Rural areas do not "have no voice" - they have exactly the representative power of their population, the same as urban centers. I'm not sure what makes people in or from rural areas thinks that once people live close together their voice should count for less. How is it "right" or "fair" to move to an urban center, take advantage of urban amenities and services, take advantage of that higher salary, and siphon some of that tax money away to rural areas because of nostalgia?
It's not really true of the Bay Area--and it's at least complicated around Manhattan. But a lot of cities like Boston an hour or an hour and a bit drive in reverse commute, much less weekend, traffic can bring you to a lot cheaper housing. There are expensive suburbs too. However, it's pretty easy to find suburban or exurban towns that are accessible to Boston for an evening event that have relatively modest home prices. Not Midwest cheap but reasonable. (Of course there are very expensive towns as well.)
What’s the GDP of New York City versus upstate?
As an aside this silly concept of “rural/urban divide” is just that.
Silly.
We need farms and farmers to feed us, it’s ok to subsidize some of these places so that happens.
It’s also ok for the people doing the subsidization to ask the rural people to stop complaining about “socialism” or other nonsense when they’re the primary benefactors of handouts.
This is why the bulk of people moving away from city centers during the pandemic moved to cheaper cities or the suburban metros surrounding cities rather than small towns, and unless small towns stop being small towns it’s not going to change.
But in current conditions, votes in rural Western Canadian ridings are basically worthless. They're ultra-safe Conservative seats, so they can be and are ignored.
But it wasn't very long ago that they were highly competitive ridings split between two right wing parties. Because Canada doesn't quite have the same 2 party system as the US does, the situation isn't as static.
Rural and low population _states_ have a fair amount of power due to having a fixed number of senators per state, but rural areas in an otherwise non-rural state may find themselves outvoted and thus mostly irrelevant.
The opposite situation, city slickers outvoted by country bumpkins, is of course possible in rural states.
For example, in my state the majority of residents live in the largest metro area. But the smaller towns & rural areas are able to more or less permanently control the legislature (because legislators have geographic districts). As a result, our laws are frequently written in ways that are openly hostile to our major city, while favoring more rural areas.
2 wolves and sheep deciding on what's for dinner huh?
Have you considered that the key problem here is the lack of direct control that people have over their own lives, causing these sort of situations where you have groups of people who permanently have zero effective agency over their futures?
I agree, giving people more voting powers just because they live in a certain place isn't the right way to fix this. But the fact that there is a problem is undeniable, and the fact that this inequality in voting helps ameliorate this problem is true as well.
The right answer here is to remove power from the state and elected officials, and return it to where it belongs, those being asked to pay for it either directly, or by being affected by it.
There is nothing as democratic as everyone choosing for themselves.
In the same way we should not have a vote to decide what's for dinner, and the winner means we all eat the same thing, we should not have votes on local and personal matters.
Democracy isn't voting, it's agency over what rules you.
> 2 wolves and sheep deciding on what's for dinner huh?
Tired analogy that doesn't actually make any point.
> groups of people who permanently have zero effective agency over their futures
This applies to approximately 0% of people in the US. Yes there is a small proportion of people who are so poor they can never move away from where they're born. Most of these people happen to live in urban areas, not rural.
> the fact that there is a problem is undeniable
For it being undeniable you haven't actually said what the problem is - only a strawman that rural Americans have no agency over their futures which is utter nonsense.
> return [power] to where it belongs, those being asked to pay for it either directly, or by being affected by it
If democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner wouldn't you want more power in the state and elected officials, so they could protect the sheep?
The problem is everybody acts like they're the sheep being taken advantage of by big bad government when it's almost never actually the case.
It does, but it seems you've missed.
Let me make it clear as day.
If there's a country with 3 people on it, where 2 of those people want to oppress the third, there is nothing that the third can do to prevent that oppression.
That is a perfectly legitimate outcome of a voting system, and one that occurs often.
>This applies to approximately 0% of people in the US. Yes there is a small proportion of people who are so poor they can never move away from where they're born. Most of these people happen to live in urban areas, not rural.
On the contrary.
If you've ever been affected by a law or regulation you're against, you've directly suffered from this in regards to that topic.
Indeed, the whole idea of "red states" and "blue states" that is common in US politics kind of shows it happening at a large scale.
For example I've recently seen news about parts of eastern Oregon wanting to secede and join Idaho, and the primary reason for that is that you have a minority (rural eastern Oregonians) who are permanently disenfranchised with effectively zero agency over the laws and regulations that rule over them, as a result of them being a minority in Oregon.
This is the problem.
>If democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner wouldn't you want more power in the state and elected officials, so they could protect the sheep?
On the contrary, for it is that power that is being used to oppress.
> For example I've recently seen news about parts of eastern Oregon wanting to secede and join Idaho, and the primary reason for that is that you have a minority (rural eastern Oregonians) who are permanently disenfranchised with effectively zero agency over the laws and regulations that rule over them, as a result of them being a minority in Oregon.
Northern California is the same, with this proposal to solve it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_st...
This goes both ways. In Utah, the urban liberals feel like they are disenfranchised because the majority suburban/rural population of the state consistently votes conservative.
Anytime you have a majority (whether that is majority liberal urban in Oregon or majority conservative rural in Utah) you will have a minority that feel disenfranchised.
Can you put into concrete terms? How many times has Philadelphia and Pittsburgh bullied their way into something that the rest of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania was so against? I think you'll find that what usually happens is the rest of the commonwealth gets its way, regardless of what the big cities want (because they have the numbers in the state legislatures).
