21–30 of 103 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where are you seeing this? I got California > Russia > New York State: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=new+york+gdp%2C+califor...
Metro area includes parts of NJ, PA and CT but not all of NY state.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps not a federation of city states, but I would definitely be in favour of a federation of England/Scotland/Wales/NI/Dependencies - perhaps even with London as a separate federal part
Certainly, that alone would be a move in the right direction. > London as a separate federal part Not the first time I've heard the suggestion of ejecting London from the Union :)
To make it work properly would probably require a different currency, so London£ could free-float to the sky like the Swiss Franc while the rest of the UK had a weaker £ more suited to export-driven economy. A large chunk of the economy would be exporting power and water to Londonistan.
London would become even more like Singapore or Dubai than it already is: skyscrapers for the mega-rich surrounded by immigrant guestworkers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps not a federation of city states, but I would definitely be in favour of a federation of England/Scotland/Wales/NI/Dependencies - perhaps even with London as a separate federal part
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.
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.
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 economies are produced by cities, not countries.[1]
Moreover, the rise of the importance of cities is genuinely a challenge to the institutions of countries, not something that is merely happening in parallel to the ongoing importance of countries. This is because the factors which allow cities to thrive -- internal diversity and external trade -- are almost diametrically opposed to the factors which allow countries to maintain their territorial integrity.
Of these two forms of power, I'm betting on cities.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My first real introduction to UK politics was listening to an only mildly tipsy ex-London mayor rant about how if he could, he'd gladly "pay the rest of the UK £10 billion to go fuck itself, and get us towed out into the mid-Atlantic and declared an independent city state." This impressed me on several levels. :-)
Boris Johnson then?
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.
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.