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The fantasies of central planners never end. The author neglects entirely the fact that these city-states arose without any central plan to create these econom

The fantasies of central planners never end. The author neglects entirely the fact that these city-states arose without any central plan to create these economic zones. They are the result of the market and political processes we already had in place. Did some technocrat wizard in Washington say, "We should target the Northeast Corridor to produce 20% of our GDP"? No. That result was organic. Here's an alternate proposal: decentralize power back to the states and have groups of states work out arrangements among themselves to enhance their shared cross-border economies. Reduce the federal take of taxes, leaving the money in the hands of the people who actually innovate, employ, and make economic decisions. The primary fallacies in this central planner's thinking is that some new National Economic Planning Board will be a) completely altruistic in allocating a pile of cash to the places that will produce the most economic benefit, b) able to out-perform the decentralized economic decision-making mechanism of the market (prices), c) not be subject to the lobbying that so corrupts the Congress now.

enraged_camel 11y ago
>>Reduce the federal take of taxes, leaving the money in the hands of the people who actually innovate, employ, and make economic decisions. Are you suggesting that the federal government doesn't innovate or employ (which would be wrong), or that the states are better at those things than the federal government (which would require a citation)?
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  It sounds like perhaps the default mental map needs to be updated before it's possible to improve the physical map.
metaphorm 11y ago
I whole-heartedly support this suggestion. Devolution of economic and political authority has been a model for success throughout history. Central planning, not so much. Not that it can't be, but we are replete with examples of it failing disastrously. However, the author of the article does get at a very interesting and relevant point, which is that the political system in the U.S., at both the state and federal level, is now badly out of date and does not reflect the contemporary realities of where the population centers are and how their economies work. It does seem like our country would greatly benefit from a broad reorganization of political-economy amongst the states and at the federal level as well.
- stcredzero 11y ago
  Central planning, not so much. Not that it can't be, but we are replete with examples of it failing disastrously. Wasn't the Interstate Highway system a boon to the US economy? Wouldn't infrastrucure projects between the meta-urban regions fall into much the same pattern?
  - Spivak 11y ago
    I don't think anyone is saying that the Federal government is without purpose. Interstate highways are exactly the type of project the Federal government should be taking on. That's not the type of central planning described in the article, this is the Federal government correcting a legitimate failing of a confederation. What was in the best interest of each state was opposed to the interests of the country as a whole. It's exactly analogous the position of a classical economist, except the states are the individual actors. Yes, markets sometimes fail, and it ought to be the duty of a central government to correct those failures when they happen but economic intervention should be rare and only when absolutely necessary.
  - metaphorm 11y ago
    fair point. I'll clarify my meaning a bit. central planning has a role to play. for certain types of projects it is appropriate and sometimes even necessary. however, the idea that central planning should be the starting point for economic development is wrong-headed in my opinion. it should be considered the exception, used when needed and not otherwise, not the rule. additionally, I challenge the notion that interstate infrastructure projects are actually examples of central planning. they are more like examples of networks of mutual development and collaboration between diverse partners. adoption of shared technical standards, agreement on shared funding models, and legal compacts to ensure shared responsibility for maintenance and upkeep are what drives projects like the interstate highway system.
  - randyrand 11y ago
    Wow. The federal government was able to connect some dots. I'm super impressed. What a great example of the power of centralized planning.
frogpelt 11y ago
The federal government has proven more times than any other organization that they are inept and inefficient at almost every task they undertake. And yet the people all but demand that they do more, more, more. Please! Take more of my money and more of my individual liberty! And in return please send me more regulation, bureaucracy, inefficient waste, and general mismanagement! I can't get enough!
- zymhan 11y ago
  Yeah, the private sector has been such a steward of my interests over the past century, why do we even need the government. /s
  - jqm 11y ago
    To work for the private sector further against your interests? /s
- entee 11y ago
  The government isn't the most efficient organization in the world, but for some problems it's the only kind of organization that can reasonably address the problem. If there isn't a plausible alternative organizational structure to solve a problem, then by definition and despite its problems government is the most efficient organization we have. Take for example national infrastructure, it's hard to imagine a way for private corporations to be incentivized to create roads to even the smallest communities. The individual roads aren't going to be profitable enough on a reasonable timescale. However the value of the whole network of roads is greater than the sum of its parts. Even if you had a private corporation that was willing, in infrastructure you have essentially natural monopolies. It's very valuable to build the first road from A to B. It's far less valuable to build the second. Look at how we've done internet infrastructure, and how little competition there is to a single one or two providers in most areas. Observe how it's hard to get high speed internet to rural locations. Tons of problems fit this structure, probably the best example is water infrastructure. Build once, use forever, structural challenges to competition. Government is essentially the only solution to these kinds of natural monopolies that ensures that more than a tiny population benefits from their services at a reasonable price. Other things government does that no private system is able to replicate at the same scale: - Funding of basic (not obviously practical in any timeline) research - National defense - Enforcement of contracts - Mitigating environmental externalities Government sucks. But let's make it better. We need good government not minimal government, those two things aren't always the same thing.
mizchief2 11y ago
Try an overlay of the fema regions to this map...
bduerst 11y ago
