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> It's a parasitic process which benefits one part of the whole at an overall cost to the whole. Surely when government compete for citizens, people benefit by

by wtbob 10y ago

> It's a parasitic process which benefits one part of the whole at an overall cost to the whole. Surely when government compete for citizens, people benefit by living under governments more to their liking?

praxulus 10y ago
When business competition goes awry, government steps in to correct the market failure. Who steps in when government competition goes awry? Governments are not perfect substitutes for each other. Packing up and moving to another city is harder than changing almost any other consumer choice. Government officials don't compete to make their citizens as happy as possible, they compete to make their voter base as happy as possible. If they can improve the lives of the majority of their voters by hurting non-voters or those who vote for someone else, they have every incentive to do so.
- StanislavPetrov 10y ago
  >Government officials don't compete to make their citizens as happy as possible, they compete to make their voter base as happy as possible. No, government officials compete to make their donors and patrons as happy as possible. A government functionary that stands to land a cushy 6 figure job in the private sector if he does what he is told while he is in government service usually does what he is told.
__derek__ 10y ago
Maybe. It depends on the kind of competition. Having been a resident of Michigan (which has a film tax credit like nearly every state) and Washington (which generously supports Boeing in return for annual not-far-from-extortion attempts), I have seen bad competition up close and personal. On the other hand, a state offering a great school system (the UC system of yore, anyone?) is pretty hard to argue with as good competition.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
That's a fairly large and optimistic assumption.
dredmorbius 10y ago
You're shifting goalposts. It's one thing to have different systems of government. It's quite another to have arbitrarily-constructed political boundaries (and very nearly all boundaries in the US are highly arbitrary), in which the design intent is quite often to execute precisely the benefits-inclusion / cost-exclusion dynamic I've described. Even where that's not the design intent, it's often the practical result, and systems have a strong tendency, though path dependencies, compunding factors, emergence, etc., to evolve in certain ways. Or do we allow every political unit sited, physically or metaphorically, upriver and up-wind from its neighbors to dump raw sewage in its waters and foul the air. After all, the source community doesn't bear those burdens. It's that analogue which, extended, is at play here. Now: you want to find a way to improve the general state of Your Fine City and make an appeal to others elsewhere on that basis? That's quite a different discussion. It's actually what the many-and-sovereign state system of the US was meant to provide -- a laboratory, if you will for governance experiments. But even there, I believe there's a line to be drawn on principles which, once established, cannot be continuously relitigated, or at least not without exceptionally good reason.

by wtbob 10y ago

praxulus 10y ago

When business competition goes awry, government steps in to correct the market failure. Who steps in when government competition goes awry? Governments are not perfect substitutes for each other. Packing up and moving to another city is harder than changing almost any other consumer choice. Government officials don't compete to make their citizens as happy as possible, they compete to make their voter base as happy as possible. If they can improve the lives of the majority of their voters by hurting non-voters or those who vote for someone else, they have every incentive to do so.

StanislavPetrov 10y ago
>Government officials don't compete to make their citizens as happy as possible, they compete to make their voter base as happy as possible. No, government officials compete to make their donors and patrons as happy as possible. A government functionary that stands to land a cushy 6 figure job in the private sector if he does what he is told while he is in government service usually does what he is told.

__derek__ 10y ago

Maybe. It depends on the kind of competition. Having been a resident of Michigan (which has a film tax credit like nearly every state) and Washington (which generously supports Boeing in return for annual not-far-from-extortion attempts), I have seen bad competition up close and personal. On the other hand, a state offering a great school system (the UC system of yore, anyone?) is pretty hard to argue with as good competition.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

That's a fairly large and optimistic assumption.

dredmorbius 10y ago

You're shifting goalposts. It's one thing to have different systems of government. It's quite another to have arbitrarily-constructed political boundaries (and very nearly all boundaries in the US are highly arbitrary), in which the design intent is quite often to execute precisely the benefits-inclusion / cost-exclusion dynamic I've described. Even where that's not the design intent, it's often the practical result, and systems have a strong tendency, though path dependencies, compunding factors, emergence, etc., to evolve in certain ways. Or do we allow every political unit sited, physically or metaphorically, upriver and up-wind from its neighbors to dump raw sewage in its waters and foul the air. After all, the source community doesn't bear those burdens. It's that analogue which, extended, is at play here. Now: you want to find a way to improve the general state of Your Fine City and make an appeal to others elsewhere on that basis? That's quite a different discussion. It's actually what the many-and-sovereign state system of the US was meant to provide -- a laboratory, if you will for governance experiments. But even there, I believe there's a line to be drawn on principles which, once established, cannot be continuously relitigated, or at least not without exceptionally good reason.