The Archdruid Report: The Principle of Subsidiary Function

The Archdruid Report: The Principle of Subsidiary Function

On the whole, though, the pursuit of complexity as a solution for the problems caused by complexity is a self-defeating strategy. It happens to be the self-defeating strategy to which we’re committed, collectively and in most cases individually as well, and it can be dizzyingly hard for many people to think of any action at all that doesn’t follow it. Take a moment, now, before reading the rest of this post, to give it a try. Can you think of a way to deal with the problems of complexity in today’s industrial nations – problems that include, but are not limited to, rapidly depleting energy supplies, ecological destruction, and accelerating economic turbulence – that doesn’t simply add another layer of complexity to the mess?

There’s at least one such way, and longtime readers of this blog will not be surprised to learn that it’s a way pioneered decades ago, in a different context, by maverick economist E.F. Schumacher. That way starts with what he termed the Principle of Subsidiary Function. This rule holds that the most effective arrangement to perform any function whatsoever will always assign that function to the smallest and most local unit that can actually perform it.

It’s hard to think of any principle that flies more forcefully in the face of every presupposition of the modern world. Economies of scale and centralization of control are so heavily and unthinkingly valued that it rarely occurs to anyone that in many situation they might not actually be helpful at all. Still, Schumacher was not a pie-in-the-sky theorist; he drew his conclusions on the basis of most of a lifetime as a working economist in the business world. Like most of us, he noticed that the bigger and more centralized an economic or political system happened to be, the less effectively it could respond to the complex texture of local needs and possibilities that makes up the real world.