Yes. Countries were relevant back in the days when territory was the most prized thing and war was the best means of acquiring it. Countries evolved as a means of ensuring territorial integrity, via means both explicit (borders enforced by militaries) and implicit (cultural/linguistic homogeneity, leading to xenophobia and other such barriers). But territories are no longer the most prized thing: economies are. And e…
But since we're abstracting away from soil, cities are only the sum of people, structures and laws. It's all position independent.
Metro area includes parts of NJ, PA and CT but not all of NY state.
I see. Still appears to be less than Russia: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=new+york+metro+area+gdp... ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._metropolitan_area... )
WolframAlpha is using data from 2014. Given that Russia's economy nearly halved in 2015 that makes the original statement probably true by now.
What evidence do we have that any of those things would occur? The pre-modern city states really did not have better accountability or less trade restrictions, as far as I know they were characterized by kings and tariffs, and were at war almost all the time.
I'm not saying it would be a particularly good system to copy, but the old Swiss confederacy is probably the prime example of self governed city states bound only in an alliance, i.e not through a monarchy. What came out of it (after some Republicanism was forcefully infuced by Napoleon) is something most Swiss are very fond of - a federal Republic with a very modest central government and checks and balances on ster…
Arguably the UK already has a pretty "federal" structure - just that the whole thing is dominated, naturally enough by England and London. Any attempt to balance things out would require devolving powers to the English regions, which nobody seems to want.
pretty "federal" structure Absolutely not, the separation of powers is both unclear and inconsistent among the devolved nations. It's also not really constitutionally guaranteed. The devolved assemblies have very limited powers over taxation and welfare spending.
Apologies - I guess I should have checked my understanding of "federal" before making such a comment!
I loved this description of the UK:
"an archipelagic supergroup comprised of four variously willing members."
Cities grow by drawing in people from around them. They can exist only thanks to the unproductive rural regions. If we separate cities from their region - it just means the money generated in cities won't be used (among other things) for fixing problems in the countryside. It's just hiding the externalities. Also from history I know of at least 3 unifications of small states and it was beneficial in all cases (at lea…
The point is that it's not the XIX century anymore. Telecommunications and airplanes allow people to literally bypass the countryside and hop from city to city. Cheap transportation costs mean that markets are distributed and not as heavily reliant on local expansion as they were. Before, if an industrial business wanted to expand, doing it locally was the easiest and cheapest option; that's not true anymore, and in fact it's often counter-productive for some types of businesses (ones that can get critical mass online but not necessarily in their own country).
The only real barrier left, IMHO, is linguistic. English works in most cases but not all, and especially in some European regions there is still a heavy preference for localized languages.
When you think that the New York Metropolitan Area has a bigger GDP than Russia, what you are suggesting (real city states) starts to actually make sense.
Where are you seeing this? I got California > Russia > New York State: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=new+york+gdp%2C+califor...
Yes. Countries were relevant back in the days when territory was the most prized thing and war was the best means of acquiring it. Countries evolved as a means of ensuring territorial integrity, via means both explicit (borders enforced by militaries) and implicit (cultural/linguistic homogeneity, leading to xenophobia and other such barriers). But territories are no longer the most prized thing: economies are. And e…
But since we're abstracting away from soil, cities are only the sum of people, structures and laws. It's all position independent.
Not in the slightest: cities are almost entirely about position. The whole point of a city is to provide easy and rapid access to a maximum diversity of goods, services, buyers, suppliers, needs, and ideas. If you took the people and laws and buildings of London or San Francisco and spread them homogeneously across the great plains, then this accessibility would be tremendously diminished and economic productivity would drop accordingly.
I wish we can have real city states as I think they have a lot of advantages over large-central states. Easier accountability of the governments, easier mobility and probably less trade restrictions.
Funny. I sometimes wish we had a global "state" with general rights to move freely, vote on global issues etc. Then people could organize in tiny city states or whatever within the global state.
Yes. Countries were relevant back in the days when territory was the most prized thing and war was the best means of acquiring it. Countries evolved as a means of ensuring territorial integrity, via means both explicit (borders enforced by militaries) and implicit (cultural/linguistic homogeneity, leading to xenophobia and other such barriers). But territories are no longer the most prized thing: economies are. And e…
At some point an administration will need to guarantee supply of sustenance for the people in their city. It makes sense to me for a city to therefore still desire territory it controls, for agriculture.