Centralized planning worked for the Insterstate Highway System [1], which was considered successful. If you parse responsibility down to the states, they're only going to build within their own self-interests, which is not very well aligned with inter-state travel. You'll get a hodgepodge of corridors, if the states even build at all. For example, Kansas won't build a track from KC to Colorado's border. Instead, they'll route the track south through Wichita and other cities within their border. Or it will turn out like California's project [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2014/04/california-high-speed-rail http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2014/04/california-h...
- lotharbot 11y ago
  inter-state travel is aligned with the self-interest of states that want to have robust economic interactions. Kansas won't built a line to Colorado's border on their own, but the two states might jointly connect KC, Wichita, and Denver, and Colorado Springs if they thought those connections would be mutually beneficial. At the city/county level, Denver doesn't have its own mass transit system -- it cooperates with several surrounding counties to make up the "Regional Transportation District" which runs buses and light rail. This sort of regional organization doesn't somehow disappear when you make it multi-state instead of multi-city.
  - bduerst 11y ago
    Right, but Kansas is a good example of how they will use their state-level control to route all inter-state travelers through each of their cities, increasing travel times and decreasing value. The question isn't whether or not interstate travel is beneficial, it's how the states will use their self interest to diminish quality, effectively turning the project into a tragedy of the commons.
    - tryitnow 11y ago
      In order for states to use their self-interest to diminish quality we have to ask "diminish relative to what"? If your comparing the actual to some ideal then, of course, your always going to see a diminished quality. But that's just a tautology. We have to ask ourselves does a particular plan work better or worse than some other realistic alternative. Unfortunately, realistic alternatives almost always require trade offs with special interest groups. Sorry dude, that's just reality. It's a simplistic analysis to compare something to an ideal optimum point and bemoan how far we've fallen from the ideal. But it's not terribly useful.
zymhan 11y ago
> decentralize power back to the states and have groups of states work out arrangements among themselves to enhance their shared cross-border economies. What does that even mean? The Constitution guarantees free flow of goods and services between all 50 states. We don't need trade agreements between groups of states for anything, it doesn't get any freer than it currently is.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  It just means that a rail line to the state border is less interesting than a rail line between two cities. Agreeing to invest in the rail line (or just working to establish compatible easements) would be an arrangement that might enhance both economies.
- dmix 11y ago
  There has been a notable trend away from state power towards federal centralization. It's not a centralized mandate but has been happening through numerous slivers and cuts over the last few decades. Additionally, there has been a significant growth in executive power over federal thanks to the Bush administration pioneering work, which Obama continued to expand.
GunboatDiplomat 11y ago
On the one hand, yes, the overbearing and excessively taxing nature of the Feds is a problem for local governments trying to do things, nowhere moreso than in the northeast, home of state such as New Jersey, which pays an enormous amount of federal taxes and receives something like $0.50 on the dollar back. On the other hand, it's sensible to have the federal government make transfer payments between the states in an attempt to equalize development and keep the beneficial union together.
dsr_ 11y ago
Reduce the federal take of taxes, leaving the money in the hands of the people who actually innovate, employ, and make economic decisions. Well, okay, but you'll end up with most of the red states declaring bankruptcy while the blue states do significantly better. Take a look at which states are subsidizing the others... http://taxfoundation.org/tax-topics/federal-taxes-paid-vs-spending-received-state http://taxfoundation.org/tax-topics/federal-taxes-paid-vs-sp...
- Tiksi 11y ago
  Maybe the richer states can buy up the bankrupt states and eventually we'll end up with the state of New York and the state of California, probably a few city-state holdouts.
- burfog 11y ago
  This is fair: consider who voted to increase the spending. If you're going to vote for high spending, you certainly ought to be paying for it.
- ap22213 11y ago
  Or, you get financially irresponsible rural areas sucking tax money from the urban areas. In the state in which I live, 80 cents of every state tax dollar that I pay goes to some rural area where they waste the money on unnecessary police cruisers and rarely-used fire trucks. The state government is one big welfare system for the rural elite.
imgabe 11y ago
This is like the opposite of central planning. It appears to be proposing that we should manage political/economic regions as they actually exist, along naturally occurring boundaries, rather than imposing arbitrary boundaries (like state borders) and managing that way. > decentralize power back to the states and have groups of states work out arrangements among themselves to enhance their shared cross-border economies. Wow, no thanks. There are already plenty of differences from one state to another. Having to deal with a radically different regulatory/trade environment from one state to the next is not helpful to business.
- entee 11y ago
  I think people neglect how much centralized regulations and processes can reduce cognitive load. Perhaps there's increase cost to the individual regulation, but the reduction in cognitive load and wasted time likely offsets that cost substantially in many cases. For those regulations where it doesn't we should reexamine and figure out a better way if possible, but I think people should better appreciate what having good government allows you to stop thinking about and start focusing on the things that matter.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    Also, those regulations provide freer markets - free from the distortions of corruption and abuse. They provide safer markets which attract more investors, because they feel they won't get cheated.
- nickysielicki 11y ago
  > Having to deal with a radically different regulatory/trade environment from one state to the next is not helpful to business. Of all the websites on the internet to argue this... Are you forgetting that YC made(/makes?) their applicants move to San Francisco? Again, SF didn't randomly become a tech hub because of some will or want, they just so happened to have attractive culture and conducive laws for startups at the right time. Are you sure that you want to claim that these differences are categorically not helpful for business? (Aside: this is the very reason that federally mandated net neutrality is a bad idea. Alaska has less than 750k inhabitants, 300k of which live in Anchorage. Alaska is 16.13% of this country by land mass. Are you really comfortable with denying very poor and very remote communities their right to enter into a contract for ad-injected or domain-whitelisted internet at a lower price because you can't stand the thought of your Netflix being throttled?)
