 words, 1 comment, Decentralisation, Water, Sewerage, Tasmania, Greg Barns, Market-state

When Canberra cherry-picks responsibilities from the states it is anti-federalism. When the states take from the local councils there is no real name for it other than centralisation. Tasmanian Councils are defending their authority and responsibility over sewerage and water. It is a familiar pattern, a crisis appears, and a central authority uses that crisis or emergency to covet new powers. It has been a dominant force in Australian politics. (more)

cam, 1238 words, 0 comments, Violence, Australian Republicanism, Decentralisation, Iraq

Any political philosophy has to deal with the issue of violence and be able to explain its current forms, as well as the institutions and natural patterns which cause and inflame it. Hobbes wrote Leviathan partly in a response to the constant civil warring in England. Many of his points of unitary sovereignty are related to those events (a kingdom divided cannot stand). Republicanism is a technology for dispersing sovereignty into the people and restricting state violence as the state has a habit of seeing any violence what-so-ever as a threat to its monopoly on force; which then produces such things as sedition laws which are not intended to end or deal with the violence, but prop up the current political order. (more)

cam, 897 words, 0 comments, Tax, Decentralisation

In the days of the silk road, production and manufacturing were a craftsman's era. No two objects were the same and essentially unique. It was art more than production and would fail any modern manufacturing quality control scheme. The industrial era came not too long after the technology of banking was refined - which was fortunate - as industrialism is a capital intensive enterprise. With the digital age we are moving back into a craftsman's era, though this time with the lessons of industrial quality control. How should the tax system change to meet these economic movements? (more)

cam, 406 words, 0 comments, Centralisation, Decentralisation, Organisation

Organisation is a technology choice. Whether it is political, social or economic organisation. Normally the most efficient form of organisation is chosen to serve a particular purpose. Capital intensive industries tend to adopt heavily centralised structures to support their operations. Commoditised industries can support decentralised structures. (more)

cam, 1547 words, 2 comments, Fluidity, Centralisation, Decentralisation

Australian government does not have any vectors for decentralisation that avoids the abolition of the states. (more)

cam, 1220 words, 0 comments, Federalism, Samuel Griffiths, Centralisation, Decentralisation, Rod Beckstrom, Commoditisation

History has a sine-like wave between the extremes of capital intensiveness and commodification. One of the best examples of this is warfare which was capital intensive with the Knights in shining armour before quickly becoming commoditised by gunpowder - which any riff raff could load and aim. The nation-state as an organisational technology proved well suited to the capital and state intensive period of the late 19th and early 20thC. However, now we are in a commoditisation swing and need to re-seek out decentralisation structures. (more)

cam, 991 words, 2 comments, Federalism, Centralism, Gary Sauer-Thompson, Greg Craven, Decentralisation

One of the arguments in Australia against federalism today is that it was politically necessary in 1901 in order to get the colonies to come under one government - and today that is no longer a political need. Federalism is a form of political organisation that has positive benefits beyond the historical reasons for Australian federation. These include; decentralisation, geographical balance of powers, policy diversity and local autonomy and representation.

This isn't nostalgia for some mythical Australian past; a federalist system is a superior form of constitutional and political organisation. (more)

cam, 2514 words, 0 comments, Quadrennial Defense Review Report, Australian Defence Force, ADF, National Security State, Gary Sauer-Thompson, Decentralisation, P.A. Yeomans, Bill Mollison, Great and Powerful Friends, GAPF, Richard Woolcott

Australia has not produced a Defence White Paper since 2000. I recently argued that we needed a new Defence White Paper as the 2003 Update and Defence Capability Plan were not sufficient enough to determine future defence doctrine. The United States military recently released the Quadrennial Defense Review Report [QDR] which acts as a similar statement on doctrine, capability and force planning as the Defence White Paper does in Australia. Since Australia adheres to the "Great and Powerful Friends" doctrine of foreign policy where Australian forces accept American leadership and the ADF is designed to slot in transparently into US forces, this will have an effect on Australian doctrine as well. (more)