Proponents of limited government have long recognized the dangers of excessive centralization. When an entity becomes large and many diverse parts are bound by a single nexus of control, it loses flexibility, adaptability, and humanity. This is true of government, which is why libertarians support local control over federal power, but the public sector is not unique in demonstrating the failure of centralized systems.
A recent example from my own experience will illustrate the point. I have always been a great advocate of brick and mortar book/record stores, and as convenient and great as online shopping is, I die a little inside every time I see one go out of business. Where I live, in Washington, DC, Barnes & Noble is pretty much the last holdout against the rising tide of e-commerce when it comes to CD sales (I know it’s anachronistic to actually buy CDs in this day and age, but I am that sort of curmudgeon. Bear with me.) It’s a pitiful holdout, to be sure, but it’s the best I have, and so I still shop there when I have the chance.
But here’s the thing: The CD section is organized in a profoundly counterproductive way. On one aisle, you have the obligatory Pop/Rock section, organized by artist name, as anyone would reasonably expect. This section is woefully underpopulated compared to the opposite aisle, which contains “sale” items, organized into three clusters; $4.99 CDs; $7.99 CDs; and $9.99 CDs.
Initially, this might seem to make sense. People like bargains, and so it is convenient to have a bunch of bargain-priced CDs in one place. But there’s a sinister flip-side to this convenience. It absolutely wrecks things for the shopper who knows, or even has a vague idea, what he wants. Suppose I am on a Tom Waits kick, as I was recently, and I want to buy some of his back catalogue, without being too particular about which albums I actually get. In order to ascertain the product selection, I have to look in four separate places: Pop/Rock, $5, $8, and $10, all of which, incidentally contained different Tom Waits albums the last time I checked. Who, except a devoted music lunatic like me, is going to go to all this trouble? The average shopper will look in Pop/Rock, conclude the album they want is not in stock, and scurry off to Amazon.com to get a better price anyway.
The only other option besides a near exhaustive manual hunt through the admittedly meager selection is to ask an employee, a course of action all but unthinkable to those of us who generally shun actual human contact to the extent that polite society allows it.
The last time I was in this particular Barnes & Noble (in quest of Brian Eno albums) I brought up my concerns to a staff member. It is difficult not to appear critical when telling people they are doing their job wrong, but I did my best to adopt a friendly and helpful demeanor.
“I agree with you,” the sales associate said. “But we have to do it this way, or we get in trouble with corporate headquarters.”
What sort of a business condemns its branch stores to lost sales by implementing such a strict blanket policy? It is conceivable (though unlikely) that this CD organization system might work well in some parts of the country, but this doesn’t mean it will work everywhere. It’s madness to assume that the record buying population of Washington, DC is the same as that in Seattle, or Toronto, or Miami, or Los Angeles. or any number of small towns that still have a chain bookstore.
It’s only a matter of time before Barnes & Noble falls before the internet juggernaut as so many have before it, but when they do, it will be a doom of their own making. By exercising centralized control, and refusing to allow individual stores to innovate, to experiment, and to find what works best for their particular situations and demographics, the company is making the same mistake that is government’s modus operendi. The difference is, where Barnes & Noble’s foolish management structure will ultimately result in its demise, depending as it does on the voluntary business of its customers, the government can continue to finance even the most impractical model indefinitely, since it can simply extract whatever funds it needs from the tax base by force. Failing that, it can always print its own money, a luxury I’m sure Barnes & Noble wishes it had.
Centralization, either private or public, always fails, but the consequences to the rest of us are far greater when such power is left to government hands.
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