okreallywtf 11y ago
This reminds me of the argument for free market capitalism. In theory it seems like a great idea, but in practice it is just abused to death. Proponents will just say "it wasn't implemented correctly", because short of founding your own country and creating all the rules from scratch it can't be implemented correctly. In reality is far easier to take away rights and discriminate on the state or local level. In a perfect world, people would have high mobility and it would be feasible to move from a state that represents you poorly to one that represents you better. Over time, presumably, people would prefer states that took better care of their people and protected their rights more. In reality, the people that need the often late and insufficient protections of the federal government are the exact people that have the least mobility in society. In these cases, the federal government can serve a useful purpose, however bloated and inefficient as it may be. It reminds me of monolithic kernels vs microkernels. Microkernels may be more architecturally appealing and may have many benefits on paper but where the rubber meets the road, monolithic kernels have won out. You can create all kinds of hypothetical circumstances where a microkernel wins, (free market capitalism, libertarianism, etc), but without some nonexistant force to enforce some kind of level playing field, you end up with what we have: a big monolithic patchwork of one off fixes and workarounds. Designing a society is hard, designing a huge software system is hard and there is a reason why so many corners have to get cut to make shit work. The system evolves all the time and giving lots of power to the states just helps the powerful in their divide-and-conquer campaign against the rest of us. Now if you excuse me I have to attempt to figure out whether it is easier to move to another state or another country.
- hackuser 11y ago
  Also, state government is far less democratic. Very few people vote for their state legislators or know what they do, making it easier for a small, powerful group to control them. That's the main reason many political operators push for more power in state capitals, IMHO.
  - sammydavis 11y ago
    You are so right about state power being the way to get influence. That is how groups like elec operate.
matthewowen 11y ago
>> decentralize power back to the states Why decentralize power back to the states? What is it about the states that make them the right level to delegate power to? A large point of what I took from the article is that states are simultaneously too large (because they encompass metro areas and rural areas that often have little in common, both in terms of economic and social outlook) and too small (because they encourage race to the bottom competition between states who in many ways have common interests). When you devolve power to a lower body, you are doing a form of central planning because you're determining what those lower bodies should be. So we should do it right. That might mean that states aren't the only body to consider. >> They are the result of ... the political processes we already had in place You can't assign this causality with certainty. They may have also arisen despite the political processes we have in place.
- clarkmoody 11y ago
  > They are the result of the market and political processes we already had in place. Fixed that for you. The market is far more important in shaping the economy that the state.
  - matthewowen 11y ago
    I didn't quibble with that part. I omitted it for clarity because I only intended to address the other part. I don't think that's controversial practice when quoting.
- nogbit 11y ago
  Because it was/is a good balance. You can take your logic all the way down to a city or all the way up to a nation and delegate or not. Having vastly different states from one another gives a citizen of a nation the freedom to easily move to somewhere else where the prospects are better and or where it aligns with your way of life more.
  - matthewowen 11y ago
    Sure. But why these states in particular? You don't think it's possible that there might be a better configuration of borders/regions? It seems improbable to me that by chance we landed on the optimal structure as these borders were defined in the years spanning from colonization to the early 20th century.
patmcguire 11y ago
What about the Erie Canal and the B&O Railroad? Those were government funded projects in the Northeast that had massive, massive impact. You can definitely draw a line between that economic jump start and the current distribution.
tryitnow 11y ago
Huh? Your comments are completely ahistorical. The US federal government played a massive role in creating the states. Examples include the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, massive Federal armed deployments against natives, the Mexican-American War, the Homestead Act. My brain is starting to break trying to fathom how completely and utterly ahistorical your assertions are. The article even makes explicit statements that contradict your claims. Setting aside the historical facts, there's other problems with the blithe claim that "markets and states know best." The primary fallacies in your proposal are that decentralized states will be (a) completely altruistic in allocating a pile of cash to the places that will produce the most economic benefit, (b)able to out-perform centralized economic decision-making of planners, (c) not be subject to the lobbying that so corrupts state and local governments now. See, that's the problem with your line of thinking - it rests entirely on the assumption that markets and smaller government units are always and everywhere better at decisions than centralized governments. A more intelligent and balanced perspective would be that sometimes centralized decision-making makes sense and sometimes decentralized decision-making makes sense. Can we please get past this puerile debate about centralized and decentralized decision-making? It's completely dependent on the context and requires deep thinking not comforting ideological platitudes.
fweespee_ch 11y ago
