The Sprawl

"And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short."

-Thomas Hobbes

(also in Tom Waits' song 'Come On Up to the House') was describing the natural state of mankind from the year 1651. Things haven't changed much. A "war of all against all" is another way of saying "every man for himself." Before the human was Social, it was belligerent. Unfortunately the former does not eclipse the latter. In Leviathan, Hobbes offered his interpretation that when faced with the anarchic state of nature most people would give up liberties in exchange for peace or "freedom." Thus, you have the broad concept of government.

Say you have 20 humans (5 groups of 4) living separately in a large wooded area. Each group is completely self-dependent and -supporting. These humans are able to survive under the circumstances but are constantly taxed by environmental conditions, marauding predators and conflict with other humans.

Now think of these humans as people.

Assume the condition of trade has been met. Being as they are mentally endowed, the idea is introduced that if they work together and pool their resources they could achieve a more rewarding and satisfying life. A whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Jump to the smallest society you can imagine. Every member has specific functions and carries out certain duties. Efficiency is a hallmark of this system. Each person influences a whole to which their daily life is tandem. As a result, one can see the impact of their actions manifest almost immediately.

Jump to a society where a true democracy is no longer viable. This is where things get complicated. This is what most people associate with the word 'government:' Representatives. Taxes. Parties. It's the base idea expanded only to encompass the growing size of the system. It becomes a sprawl.

Social contracts exist under the requisite concept that those involved are contributing to the group. In the United States we pay taxes. Those taxes go to a pool that is then spent on things concerning the whole. Public spaces, infrastructure, security, et cetera. For simplicity we'll address local, state and national levels at once. People pay taxes (whether intentionally or not) because they want the continued benefits that participating in a society affords them. In a representative democracy delegates convene to determine who gets "what, when and how" (Lasswell. Word.). That stage, right there, is where the problems arise.

If a government is supposed to represent the wishes of the people through the spending of public money and the number of people exceeds the capacity of government to satisfy, what good is the system? If you were to sit down and have a conversation with me I would likely delve into more complex and specific instances and projections of this concept at work, which is where the meat of the subject is. I believe there are deep negative social effects that result from such a situation. Problems that would be much less likely to occur without.

Because the literal characteristic of a sprawl is separation of the community. 100s of 1000000s of people have a stake in the same national resources yet each of them regularly interacts with a dot fraction of the community. Darwin's finches evolved different beaks over a 18,750 square mile area (and that's counting water). By comparison, Texas is 268,820 square miles. Imagine how many different ways people evolved to think about the world over the span of the United States. And all of them have a say in how the common resource is spent. In theory.