Bay Area as a City State | Hacker News Reader

Bay Area as a City State

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49 pointssmysore37 comments

This reminds me of one of my unexpected favorite reads: Jane Jacob's "Cities & the Wealth of Nations" http://www.amazon.com/Cities-Wealth-Nations-Jane-Jacobs/dp/0...

She argues that cities (more specifically, city-regions) are the most fundamental economic unit, and many of the problems that national economies encounter are a result of an imbalance created by tying together multiple city-region economies; and tying them together (and together with large rural areas) creates political problems (because their interests do not align). She also points to cities like Singapore & Hong Kong to show how separating a city-region politically and economically from other city-regions, and decoupling large, rural areas allows for optimal economic conditions for cities. She's not a trained economist, but as a city resident, her argument resonated pretty strongly with me -- though, as a practical matter, well, not at all practical.

An observant reader (or someone who lived in singapore or hong kong) would note that both Singapore and Hong Kong do not have true democratic governments.

Hong Kong currently has a parliament that is only one third elected by the people, one third elected by the government itself and one third elected by special interest groups. The executive (the head of state) is elected by 800 people representing private citizens and special interest groups. In practice however, these 800 people are all selected by the government itself. As a result, each year you see the same billionaires in the 800 group, always electing the candidate who has shaken the most hands with the PRC government.

There are a multitude of economic consequences as a result of this. Policies left over from decades ago include fixed electricity pricing, price floor on bus tickets, supermarket duopolies, tunnel operator monopolies, misplaced housing estates, local shopping center monopolies, are some problems the government is not willing to deal with. (Why would they, to lose support among 33% of voters who also happen to be most economically well-off and to be accused of "economic interference"?) These are all things that exacerbates income inequality. Income inequality is increasing not because the highest income people are producing more but because they're earning more from the inefficient market and political system geared towards them.

Everyone thinks Hong Kong has like the best economic system ever, but I'd like to point out that they don't.

Of course, things I've said here are very political and you might get different responses depending on who you're talking to...

I am not saying that the examples you cite are not problems, but would you prefer great income inequality in which the lowest-earners make X and the highest earners say 10X, or a very homogenous society in which the lowest earners earn 0.1X and the highest earners barely make X?

Income inequality is not a simple yes or no choice.

[edited: brevity]

I didn't know that re Hong Kong's government.

The makeup of their government sounds a lot like the classical mixed republic, with elements of democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy combined into a single set of institutions.

Historically, the states that had this structure tended to encourage some of the most stable and prosperous societies, e.g. the Roman Republic and early modern England.

If Hong Kong is really organized like this, it's not surprising that they have such a strong economy. I suppose how long it will last depends on how long the PRC will maintain their hands-off policy and how long Hong Kong itself can stave off internal pressure to change their constitution to favor one faction or another.

Residents pay taxes to the feds and the state, some of that money trickles back down to the state, and some of that money trickles back down to the city.

Wake me up when we can pay taxes to our city-states, and some of that money trickles up to the state, and some of that money trickles up to the feds.

You would love CA then, where the state seizes local taxes to pay state bills and the republicans rant on about lowering taxes. The cities are feeling the pinch and have to cut local services.

That's not at all what I said I wanted :)

I want trickle-up instead of trickle-down taxes, ie, the city controls the purse strings instead of the federal and state governments.

I know. I was being deliberately obtuse. Imperial China had what you were talking about and it was institutionalized corruption.

The federal government was funded by the states under the Articles of Confederation. The states didn't give enough money to fund the government, so they got rid of it and created a federal government that could collect its own taxes.

Federalism works when when the governmental bodies involved function within the boundaries of the rules that have been set out for them via, for instance, a constitution. This rarely happens. It's still better than the alternatives.

Google is incorporated in Delaware. Apple (through Braeburn Capital since the mid-2000s) manages most of its assets in Nevada. They're not paying state corporate income taxes to anyone, let alone California. Perhaps they're not using any of the services that California state taxes provide. But it's sort of a complicated argument.

The state has a long history. Perhaps this article is a good way to break the deadlock. But realistically, corporations are already acting as if this were a city state (funding their nearby cities much more than the state, etc.).

So I don't know. If anything, I think they should move the capital to San Francisco, so that there is better dialogue and involvement with businesses. Similarly, I don't quite understand what the point of Springfield, Illinois, or Albany, New York are. Maybe there's a reason though...

I have always thought that there is a reason (or can be, depending). When the capital city is also the largest city, the rest of the state can often be ignored (a complaint from many about Boston, for example). If the capital is outside of the major cities then the government can better focus on the state as a whole without getting involved in local politics (think Albany vs New York City).

Also, often capitals are moved outside of major cities due to population and infrastructure, as sometimes larger cities can't sustain any more growth (which is what happened to Malaysia).

San Francisco has interestingly never been a contender for the capital, as before Sacramento it was Monterey (and Benicia and Vallejo but those were just stints). And if it were, the odds of the State focusing on the Bay Area before anywhere else could indeed become an issue.

If there's a significant economic, cultural, and political divergence between a city and the rest of its state, there's also a strong argument to separate the cities off as autonomous city-states.

If people in upstate NY and NYC have conflicting interests, wouldn't it be better for both parties to separate NYC as as state in its own right, rather than maintain the compromise solution of Albany?

Apple was, and is, incorporated in California. Perhaps you're thinking of Braeburn Capital, their cash-management subsidiary which they (relatively recently) created in Nevada.

Good point. Updated.