> c) not be subject to the lobbying that so corrupts the Congress now. You seem to be operating under the belief this is harder than corrupting State and/or local governments. Hint: It is easier, not harder. > b) able to out-perform the decentralized economic decision-making mechanism of the market (prices), Corruption is done via the marketplace at market prices within an ideological range the constituency will accept. I'm uncertain why you think that isn't market-based. > a) completely altruistic in allocating a pile of cash to the places that will produce the most economic benefit If they were paid the market price to perform this function then, yes, they could do so. Nothing prevents that. > Here's an alternate proposal: decentralize power back to the states and have groups of states work out arrangements among themselves to enhance their shared cross-border economies. Reduce the federal take of taxes, leaving the money in the hands of the people who actually innovate, employ, and make economic decisions. Corruption at the local level is pervasive, extensive, and frequently impossible to fight due to the fact the only people with the financial resources are the ones who bought the local government in the first place [or nonprofits who cover a greater area, such as the ACLU, and able to bring in out of area money to compete against the corruption]. If you think this is a recipe for reducing corruption, I suggest you get involved in local politics and try to support a minority candidate in a heavily white area. Hell, they'll do all sorts of legal [but shady] shit like hire a guy with the same name [different middle initial] and put them both on the ballot to split the vote. You only need to pull of a few percentage points of support this way to win in many situations. > The fantasies of central planners never end. The fantasies of people who think decentralization reduces corruption never end either.
- clarkmoody 11y ago
  Well if nothing else, your points about corruption are arguments against government in general :-) Decentralize power back to the people themselves. If I have no power over another, then my corruption affects only me. However, corruption at the local level affects a limited number of people, and since local politics are easy to influence, they can be changed. Local politicians get into criminal trouble all the time, so they are not immune to the law. Corruption at the national level affects all of us, and it's much harder to change the institutions. Even worse is the bureaucracy, which cannot be changed directly by the people, but meddles incessantly with our economy. As for escaping corruption, you can leave your city easily, your state with moderate difficulty, but your country with great difficulty.
numair 11y ago
I am assuming that you don't care much for Silicon Valley, which was a creation of the Federal Government. https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/
- randyrand 11y ago
  What a ridiculous statement. A tech hub would have happened with or without the ferderal government. Just like it has happened for countless other industries without the need of the government to do anything.
  - sophacles 11y ago
    What industries happened without the government?
    - randyrand 11y ago
      Sex industry. Though that question isn't really relevant to the question of how industry hubs form.
      - JoBrad 11y ago
        Great example. An industry that has historically preyed on the unfortunate.
        sammydavis 11y ago
        I think it's hard to do argue that the federal government wasn't involved. Don't forget why they call them hookers, General Hooker was the source of the name during Civil War and it wasn't B.C. he used them himself.
        JoBrad 11y ago
        That's not a true story [1], although you're not the first person I've heard it from. The sex industry was thriving well before the US government, or any other government around today, however. And it would be very hard to argue that the US government has ever been formally "involved" with the sex industry, except as a regulatory presence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Hooker#Final_years_and_legacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Hooker#Final_years_and_...
rayiner 11y ago
State governments are, if anything else, even more dysfunctional than the federal government. D.C. telling Chicago what to do is pretty inane, but Springfield doing so is even more inane. I like the idea of decentralization, but the states are the wrong vehicle for doing that. We should get rid of the states, and decentralize the federal government, with autonomy pushed down into the various major economic centers (New York, LA, Houston, etc).
- harryh 11y ago
  I wonder what structural forces cause this to be the case. Less attention from the people (and the press)? More restrictive state constitutions? I don't have a lot of hypotheses.
  - rayiner 11y ago
    In addition to the factors you mention, I think low voter turnout breeds monoculture and allows minority interests to dominate.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      They also have much smaller constituencies, which makes their seats safer. Madigan's 22nd is 1/8th the size of Danny Davis's 7th Congressional.
maaku 11y ago
For me to consider your proposal you will have to explain California's high speed rail system which has been grossly warped from the original vision and promise by purely local interests.
hinkley 11y ago
Go find yourself one of those old rail corridors. You'll notice they don't always take what seems to be the straightest or even the most sensible route. Find a historical society that knows about the rail and they'll be all too happy to tell you why. Typically the reroute was because some business interest bought off the company and they went miles out of their way to come to him. They'll also be able to tell you about the abandoned town that should have been on the route, but withered and died after the railroad went around them (not unlike the little towns along Route 66 a century later). Occasionally it'll be because some landholder wouldn't let them cut across his homestead, but usually it was graft.
Spooky23 11y ago
It wasn't organic at all. The NE corridor has a powerful, although declining in many ways, economic engine as a result of nearly 400 years of access to the best transportation resources available: water, later canals, later railroads eventually interstate. If you think the Congress is a cesspool of corruption, state governments are the scum at the bottom. Examples: - The legislative leaders of New York were just convicted of felony charges. About a half dozen of their colleagues have been convicted of various corruption crimes in the last few years. - The NJ governor basically stole Federal aid intended to rebuild the overloaded and damaged Hudson River rail tunnels that connect NYC to NJ and the rest of the country by rail. I agree that this regional vision is pretty dumb. But, I think the Federal government has a pretty good record on planning and funding transportation infrastructure.
ap22213 11y ago
I'm not sure why you believe that states are any better. Central planners are everywhere, even down at the regional and local levels. I've lived in ten different towns / cities in five different states, and each had its share of central planning, for better or worse.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  I've worked with several different county or city planning boards, and have found them to be reasonable and diligent. It is possible for local government to function, even if there are many examples of it not doing so. On that topic, don't even get me started on the wastewater agencies. At both the state and local levels, they have repeatedly failed to accomplish anything fairly or effectively.

