Business 180(9/4-9) – The Founding Of The U.S. Is A Case Study In Decentralization

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Battle Of Bunker Hill

Warm up

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  1. What industry do you work in and what is your role?
  2. What are your responses in your role / position?
  3. Can you describe to the function of your workplace / company?
  4. How many departments, how many offices. National or International?
  5. What are the minimum requirements for employment ie Education or Experience?
  6. How many opportunities are there to ‘move up the ladder’?
  7. What is the process for changing job roles ie Interview? Test?

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General discussion about your workweek:

  1. Current projects? Deadlines? Opportunities?
  2. Anything of interest happening?

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Article

1. Think back to your American history class, and you might remember being taught the differences between federalism and anti-federalism. On one side were the Federalist Founding Fathers, led by statesmen such as Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, who believed in a strong central government. On the other side were the anti-Federalists, led by Patrick Henry of “Give me liberty or give me death” fame, who believed in a weak central government.

2. Today, nearly 250 years later, we might think of this ideological rift in terms of centralization (a strong central authority) versus decentralization (a more distributed system). In fact, I would go as far as to say that the push-and-pull of these two forces is the great contest of our times. And I believe decentralization is winning out.

3. The global trend toward decentralization really got a boost six years ago when the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. Brexit was about redistributing power from a bloated centralized authority, Brussels, and returning it to London. Admittedly, the U.K. has faced a number of expected challenges since it officially departed the EU in January 2020, including a slump in trade and foreign direct investment (FDI), but I believe these issues will be ironed out over time and the country will be stronger for it.

What characterisctics do you think define American culture? Why?

Russia And China Show The Folly In Extreme Centralization

4. The truth is that the world is a safer, richer, more transparent place when power is distributed across a greater number of actors, not fewer. Consider what’s happening in Eastern European. Russia’s efforts to take over Ukraine are a highly centralized move, one that will ultimately fail. In the meantime, Moscow is paying the price because of stiff international sanctions.

5. And then there’s China. As of last week, one out of every five container ships across the world is waiting to dock at a Chinese port, with the worst yet to come in terms of global supply chain disruptions, all because of the centralized Chinese Communist Party’s hardline approach to containing the virus.

6. The economic and financial impact has been significant. Shanghai-listed stocks have sold off to two-year lows, and the country’s manufacturing industry, as measured by the purchasing manager’s index (PMI), have contracted in the last two months.

What is your opinion on “big government”?

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7. What’s more, the Chinese yuan just had one of its worst months on record against the U.S. dollar, plunging as much as 4.5% at its low. It’s largely due to the actions of these two highly centralized countries that the world is experiencing the highest rates of inflation in decades. In March, global food prices hit a new all-time high going back to 1961, which I’m sure everyone reading this is feeling.

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Progress Is Made Possible Through Decentralization

8. Meanwhile, here in the U.S., decentralization still holds, even if it doesn’t feel like it sometimes. That’s thanks to Founders like Patrick Henry, who fought to include a Bill of Rights that, as the name implies, conferred certain liberties to individuals and states that the federal government could not take away.

9. Americans also enjoy separation of powers, as well as checks and balances, so that no single government branch can make all the decisions. A good example of this type of decentralization in action was when a federal district court judge recently struck down the White House’s mask mandate on mass transit, including commercial flights. 

How do you think Japan and America differ when it comes to matters of seperation of power?

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