"Google is incorporated in Delaware. Apple (through Braeburn Capital since the mid-2000s) manages most of its assets in Nevada. They're not paying state corporate income taxes to anyone, let alone California. "

I don't think this is entirely correct as it's a misconception about what it means to incorporate in Delaware. Foreign companies operating in California (and other states) pay taxes there.

There are ways to use Delaware and Nevada to pay less in state taxes, but simply being incorporated there is not one of them, and they are still definitely paying state taxes to Georgia.

Of course a bay area city state would vote to spend no money on the military industrial complex, and then an orange county city state would invade and conquer them.

We would shut off OC's GPS access and their fleet of armed SUVs would be useless - they'd never make it beyond LA

You don't have to turn off their GPS for them to get stuck in LA's gridlock and miss the invasion time. They are their own worst enemy.

Well, it seems that Singapore, as a model city state in that article, has much stronger military forces than many much larger and more populated countries.

I think waterlesscloud was alluding to the political preferences of Bay Area residents.

Self-defense is cheap. Iraqis and Afghans seem to find a way to do a pretty impressive job without throwing buckets of money at the problem. (There's probably some significant outside funding in each case, but still.)

Is military funded on a per-state basis in US? I would expect that to be a federal matter?

Reading this article, I immediately thought of this prediction, where a Russian economist predicted that the US would break into six separate pieces by 2010:

http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/us-to-split-into-6-pie...

If I were in charge of California, an independent Bay Area would be paying through the nose for water.

What about distillation. I have read a few science articles claiming the price of distillation is coming down and a viable alternative than pumping water great distances.

I can't find the one from Popular Science, but I did a quick google search and found this article. Though, I don't know its accuracy.

from http://www.freedrinkingwater.com/water_quality/quality1/1-ma...

Here's a few reasons why...Seawater provides an unlimited, reliable water supply for coastal populations worldwide; brackish water is a plentiful, relatively drought-proof water resource for inland populations and reduces dependency on imported water. And, of all the Earth's water, 97 percent is salt water, only 1 percent is fresh water available for humans to drink, and 2 percent is frozen. Of the more than 7,500 desalination plants in operation worldwide, 60% are located in the Middle East. The world's largest plant in Saudi Arabia produces 128 MGD of desalted water. In contrast, 12% of the world's capacity is produced in the Americas, with most of the plants located in the Caribbean and Florida.

To date, only a limited number of desalination plants have been built along the California coast, primarily because the cost of desalination is generally higher than the costs of other water supply alternatives available in California (e.g., water transfers and groundwater pumping). However, as drought conditions occur and concern over water availability increases, desalination projects are being proposed at numerous locations in the state. Desalination costs are decreasing as technology improves and more plants are built. Today there are more than 15,000 desalination plants in 120 countries. The desalination market is forecast to grow more than $70 billion in the next 20 years. About half of the world's desalted water is produced with heat to distill fresh water from seawater.

Residential users use about 10% of the water, last time I looked. Larger users are alpha, hay, and rice. So if we ban growing rice in the desert, we will have plenty for the people. CA rice is probably for export, because it is the shor grain variety, not the long grain that most of us eat.

That is true, but what parent is alluding to is that the rest of California would have a monopoly on our water supply. The real demand matters little when said demand is inelastic and only one guy controls it.

This is probably the one biggest reason why nation-states exist as they do today. The sum of the parts is less than the whole. This leads to some interesting ideas. What if societies go through downturns (and even collapse) because the central bureaucracy becomes a net negative instead of a net positive, as is happening in California today? But this digresses from the topic at hand.

Actually not. San Francisco, and East Bay MUD which supply much of the SF Peninsula and the East Bay both own their own Sierra dams and infrastructure. I dont think a hostage situation would ensue.

10% of which water? My guess is in the 'bay area city state', which doesn't include a great deal of agricultural land, that figure is much higher.

And since California, minus the BACS is going to be that much more rural, it's going to tilt just a little bit in favor of those users.

Why ban specific uses instead of just charging appropriate prices for water?

"In an age when nations have become so large that their citizens no longer identify with distant governments..."

What? it would seem like the complete opposite of this is true. I would say that nationalism and national identity, in the US and most other places in the world, is stronger now than it has been in the past 50 years.

Indeed. Honestly that seems like the biggest problem with the plan- most local politicians and representatives are complete nobodies, they get elected by riding the coattails of presidential and maybe the senatorial elections.

That's because the media doesn't do a good job of informing people about what state and local politicians actually do. Luckily, there's a way to fix that. At the Texas Tribune, we're aiming to solve that problem, and there are similar California-based organizations.

http://californiawatch.org/

http://www.baycitizen.org/

Identifying with your governing body and feeling represented is NOT the same thing as having "national pride".

Thank god this wont happen. I live just north of San Luis Obispo and would be left with the same old mess. Better would be to fix the mess in Sacramento. A new governor with a more pragmatic outlook, Jerry Brown, passing the initiative to remove the budget supermajority would be a good start.

I'm not so sure it'd be that bad. California would get a greater voice in the Senate and thus receive back more of the tax dollars we pay federally (we currently receive far less than we payout with a sizable portion of our funds going to other states). And I have to imagine state politics would be simplified by making the state smaller.

It's kind of silly California, 'we', Bay Area, are the best and greatest of all, you need us, bow before us. This sounds too one-sided and most likely, it's not that simple.

Anyway, except this reasoning, I'm very keen on the idea of city states, I'd like to try something like that, the city I live in is most likely the first thing I try to identify with, and it is perhaps the authority that affects my life the most (and I even can't vote in the city where I live now…).

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