enraged_camel 11y ago

>>Reduce the federal take of taxes, leaving the money in the hands of the people who actually innovate, employ, and make economic decisions. Are you suggesting that the federal government doesn't innovate or employ (which would be wrong), or that the states are better at those things than the federal government (which would require a citation)?

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
It sounds like perhaps the default mental map needs to be updated before it's possible to improve the physical map.

metaphorm 11y ago

I whole-heartedly support this suggestion. Devolution of economic and political authority has been a model for success throughout history. Central planning, not so much. Not that it can't be, but we are replete with examples of it failing disastrously. However, the author of the article does get at a very interesting and relevant point, which is that the political system in the U.S., at both the state and federal level, is now badly out of date and does not reflect the contemporary realities of where the population centers are and how their economies work. It does seem like our country would greatly benefit from a broad reorganization of political-economy amongst the states and at the federal level as well.

stcredzero 11y ago
Central planning, not so much. Not that it can't be, but we are replete with examples of it failing disastrously. Wasn't the Interstate Highway system a boon to the US economy? Wouldn't infrastrucure projects between the meta-urban regions fall into much the same pattern?
- Spivak 11y ago
  I don't think anyone is saying that the Federal government is without purpose. Interstate highways are exactly the type of project the Federal government should be taking on. That's not the type of central planning described in the article, this is the Federal government correcting a legitimate failing of a confederation. What was in the best interest of each state was opposed to the interests of the country as a whole. It's exactly analogous the position of a classical economist, except the states are the individual actors. Yes, markets sometimes fail, and it ought to be the duty of a central government to correct those failures when they happen but economic intervention should be rare and only when absolutely necessary.
- metaphorm 11y ago
  fair point. I'll clarify my meaning a bit. central planning has a role to play. for certain types of projects it is appropriate and sometimes even necessary. however, the idea that central planning should be the starting point for economic development is wrong-headed in my opinion. it should be considered the exception, used when needed and not otherwise, not the rule. additionally, I challenge the notion that interstate infrastructure projects are actually examples of central planning. they are more like examples of networks of mutual development and collaboration between diverse partners. adoption of shared technical standards, agreement on shared funding models, and legal compacts to ensure shared responsibility for maintenance and upkeep are what drives projects like the interstate highway system.
- randyrand 11y ago
  Wow. The federal government was able to connect some dots. I'm super impressed. What a great example of the power of centralized planning.

frogpelt 11y ago

The federal government has proven more times than any other organization that they are inept and inefficient at almost every task they undertake. And yet the people all but demand that they do more, more, more. Please! Take more of my money and more of my individual liberty! And in return please send me more regulation, bureaucracy, inefficient waste, and general mismanagement! I can't get enough!

zymhan 11y ago
Yeah, the private sector has been such a steward of my interests over the past century, why do we even need the government. /s
- jqm 11y ago
  To work for the private sector further against your interests? /s
entee 11y ago
The government isn't the most efficient organization in the world, but for some problems it's the only kind of organization that can reasonably address the problem. If there isn't a plausible alternative organizational structure to solve a problem, then by definition and despite its problems government is the most efficient organization we have. Take for example national infrastructure, it's hard to imagine a way for private corporations to be incentivized to create roads to even the smallest communities. The individual roads aren't going to be profitable enough on a reasonable timescale. However the value of the whole network of roads is greater than the sum of its parts. Even if you had a private corporation that was willing, in infrastructure you have essentially natural monopolies. It's very valuable to build the first road from A to B. It's far less valuable to build the second. Look at how we've done internet infrastructure, and how little competition there is to a single one or two providers in most areas. Observe how it's hard to get high speed internet to rural locations. Tons of problems fit this structure, probably the best example is water infrastructure. Build once, use forever, structural challenges to competition. Government is essentially the only solution to these kinds of natural monopolies that ensures that more than a tiny population benefits from their services at a reasonable price. Other things government does that no private system is able to replicate at the same scale: - Funding of basic (not obviously practical in any timeline) research - National defense - Enforcement of contracts - Mitigating environmental externalities Government sucks. But let's make it better. We need good government not minimal government, those two things aren't always the same thing.

mizchief2 11y ago

Try an overlay of the fema regions to this map...

bduerst 11y ago

Centralized planning worked for the Insterstate Highway System [1], which was considered successful. If you parse responsibility down to the states, they're only going to build within their own self-interests, which is not very well aligned with inter-state travel. You'll get a hodgepodge of corridors, if the states even build at all. For example, Kansas won't build a track from KC to Colorado's border. Instead, they'll route the track south through Wichita and other cities within their border. Or it will turn out like California's project [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2014/04/california-high-speed-rail http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2014/04/california-h...

