9. The role of the federal government

As discussed in earlier blogs, the federal government plays the important role of resolving the jurisdiction among govlets. Besides that, a few other important governmental functions or services have to remain in the hands of the federal government. 

Let's take a look at our current federal spending to understand its main functions. The following is a pie chart  of the federal budget for the fiscal year 2013 (courtesy of usgovernmentspending.com): The main federal spending are social security (pension), defense, health (including medicare, NIH funding etc), welfare etc. The remainder 18% of federal budget includes debt interests, education, environment protection, scientific research etc. 

Among these functions, defense clearly should remain the responsibility of the federal government because military training and operations are best run centrally. If govlets maintain their own armed forces, the civil wars may erupt between competing govlets. It is too much of a risk comparing to any potential efficiency gains from military competitions. It is certainly debatable whether the federal government needs to spend that much ($846 billion per year) on defense, but it is a separate issue we will revisit later. 

Another important function that should remain in the hands of federal government is the natural resource and environmental protection. The govlets cannot possibly fulfill the environmental protection objectives because they lacks the broad jurisdiction over large geographical areas, which is essential for environmental protection. In addition, the basic philosophy of the govlets is to protect everyone's right to pursue his/her own interests. The pursuit of personal wealth and profits is the primary driver for human ingenuity and productivity, and the best incentive to organize and mobilize a group of people for the common goals. However, in the case of the natural resource and environmental issues, the best interests of the current generation is clearly to consume and pollute as much as we can, and let the future generation to bear the consequences. The general population are selfish and unwilling to sacrifice their own interests and convenience for the benefits of the future generations, this is why most of the environmental protection legislation have met stern resistance on the capital hill. The future generations are the true stakeholders of the natural resource and environmental issues, but unfortunately they don't have any representations in the current political process for obvious reasons. Therefore, the federal government has to represent the interests of the future generations, and advocate and regulate natural resource and environmental issues against the selfish interests of the current generation. 

Even though the govlet system is not a good form to directly solve environmental issues, it can help discover creative ways to protect the environment. by letting those who truly care about the well-being of future generations to form govlets and experiment with new environmental regulations.

Besides jurisdiction resolution, defense and environment protection, all other major governmental functions, such as social security, health care, education and welfare, can be effectively and efficiently handled by competing govlets. By ending the federal government's monopoly in these areas, there are strong reasons to believe that the govlets will provide much more personalized services that are tailored to individuals' political ideologies without resorting to coercion, and at a much lower cost.