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Comment by mr_tristan | Hacker News Reader

I suspect this is a much bigger deal in the US, since we have rural power bias built into our political system. Thus, the rural voter has a much bigger "say" in how things run.

(Subsequently, if their life continues to get worse, well, I suspect more tendencies towards authoritarianism.)

This is where I sense the tension. At least in the US, the political system seems to want to maintain people in rural areas, but the economic system doesn't. And I'm not sure a politician running on a platform of "we're gonna get you out of dodge" is going to be very popular.

Advocating for moving people out of rural areas seems like political suicide. I can't find anyone pushing for this idea.

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Plenty of economists push that idea. The way to make people richer is to move them to rich places. (Even more so internationally.)

Your point about politicians stands. That's a great assessment of the tension between the two worldviews.

Not everyone wants to be ‘richer’. That economists push that idea begs the question. I’m not placing a value judgement on either worldview, just pointing out that in one worldview, there’s an assumption of constant growth. I happen to fall into this worldview, but I’ve grown an appreciation for those who don’t. Unbridled growth = cancer.

> Not everyone wants to be ‘richer’.

They say that, but if you write them a cheque, they'll cash it.

It's the things that come along with wealth that they may disagree with, but certainly not the wealth itself.

No doubt, there are pockets (even in Canada#) that refuse government welfare programs like health insurance because they feel that they shouldn't be dependent on others like that, but it's much less than 1%.

# Some of our old-order Mennonites refuse to get a government health card.

if you write them a cheque, they'll cash it.

Not 100% true. I grew up in farm country and there were lots of people (my parents included) who refused on principles to participate in federal CRP programs which would have essentially provided government checks for doing nothing.

> if you write them a cheque, they'll cash it

That's why all the great scientists are working in the Fintech industry. (No, they are not)

>I suspect this is a much bigger deal in the US, since we have rural power bias built into our political system. Thus, the rural voter has a much bigger "say" in how things run.

At the federal level there is a bias toward rural states mostly because of how the senate works. At the state level pretty much every state is ruled by a couple counties that have the biggest cities in the state in them and everyone else is along for the ride.

I personally think this is pretty well balanced but would prefer for there to be far less federal authority (so it matters much less who controls each branch of the federal government) and far more (like 100 or so) states so that both groups can do what they want, in their own state, without much federal interference (and without fighting as much over everything) but that will never happen because the cities depend on the rural areas for resources and the rural areas depend on the cities for money so states will never split (and even if that were solved you'd never be able to divide states in a way that wasn't gerry-mandered to hell and back which would defeat the point).

I don't think states are particularly balanced, either. States tend to put capitals away from population centers, and have the same tendencies to bias toward rural voters:

"Even states that had constitutions requiring equal population districts were ignoring them. Florida, Georgia and New Mexico gave small counties 100 times the voting power of the most populous ones. Decades ago in California, Amador County (population 14,294) had the same representation in the state’s Senate as Los Angeles County (with a population over six million)."

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/upshot/as-american-as-app...

There are tons of gerrymandered states that result in states' politicians not reflecting the wishes of the majority of the voters, and it's always the rural areas benefiting from the gerrymandering.

Every east coast state from Maine to Maryland is run by the cities in that state. The west coast is almost the same. I don't know if those states are "gerrymandered" in favor of the rural districts but if they are it's not enough to matter because those states are certainly run by the cities.

I'm not saying what you've said isn't true. I'm saying it doesn't matter in practice.

Gerrymandered or not if the cities want something they get it. The only time rural areas get a real say is if the cities are split on an issue or if the suburban areas split disagree with the cities. NY, MA and VT are good examples.

Cities have wanted minority rights, legal marijuana, abortion rights, gay rights, public transport, minimum wage, higher education, multitudes of other items for a long time, and I don’t see them getting those without an uphill battle every time. Time and time again, the majority of voters are overruled due to the way the game is setup, and they can’t change the way it’s setup since they would need the political majority (even though they have the voter majority) to do that.

There are seven states with only ONE House of representative: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming.

The reason for the above is that there are so little population ( less than 650,000 )in the whole state.

These 7 states each have TWO senators. The reason for this is this is how the country was formed giving 2 senators to each state in the constitution. These 14 senators are always Republican and see their weight on 100 seat Senate.

so two reasons why US cannot reflect the wishes of the majority of the voters.

1/ fourteen senators from 7 states ( with a population less than 650,000) elect the same Republican senators for decades ( think about their influence on judicial judge selection and every other decision senate make)

2/ as you mentioned, state-level gerrymandered ( in bigger population states) electing more House reps of Republicans even though their vote share is less than 50%

https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_House_of_Representativ...

https://www.vox.com/2014/8/5/17991950/how-gerrymandering-wor...

Not all 14 of them are Republican. Delaware has two Democrats, and Vermont has one Democrat and one Bernie Sanders.

agree, that makes it 11 GOP senators to 3 DEM senators.

California with 40 Milion population 2 senators, to 2 senators for these 600,000 population for each of these 7 states.

>agree, that makes it 11 GOP senators to 3 DEM senators.

And how many of those two CA senators are GOP? Guess those 7 states are more diverse than CA.

That's the stereotype, even if the facts don't bear that out.

What was different about America that small towns thrived?

The economic system is short sighted, and doesn't always have to drive politics - this may be a recent phenomena.

When the US was founded, about 95% of the population was rural, and notably, Thomas Jefferson was famously pro-rural, and viewed cities as corrupt.

You can just search "thomas jefferson agrarian quotes" and get tons of pro-ag, anti-city statements from him, such as:

“Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds. As long, therefore, as they can find employment in this line, I would not convert them into mariners, artisans, or anything else.” –Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1785.

We've become a nation of employees.

Microserfs

For a very long time in the US (up to 1970's in Alaska) one had the homestead act that allowed people to claim a large amount of land (160 acres) if you lived on it for five years and improved it. There was a huge amount of land available and this "free" land would create a lot of rural population. People from all over the world came to get a chance to own land. Impossible in Europe basically for a person to be able to own land as just a laborer. Most of this land in the lower 48 was gone by 1900 or so and this is what people are referring to when they talk about the closing of the American frontier.

> Most of this land in the lower 48 was gone by 1900 or so and this is what people are referring to when they talk about the closing of the American frontier.

Well, sorta. The feds still own 30-85% of each Western state:

https://assets3.bigthink.com/system/tinymce_assets/944/origi...

Mostly because that land is so inhospitable that nobody wants it.

Lots of national forest land that many people would love to be able to live on. Check out the prices around Aspen which is surrounded by National forests.

I’m really not familiar with the geography, or its history, but the feds only kept 2% of Texas. I’ll assume the rest became private.

To put it as succinctly as possible... Oil.

Logistics, essentially, and the advent of globalism caused more and more centralized approaches.

When the primary economic inputs were land and undifferentiated labor, there was no use playing in a crowded field.

Now the economic inputs are highly skilled workers and the connections between them.

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