lotharbot 11y ago
inter-state travel is aligned with the self-interest of states that want to have robust economic interactions. Kansas won't built a line to Colorado's border on their own, but the two states might jointly connect KC, Wichita, and Denver, and Colorado Springs if they thought those connections would be mutually beneficial. At the city/county level, Denver doesn't have its own mass transit system -- it cooperates with several surrounding counties to make up the "Regional Transportation District" which runs buses and light rail. This sort of regional organization doesn't somehow disappear when you make it multi-state instead of multi-city.
- bduerst 11y ago
  Right, but Kansas is a good example of how they will use their state-level control to route all inter-state travelers through each of their cities, increasing travel times and decreasing value. The question isn't whether or not interstate travel is beneficial, it's how the states will use their self interest to diminish quality, effectively turning the project into a tragedy of the commons.
  - tryitnow 11y ago
    In order for states to use their self-interest to diminish quality we have to ask "diminish relative to what"? If your comparing the actual to some ideal then, of course, your always going to see a diminished quality. But that's just a tautology. We have to ask ourselves does a particular plan work better or worse than some other realistic alternative. Unfortunately, realistic alternatives almost always require trade offs with special interest groups. Sorry dude, that's just reality. It's a simplistic analysis to compare something to an ideal optimum point and bemoan how far we've fallen from the ideal. But it's not terribly useful.

zymhan 11y ago

> decentralize power back to the states and have groups of states work out arrangements among themselves to enhance their shared cross-border economies. What does that even mean? The Constitution guarantees free flow of goods and services between all 50 states. We don't need trade agreements between groups of states for anything, it doesn't get any freer than it currently is.

maxerickson 11y ago
It just means that a rail line to the state border is less interesting than a rail line between two cities. Agreeing to invest in the rail line (or just working to establish compatible easements) would be an arrangement that might enhance both economies.
dmix 11y ago
There has been a notable trend away from state power towards federal centralization. It's not a centralized mandate but has been happening through numerous slivers and cuts over the last few decades. Additionally, there has been a significant growth in executive power over federal thanks to the Bush administration pioneering work, which Obama continued to expand.

GunboatDiplomat 11y ago

On the one hand, yes, the overbearing and excessively taxing nature of the Feds is a problem for local governments trying to do things, nowhere moreso than in the northeast, home of state such as New Jersey, which pays an enormous amount of federal taxes and receives something like $0.50 on the dollar back. On the other hand, it's sensible to have the federal government make transfer payments between the states in an attempt to equalize development and keep the beneficial union together.

dsr_ 11y ago

Reduce the federal take of taxes, leaving the money in the hands of the people who actually innovate, employ, and make economic decisions. Well, okay, but you'll end up with most of the red states declaring bankruptcy while the blue states do significantly better. Take a look at which states are subsidizing the others... http://taxfoundation.org/tax-topics/federal-taxes-paid-vs-spending-received-state http://taxfoundation.org/tax-topics/federal-taxes-paid-vs-sp...

Tiksi 11y ago
Maybe the richer states can buy up the bankrupt states and eventually we'll end up with the state of New York and the state of California, probably a few city-state holdouts.
burfog 11y ago
This is fair: consider who voted to increase the spending. If you're going to vote for high spending, you certainly ought to be paying for it.
ap22213 11y ago
Or, you get financially irresponsible rural areas sucking tax money from the urban areas. In the state in which I live, 80 cents of every state tax dollar that I pay goes to some rural area where they waste the money on unnecessary police cruisers and rarely-used fire trucks. The state government is one big welfare system for the rural elite.

imgabe 11y ago

This is like the opposite of central planning. It appears to be proposing that we should manage political/economic regions as they actually exist, along naturally occurring boundaries, rather than imposing arbitrary boundaries (like state borders) and managing that way. > decentralize power back to the states and have groups of states work out arrangements among themselves to enhance their shared cross-border economies. Wow, no thanks. There are already plenty of differences from one state to another. Having to deal with a radically different regulatory/trade environment from one state to the next is not helpful to business.

entee 11y ago
I think people neglect how much centralized regulations and processes can reduce cognitive load. Perhaps there's increase cost to the individual regulation, but the reduction in cognitive load and wasted time likely offsets that cost substantially in many cases. For those regulations where it doesn't we should reexamine and figure out a better way if possible, but I think people should better appreciate what having good government allows you to stop thinking about and start focusing on the things that matter.
- hackuser 11y ago
  Also, those regulations provide freer markets - free from the distortions of corruption and abuse. They provide safer markets which attract more investors, because they feel they won't get cheated.
nickysielicki 11y ago
> Having to deal with a radically different regulatory/trade environment from one state to the next is not helpful to business. Of all the websites on the internet to argue this... Are you forgetting that YC made(/makes?) their applicants move to San Francisco? Again, SF didn't randomly become a tech hub because of some will or want, they just so happened to have attractive culture and conducive laws for startups at the right time. Are you sure that you want to claim that these differences are categorically not helpful for business? (Aside: this is the very reason that federally mandated net neutrality is a bad idea. Alaska has less than 750k inhabitants, 300k of which live in Anchorage. Alaska is 16.13% of this country by land mass. Are you really comfortable with denying very poor and very remote communities their right to enter into a contract for ad-injected or domain-whitelisted internet at a lower price because you can't stand the thought of your Netflix being throttled?)

