Break Up the Liberal City | Hacker News Reader

Break Up the Liberal City

nytimes.com

16 pointscloseparen13 comments

Interesting polemic.

No arguments on government. Institutions which are intended to be "of the people" should look like it geographically. Federal facilities already are doled out around the country as political pork, but headquarters could be a little more distributed, in addition to back-offices. Even if it changes nothing about the nature of the institutions, it would likely increase trust in them. We could do with some of that. It would cause more taxpayer-funded air travel, which certainly won't be popular.

The whole country benefits immensely from the research done by the densely packed brilliant minds at elite universities, and from the middle-class kids who were educated in their undergraduate divisions thanks to financial aid from their endowments. Trying to tax away their ability to fund low and middle income students seems like the opposite of what you want. Trying to dilute them into being like all other commuter colleges fits the author's point about disbanding clustered elites, I guess.

I think there is immense value in having elite universities. We should be making sure they are elite in terms of intellectual capability and academic work ethic, rather than family wealth, by raising all K12 schools to the standards of the ones that feed Ivies.

As I understand it, in the German higher education system, some universities are the best in their field, but they are all state-sponsored and the admissions process is nationalized, with a merit component and a lottery component, and no special allowances for probable donors. Maybe we need that.

There has been an over 10,000 year trend toward urbanization. Nothing like this has ever happened before. It can't work on so many levels.

Also consider red state economics work well for the youthful poor, too. Housing is much more affordable than places like NYC or SF or even Chicago. I live in Minneapolis. I would be taking a huge pay cut to live in a tiny place in any of these big cities. But then I don't want to move to Louisville, either.

But you'd probably also make 2-5x working in a city, assuming you're doing something like tech, finance, real estate, etc. Everything locally costs more, rent costs more, but there's still more dollars left at the end of the month. Cars still cost the same. Buy a house somewhere you want to live, work in a city for a while while renting the house, then move into your paid-off home elsewhere after 3-5 years.

In SF, I'd only make 10-20% more than MPLS. But my housing would be 2-5x. This is a pay CUT. Louisville it's even more extreme. I might get a 30-40% pay raise, but my housing would be 3x-8x.

The article does not say why we should break up the liberal city. It just kind of rambles.

It seems to want to lead to some sort of sprawling country where everyone has an equal portion of land and money, and incentivize "spreading out" jobs and taxes rather than concentrating them. So centers for investment, learning, and business building would lose money by taxation, then spread out geographically and lose people, and eventually nobody would want to do business in this country, or live here in the interest of the arts or academia, and people would leave in droves to foreign nations where there are still big cities where people can draw together their varied interests into a (somewhat) multicultural metropolis.

It is a shame that, rather than accepting that there are vastly different peoples within the united states and we need to secede sovereignty to one another peacefully, we are intent on correcting one another on issues that are, for the most part, subjective and fall back on disagreements around moral axioms, about which reason has little to offer.

Why on earth should San Francisco and Dallas have any government in common? They should each go to hell in their own way.

Why are we fighting? Why not a firm handshake and a friendly wave goodbye?

I have yet to see a serious piece of thinking from Douthat, and this piece doesn't change that. In fact, the only good point he makes is not one he intends: how inherently unfair our current structures are. "... actually weakened liberalism politically by concentrating its votes." This is true, and not a problem of the city, but rather of our outdated voting system. Not that we'll ever be able to address that.

What an ass, this is the same holier than thou crap from the left that got Trump in in the first place.

"while the Trumpish hinterland languishes in resentment and nostalgia."

Come on these are people too and you can't just write them off as hill billies. They're not beyond reach if you try to reach them, but if you attack them they're gonna get alienated.

Edit: I read the first few paragraphs and didn't read the rest. I now see I was totally wrong.

Having read the whole thing I think this editorial is rather silly, but you're not giving it a fair chance. The portion you quoted is the author paraphrasing someone else's argument. His very next sentence begins with the sentence "I respectfully dissent."

> Having read the whole thing I think this editorial is rather silly

The solution is (probably) silly, although there are merits to the problem statement.

Did you read the article?

To be honest I gave up at the point I quoted.

The author, Ross Douthat, is no leftist; he's one of the house conservatives at the New York Times. You're missing the satiric tone of his "hinterland" comments. EDIT: Just saw your own edit; glad you re-read the article.

Douthat's suggestion to distribute some now-centralized federal government functions to other cities is worth considering. It would make the American national society less vulnerable if Washington D.C. were to be taken out by a man-made or natural disaster. Of course, there'd be costs to consider as well, along with unforeseen consequences.

EDIT: As to unforeseen consequences, liberal (and Nobel-laureate) economist Paul Krugman tweets: "Interesting piece. But if u think decentralizing govt will break hold of big cities, two words: Albany. Trenton." [0]

[0] https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/846097749519093760

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