NEGATIVE — COUNTERPLAN — STATES/FEDERALISM — ADVANTAGES 34

FEDERALISM SUSTAINS ECONOMIC PROSPERITY

A DECENTRALIZED FEDERAL SYSTEM SUSTAINS OUR ECONOMY

Steven G. Calabresi, December 1995; MICHIGAN LAW REVIEW, "A government of limited and enumerated powers," EE2001-hxm P.

Finally, decentralization improves the quality of governmental decisionmaking by improving the information flow from the populace to the relevant government decisionmakers. Centralized command and control decisionmaking is often economically inefficient beyond a certain point in all social organizations. This point holds true for the military, for corporations that contract out for many goods and services, and for government as well. Large, multilayered bureaucracies cannot process information successfully.(79) Decentralization alleviates this crucial problem by leading to better informed decisionmaking. As our society and economy grow in complexity, the amount of information that government must process increases as well.(80) This is why overly centralized, top-down command and control mechanisms are even less desirable in today's complex modern economy than they were during the Model-T era of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Ironically, the decentralized federalism of the horse-and-buggy era is better suited to the needs of our information economy than is the overly centralized, outmoded nationalism of the New Deal.

FEDERALISM IS KEY TO ECONOMIC PROSPERITY

John Kincaid, Spring 1995; Publius, "Values and value tradeoffs in federalism," EE2001-hxm P.

An ultimately more important value to be achieved by union was prosperity through establishment of a common market. Peace and security are prerequisites for prosperity but are not in themselves sufficient to bind citizens and their constituent states together through common economic relationships. A common market lowers trade barriers between jurisdictions, reduces the potential for military conflict arising from trade disputes, expands the space available for entrepreneurial activity, and makes more goods and services available to citizens.