okreallywtf 11y ago

This reminds me of the argument for free market capitalism. In theory it seems like a great idea, but in practice it is just abused to death. Proponents will just say "it wasn't implemented correctly", because short of founding your own country and creating all the rules from scratch it can't be implemented correctly. In reality is far easier to take away rights and discriminate on the state or local level. In a perfect world, people would have high mobility and it would be feasible to move from a state that represents you poorly to one that represents you better. Over time, presumably, people would prefer states that took better care of their people and protected their rights more. In reality, the people that need the often late and insufficient protections of the federal government are the exact people that have the least mobility in society. In these cases, the federal government can serve a useful purpose, however bloated and inefficient as it may be. It reminds me of monolithic kernels vs microkernels. Microkernels may be more architecturally appealing and may have many benefits on paper but where the rubber meets the road, monolithic kernels have won out. You can create all kinds of hypothetical circumstances where a microkernel wins, (free market capitalism, libertarianism, etc), but without some nonexistant force to enforce some kind of level playing field, you end up with what we have: a big monolithic patchwork of one off fixes and workarounds. Designing a society is hard, designing a huge software system is hard and there is a reason why so many corners have to get cut to make shit work. The system evolves all the time and giving lots of power to the states just helps the powerful in their divide-and-conquer campaign against the rest of us. Now if you excuse me I have to attempt to figure out whether it is easier to move to another state or another country.

hackuser 11y ago
Also, state government is far less democratic. Very few people vote for their state legislators or know what they do, making it easier for a small, powerful group to control them. That's the main reason many political operators push for more power in state capitals, IMHO.
- sammydavis 11y ago
  You are so right about state power being the way to get influence. That is how groups like elec operate.

matthewowen 11y ago

>> decentralize power back to the states Why decentralize power back to the states? What is it about the states that make them the right level to delegate power to? A large point of what I took from the article is that states are simultaneously too large (because they encompass metro areas and rural areas that often have little in common, both in terms of economic and social outlook) and too small (because they encourage race to the bottom competition between states who in many ways have common interests). When you devolve power to a lower body, you are doing a form of central planning because you're determining what those lower bodies should be. So we should do it right. That might mean that states aren't the only body to consider. >> They are the result of ... the political processes we already had in place You can't assign this causality with certainty. They may have also arisen despite the political processes we have in place.

clarkmoody 11y ago
> They are the result of the market and political processes we already had in place. Fixed that for you. The market is far more important in shaping the economy that the state.
- matthewowen 11y ago
  I didn't quibble with that part. I omitted it for clarity because I only intended to address the other part. I don't think that's controversial practice when quoting.
nogbit 11y ago
Because it was/is a good balance. You can take your logic all the way down to a city or all the way up to a nation and delegate or not. Having vastly different states from one another gives a citizen of a nation the freedom to easily move to somewhere else where the prospects are better and or where it aligns with your way of life more.
- matthewowen 11y ago
  Sure. But why these states in particular? You don't think it's possible that there might be a better configuration of borders/regions? It seems improbable to me that by chance we landed on the optimal structure as these borders were defined in the years spanning from colonization to the early 20th century.

patmcguire 11y ago

What about the Erie Canal and the B&O Railroad? Those were government funded projects in the Northeast that had massive, massive impact. You can definitely draw a line between that economic jump start and the current distribution.

tryitnow 11y ago

Huh? Your comments are completely ahistorical. The US federal government played a massive role in creating the states. Examples include the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, massive Federal armed deployments against natives, the Mexican-American War, the Homestead Act. My brain is starting to break trying to fathom how completely and utterly ahistorical your assertions are. The article even makes explicit statements that contradict your claims. Setting aside the historical facts, there's other problems with the blithe claim that "markets and states know best." The primary fallacies in your proposal are that decentralized states will be (a) completely altruistic in allocating a pile of cash to the places that will produce the most economic benefit, (b)able to out-perform centralized economic decision-making of planners, (c) not be subject to the lobbying that so corrupts state and local governments now. See, that's the problem with your line of thinking - it rests entirely on the assumption that markets and smaller government units are always and everywhere better at decisions than centralized governments. A more intelligent and balanced perspective would be that sometimes centralized decision-making makes sense and sometimes decentralized decision-making makes sense. Can we please get past this puerile debate about centralized and decentralized decision-making? It's completely dependent on the context and requires deep thinking not comforting ideological platitudes.

