Swine Flu and Subsidiarity

David Brooks makes a connection in his NYT editorial:

The correct response to these dynamic, decentralized, emergent problems is to create dynamic, decentralized, emergent authorities: chains of local officials, state agencies, national governments and international bodies that are as flexible as the problem itself.

Swine flu isn’t only a health emergency. It’s a test for how we’re going to organize the 21st century. Subsidiarity works best.

The major problem I have with the above is the word "create." We already have an array of local organizations, businesses, and hospitals, they just need to be empowered and freed from heavy-handed government and fears of lawsuits. Katrina is a good case study on a top-down versus bottom-up approach. Who were the heroes in responding to Katrina? Certainly not FEMA, but Wal-Mart and the Coast Guard. From an article on a Steve Horowitz research paper:

Another element of Wal-Mart's successful response was the great degree of discretion that the company gave to district and store managers. Store managers have sufficient authority to make decisions based on local information and immediate needs. As the storm approached, CEO Lee Scott provided a guiding edict to his senior staff and told them to pass it down to regional, district, and store managers: "A lot of you are going to have to make decisions above your level. Make the best decision that you can with the information that's available to you at the time, and, above all, do the right thing."

In several cases, store managers allowed either emergency personnel or local residents to take store supplies as needed. They did not feel the need to get pre-approval from supervisors to do so. A Kenner, Louisiana employee used a forklift to knock open a warehouse door to get water for a local retirement home. In Marrero, Louisiana employees allowed local police officers to use the store as a headquarters and a sleeping place as many had lost their homes.

In Waveland, Mississippi assistant manager Jessica Lewis, who was unable to reach her superiors to get permission, decided to run a bulldozer through her store to collect basics that were not water-damaged, which she then piled in the parking lot and gave away to residents. She also broke into the store's locked pharmacy to supply critical drugs to a local hospital.

And the Coast Guard:

The one government agency generally acknowledged to have performed well during Katrina was the U. S. Coast Guard. One explanation for its success is that it has had both independence from the political process and a decentralized organizational structure, much like Wal-Mart. It also had a fairly clear and visible “output” (i.e., saving lives through rescues). Despite the Coast Guard not having the ability to rely on profit and loss for knowledge and incentives, it at least could take advantage of local knowledge through its decentralized organizational structure as well as its long-standing powerful organizational culture of agility and independence.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am not saying Wal-Mart is a corporate angel by any means, but I don't see them as the ultimate evil, either. The truth lies somewhere in the middle. But there is no denying that they are good at what they do, and much of their competitive success is a result of combining centralized technology systems with very decentralized decision making. Charles Platt found this out when he left Wired magazine and went undercover as a Wal-Mart employee:

My standard equipment included a handheld bar-code scanner which revealed the in-store stock and nearest warehouse stock of every item on the shelves, and its profit margin. At the branch where I worked, all the lowest-level employees were allowed this information and were encouraged to make individual decisions about inventory. One of the secrets to Wal-Mart’s success is that it delegates many judgment calls to the sales-floor level, where employees know first-hand what sells, what doesn’t, and (most important) what customers are asking for.

Bottom-up works, but it requires those at the top to give up control, not exactly a strength for career politicians.