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Most city residents should support these kinds of secessionist ideas. State tax dollars around the entire US subsidize rural living by maintaining unsustainable

by zanny 9y ago

Most city residents should support these kinds of secessionist ideas. State tax dollars around the entire US subsidize rural living by maintaining unsustainable roads and utilities infrastructure to reach people with way more capital on average than the people in the cities getting the short end of the stick. It comes back to incentives. If you don't support high-volume infrastructure to enable city growth - in an economic climate and era where practically all work is optimized in cities, and where living outside a city is simply an extravagant luxury - but you do support broad low volume high upkeep infrastructure all over rural areas, you build an incentives structure to artificially drive more people out of efficient, high density cores and into twig mcmansions guzzling water to feed lawns that nobody uses for anything because they are inside all day anyway. The better structure would obviously be to promote what costs less per capita while also promoting economic growth - promoting high density living, even if the upfront costs are high. Electoral incentives, however, are practically opposite such a notion, sadly.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago
I agree with you. The rest of the state wants NYC to gtfo as bad as NYC wants out. The problem is that their unfortunately economically interdependent enough that when the idea gets floated the people who stand to lose money make a big fuss, sway public opinion and the idea is dead in the water. IIRC there was a little bit of noise about a similar split in Washington recently. NorCal would probably be much happier without SoCal. The rest of IL would probably do ok without Chicago, etc. The pattern is that people in the country really don't like a bunch of people who are nothing like them running the state and telling them what to do and the city thinks the country is full of backwards hicks who are holding them back. They'd be better off without each other. IMO being able to actually self govern is well worth whatever the price is.
- zanny 9y ago
  This is the kind of realization Brexit should throw in your face. There are highly disparate groups of people with different ideologies that want nothing really to do with one another, and the only reasons they are forced to mutually participate are for historical inertias sake, and for the sake of those who profit off the status quo. The inerta relates back to why large empires and countries formed to begin with. With the advent of NATO and the nuclear deterrent it is ludicrous to think anyone who is either nucularly armed or has defensive pacts with the armed could possibly be attacked or invaded by a traditional military. War today is predominantly economic, but allowing disparate populations to go their separate ways while maintaining positive relations and trade for mutual self interest only serves to grow economies in the long term.

by zanny 9y ago

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

I agree with you. The rest of the state wants NYC to gtfo as bad as NYC wants out. The problem is that their unfortunately economically interdependent enough that when the idea gets floated the people who stand to lose money make a big fuss, sway public opinion and the idea is dead in the water. IIRC there was a little bit of noise about a similar split in Washington recently. NorCal would probably be much happier without SoCal. The rest of IL would probably do ok without Chicago, etc. The pattern is that people in the country really don't like a bunch of people who are nothing like them running the state and telling them what to do and the city thinks the country is full of backwards hicks who are holding them back. They'd be better off without each other. IMO being able to actually self govern is well worth whatever the price is.

zanny 9y ago
This is the kind of realization Brexit should throw in your face. There are highly disparate groups of people with different ideologies that want nothing really to do with one another, and the only reasons they are forced to mutually participate are for historical inertias sake, and for the sake of those who profit off the status quo. The inerta relates back to why large empires and countries formed to begin with. With the advent of NATO and the nuclear deterrent it is ludicrous to think anyone who is either nucularly armed or has defensive pacts with the armed could possibly be attacked or invaded by a traditional military. War today is predominantly economic, but allowing disparate populations to go their separate ways while maintaining positive relations and trade for mutual self interest only serves to grow economies in the long term.