Friday, January 03, 2014

City/States

In the fantasy post-American commonwealth, or republic, or whatever, one of the socio-political realities that should be incorporated into the structure of government is the difference between cities and everywhere else.

A major reason why Official Sacred Victim Groups have so much power is that they are concentrated in cities. And cities dominate culture.

So whatever kind of federalism the new country has, it ought to leave behind the notion that a state is one of its fundamental building blocks unless it is willing to see cities of a certain size as city-states.

And to build into its constitution a way for non-urban populations to have some power balance against them.

The current Senate, for example, is clearly meant to balance the power between large and small states (population-wise). On paper, this means that Wyoming has as much power as California.

But in reality, major cities in the US are the real centers of power (and identity), not states.

Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, etc. really should be city-states. So that non-urban populations have some defense against them.

That's just government, of course. When it comes to culture, money, etc. I don't know of a governmental structure that could (or should?) try to deal with that.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've noticed this discrepancy in past elections, and it irritates me to no end. I find it outrageous that every district in a state except one vote one way, and the state as a whole vote the other way because of one or two crumbling population centers.

-Sean

Anonymous said...

My dad just informed me that here in Pennsylvania, there is a plan to implement a system almost identical to the one you proposed. After the election, there was a lot of anger in farm country and the suburbs that every county in the state except for the counties containing Philadelphia and Pittsburg voted for Romney, but got outweighed by the big cities. If the plan got implemented, Pittsburg and Philadelphia would be considered separately from the rest of the state to see which candidate got them. How many electoral votes the cities would get is beyond me, though.

-Sean

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