fweespee_ch 11y ago

> c) not be subject to the lobbying that so corrupts the Congress now. You seem to be operating under the belief this is harder than corrupting State and/or local governments. Hint: It is easier, not harder. > b) able to out-perform the decentralized economic decision-making mechanism of the market (prices), Corruption is done via the marketplace at market prices within an ideological range the constituency will accept. I'm uncertain why you think that isn't market-based. > a) completely altruistic in allocating a pile of cash to the places that will produce the most economic benefit If they were paid the market price to perform this function then, yes, they could do so. Nothing prevents that. > Here's an alternate proposal: decentralize power back to the states and have groups of states work out arrangements among themselves to enhance their shared cross-border economies. Reduce the federal take of taxes, leaving the money in the hands of the people who actually innovate, employ, and make economic decisions. Corruption at the local level is pervasive, extensive, and frequently impossible to fight due to the fact the only people with the financial resources are the ones who bought the local government in the first place [or nonprofits who cover a greater area, such as the ACLU, and able to bring in out of area money to compete against the corruption]. If you think this is a recipe for reducing corruption, I suggest you get involved in local politics and try to support a minority candidate in a heavily white area. Hell, they'll do all sorts of legal [but shady] shit like hire a guy with the same name [different middle initial] and put them both on the ballot to split the vote. You only need to pull of a few percentage points of support this way to win in many situations. > The fantasies of central planners never end. The fantasies of people who think decentralization reduces corruption never end either.

clarkmoody 11y ago
Well if nothing else, your points about corruption are arguments against government in general :-) Decentralize power back to the people themselves. If I have no power over another, then my corruption affects only me. However, corruption at the local level affects a limited number of people, and since local politics are easy to influence, they can be changed. Local politicians get into criminal trouble all the time, so they are not immune to the law. Corruption at the national level affects all of us, and it's much harder to change the institutions. Even worse is the bureaucracy, which cannot be changed directly by the people, but meddles incessantly with our economy. As for escaping corruption, you can leave your city easily, your state with moderate difficulty, but your country with great difficulty.

numair 11y ago

I am assuming that you don't care much for Silicon Valley, which was a creation of the Federal Government. https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/

randyrand 11y ago
What a ridiculous statement. A tech hub would have happened with or without the ferderal government. Just like it has happened for countless other industries without the need of the government to do anything.
- sophacles 11y ago
  What industries happened without the government?
  - randyrand 11y ago
    Sex industry. Though that question isn't really relevant to the question of how industry hubs form.
    - JoBrad 11y ago
      Great example. An industry that has historically preyed on the unfortunate.
      - sammydavis 11y ago
        I think it's hard to do argue that the federal government wasn't involved. Don't forget why they call them hookers, General Hooker was the source of the name during Civil War and it wasn't B.C. he used them himself.
        JoBrad 11y ago
        That's not a true story [1], although you're not the first person I've heard it from. The sex industry was thriving well before the US government, or any other government around today, however. And it would be very hard to argue that the US government has ever been formally "involved" with the sex industry, except as a regulatory presence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Hooker#Final_years_and_legacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Hooker#Final_years_and_...

rayiner 11y ago

State governments are, if anything else, even more dysfunctional than the federal government. D.C. telling Chicago what to do is pretty inane, but Springfield doing so is even more inane. I like the idea of decentralization, but the states are the wrong vehicle for doing that. We should get rid of the states, and decentralize the federal government, with autonomy pushed down into the various major economic centers (New York, LA, Houston, etc).

harryh 11y ago
I wonder what structural forces cause this to be the case. Less attention from the people (and the press)? More restrictive state constitutions? I don't have a lot of hypotheses.
- rayiner 11y ago
  In addition to the factors you mention, I think low voter turnout breeds monoculture and allows minority interests to dominate.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    They also have much smaller constituencies, which makes their seats safer. Madigan's 22nd is 1/8th the size of Danny Davis's 7th Congressional.

maaku 11y ago

For me to consider your proposal you will have to explain California's high speed rail system which has been grossly warped from the original vision and promise by purely local interests.

hinkley 11y ago

Go find yourself one of those old rail corridors. You'll notice they don't always take what seems to be the straightest or even the most sensible route. Find a historical society that knows about the rail and they'll be all too happy to tell you why. Typically the reroute was because some business interest bought off the company and they went miles out of their way to come to him. They'll also be able to tell you about the abandoned town that should have been on the route, but withered and died after the railroad went around them (not unlike the little towns along Route 66 a century later). Occasionally it'll be because some landholder wouldn't let them cut across his homestead, but usually it was graft.

Spooky23 11y ago

It wasn't organic at all. The NE corridor has a powerful, although declining in many ways, economic engine as a result of nearly 400 years of access to the best transportation resources available: water, later canals, later railroads eventually interstate. If you think the Congress is a cesspool of corruption, state governments are the scum at the bottom. Examples: - The legislative leaders of New York were just convicted of felony charges. About a half dozen of their colleagues have been convicted of various corruption crimes in the last few years. - The NJ governor basically stole Federal aid intended to rebuild the overloaded and damaged Hudson River rail tunnels that connect NYC to NJ and the rest of the country by rail. I agree that this regional vision is pretty dumb. But, I think the Federal government has a pretty good record on planning and funding transportation infrastructure.

ap22213 11y ago

I'm not sure why you believe that states are any better. Central planners are everywhere, even down at the regional and local levels. I've lived in ten different towns / cities in five different states, and each had its share of central planning, for better or worse.

jessaustin 11y ago
I've worked with several different county or city planning boards, and have found them to be reasonable and diligent. It is possible for local government to function, even if there are many examples of it not doing so. On that topic, don't even get me started on the wastewater agencies. At both the state and local levels, they have repeatedly failed to accomplish anything fairly or effectively.