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Comment by afsina | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

(now when we are talking fantasies)

That's in some ways how the EU is working out, although the global state is smaller and the city states are more like regions. The EU provides a single market, a customs area, freedom of movement and to some degree a currency. Most of the former Communist states are a lot smaller than 19th century imperatives would have dictated. In the EU and EU accession countries, there's Poland (40m), Romania (20m), and then all other countries are 11 million and below. And in Western Europe the independence movements are about spin-offs of similar populations. Scotland is 5 million, Catalonia is about 7.5 million (5 million in Barcelona), Brittany is about 4.5 million, the Italian city states a bit smaller. That's the way things are going.

A state exists primarily to defend its polity against other states. It takes a lot of resources to maintain a military, accomplish geopolitical objectives, pursue a coherent foreign policy.

Let's say we found aliens living in the next solar system. That would be the beginning of the global human state. Even if they're not hostile, humanity as a whole world need to band together to figure out just what to do about them.

What you're looking for is pan-national governmental institutions. There are plenty of those.

Isn't that an oxymoron - multiple pan-national states? You're only supposed to need one.

Anyway, I predict when other people are discovered in another solar system, then each nation on Earth will attempt to have a relationship with them and it will be business as usual. Why would America or China agree on the best policy vs interstellar trade? They agree on so little else!

That's why I said it would be the beginning of the new state. It wouldn't happen overnight. But it's bound to happen.

The fundamental axiom of geopolitics is that when confronted with a threat, humans consistently identify with the people they are closest to and most like. Family first, then tribe, village, region, country.

The size of the threat begets a corresponding organizational response. We don't cooperate all that well with China now, but you can better believe that if there were a compelling reason to, like, say, aliens in our back yard, we'd figure it out in a hurry.

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 steroids (via direct democratic participation that can overrule anything the elected leaders can come up with). Governance as local as possible makes sense for many things - not all though.

Fair point, forgot about those sensible Swiss.

Well, if you look at the Old Confederacy, you were only really wrong in one account: the assumption that it needs to be a monarchy. These fellas were rather fond of going into battle, it's just that all out war has somehow been avoided since the mid 17th century.

Effectively Switzerland is pretty much a one-dimensional (only 30 to 70 km in width) multi or triple center city-(cluster) state due to it's economically usable geography wedged in between the Jura and alpine Mountain ranges. This 300 km long plateau only covers about 30% of the Swiss total land area.

Geneva plus Lac Léman region (Lausanne, Montreux) on the one end. Seperated by the "Röstigraben" from the German part of the Swiss Plateau, which itself is culturally divided by the Brünig-Napf-Reuss line[2].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Plateau [1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br%C3%BCnig-Napf-Reuss_line [2]

Agreed, up to one point: I'd argue that looking at it as a triple city cluster is too much of a simplification - these centers are simply not large enough to render the others insignificant. I.e. the Berne, Lugano, St. Gallen and Lucerne urban und cultural areas aren't totally insignificant compared to Zurich, Geneva/Lausanne or Basel. Switzerland is simply too multifaceted to reduce it like that.

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.

Why so?

Don't you think that an economy greater than Russia deserves to govern itself, or at least have much greater autonomy?

Wouldn't that argument work in reverse too? How much autonomy does Vermont (lowest gdp) need anyway?

Or that perhaps the key to New York's success is dependent upon the existing government framework?

I doubt that. Singapore, Monaco and Luxembourg are doing just fine without the blessing of a big state.

I'm not so sure these are very good examples. Monaco is effectively a tiny gated community of France for the super rich that produces little-to-no goods or services. Luxembourg is heavily dependent on support and the existance of the EU (receiving approximately €3,000 per person, the highest in the entire EU). Singapore is probably the best example of a city-state succeeding outside the framework of a larger state, but the size of their public debt is a little frightening for such a small country - and would be slightly less so if it was within a larger body.

There are also Andorra, Lichtenstein and probably Macao and Hong Kong (They could be just fine without England and China).

Monaco and Luxembourg both are inside the EU and exist very much as a result of cooperation with France (and the Treaty of Utrecht). They both have ceremonial militaries only, and subsist by facilitating tax avoidance for the nearby elites.

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.

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.

Go cheap oil!

Depending on how you define it, the NY metro area extends into NJ, CT, and PA. I still don't think it surpasses Russia, but it does surpass the vast majority of countries, including Spain: http://www.usmayors.org/metroeconomies/2013/201311-report.pd...

New York Metropolitan Area GDP (or GMP) in 2015: $1,573.8 billion http://www.statista.com/statistics/183808/gmp-of-the-20-bigg...

Russia GDP in 2015: $1,235.858 billion

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2015/02/weodata/weor...

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