Planetary Subsidiarity

Jonathan Blake's principle, from Children of a Modest Star, for allocating authority in a worldwide but non-world-state governance architecture: authority over any function goes to the scale that governs it most effectively, in service of habitability and multispecies flourishing. Four features: form follows function (habitat restoration local, carbon management planetary); new institutions above and below the nation-state, such as a Planetary Atmospheric Steward; duties of assistance (subsidium) in all directions; and a preference for the local that keeps planetary institutions "minimally viable." A subsidiarity assembly holding meta-authority periodically revises allocations, deciding who decides, not what. Moynihan cites it as the middle ground between chaos and world government; Bratton's cybernetic account of governance in the same volume is its unreconciled rival.