If you'd like a more concrete example, how about we look at the effects that these minority/majority impacts have had on the delegates sent to the presidential college?
Here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden...
As you can see you have several states that have always voted for the same party for decades.
For example, Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, south Dakota, Utah and Wyoming... Have voted for the republican candidate every single year since 1964. How many Democrats live in those states? These are literally millions of people who by virtue of being a minority have had exactly zero agency in who will rule over them.
On a more local level, how many regulations are voted on by people in cities, but will inevitably affect rural people? Or heck, any people who did not want those regulations?
For people being oppressed, who have no actual way to prevent their oppression, does it really matter if the oppression is being done by a dictator or a vote?
That's not an example of what you're saying. It appears to be in ongoing discussions. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
On a more local level, how many regulations are voted on by people in cities, but will inevitably affect rural people? Or heck, any people who did not want those regulations?
What level are you talking about? I mean, what locality spans city and rural areas? These are great hypothetical situations, but you gotta put real examples behind them to show that there is some conspiracy about oppressing people living in rural areas. Even at a state level, due to the nature of districting, urban areas don't have any more representation in state legislatures.
As you can see you have several states that have always voted for the same party for decades.
You're now changing your argument from urban-rural to D-R?
It's not really urban-rural or D-R as such. It's more "people who don't even live in your town are dictating how to run it".
Like the recent ruling with abortion: it made it not a federal concern. That's it. Why do people in California care so much about what e.g. Alabama is doing now? Do they get upset about abortion laws in Poland too?
Higher levels of government are needed to prevent conflicts (e.g. to deal with someone in Colorado polluting the river and screwing over everyone in Utah), but they end up getting used to enforce social norms. It would be better if we could push more regulation down to the county/municipal level. People wouldn't need to be so polarized because they could just agree to disagree, and live somewhere with like-minded people.
Want to live somewhere where there's strict credentials for teachers? Cool. Want to live somewhere where the lady down the street that homeschools her kids can also teach yours? Cool. It's a big country. There's room for everyone.
Not sure how this fits in. It only had 25% nay votes in the assembly and 17.5% nay votes in the senate. Some nay votes came from a D from SF and someone form Huntington Beach, so the vote really wasn't on party or urban-rural lines. I also wonder how genuine you're being when you say a measure that gives someone more freedom (to build what they want on their property) is someone telling you how to live your life.
Gun laws in most blue states.
I'm not really sure laws what you mean. We have to recognize that nationwide, 63% of adults are dissatisfied with our current gun laws. In light of this, we have the SCOTUS striking down gun laws that most people want. This doesn't appear to be the win you think it is. https://news.gallup.com/poll/470588/dissatisfaction-gun-laws...
Washington's comprehensive sex ed law
I'm not sure what to say when you think direct democracy is bad with regards to state measures.
Like the recent ruling with abortion: it made it not a federal concern. That's it. Why do people in California care so much about what e.g. Alabama is doing now?
Well, this specific issue aside, this current trend of conservatives trying to legislate from the SCOTUS (people appointed for a lifetime) is largely undemocratic. If you don't want people who don't even live in your town dictating how to run it, you should be very opposed to SCOTUS doing just that, since they basically answer to no one.
Even if 75% of California residents want to ban single family zoning, if 75% of residents in Redding want to keep it in Redding, why should people in San Diego have any more than 0% influence on that decision? People 600 miles away should have exactly zero input into something like that.
It's not about whether the decisions being made are good. It's about who gets to make them/how broadly they apply. China could have the greatest ideas in the world, but it doesn't make sense to "democratically" vote with equal representation between US and Chinese citizens on what free speech laws in the US should be. They have 4x the population and nothing in common. Such a "democracy" would be a farce.
Because Redding isn't an independent, self-supporting, sovereign entity, its an administrative subdivision of California whose existence as an entity and powers of government are delegated to it by the people of the State of California through the Constitution and laws of said State (in part directly, and in part indirectly through, e.g., Shasta County, a similar but higher-level subdivision within which Redding is nested), and which is funded in no small part by distribution of taxes set and collected by and from the State of California as a whole.
That's what I was discussing, too.
If there was a Redding-separatist movement, we could discuss whether Reading separatism is just and whether that changes the justice of decision-making arrangements, but the justice of decision-making authority within the current context is not independent of the structure of that context aside from the particular decision-making question being examined, and where “Redding” fits into that structure.
(This is also a separate question from the justice of particular decisions; like it can be just for the people of California at large to be the decisive decision-making authority, and still be unjust for them to make a particular decision. But that wasn't the question.)
> Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
The bar for injustice is quite a bit lower than secession-inducing. If you have broad agreement in place X that they would like to live one way, and agreement among places Y and Z (who have never even been to X and would be entirely unaffected by what X does for the decision at hand) that X should live another way, then I assert Y and Z imposing their will on X is unjust, regardless of how democratic the decision was, or whether some generations-old political structure says Y and Z can do that. The people of Y and Z should recognize that they shouldn't do that.
[0] https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-aler...
This tells me you missed the argument i was making.
The point isn't a specific urban-rural or Dem-Rep, it's the underlying concept of not having agency over what rules you.
The more powers you grant the state, the less powers you have, and the greater these issue become and the more important acquiring political power becomes.
You're actually making a good argument in favor of jdasdf's point. Just try to get a concealed carry permit in Potter County, and one in Philadelphia County, and see how different they are. Both completely legal because there's totally different laws in play for the same process.
Isn't this also the case of blue cities in red states? I believe e.g. there's a big hullabaloo in Virginia at the moment where the bluer school district close to DC is resisting anti-transgender top-down demands from the state. If we want to argue about rural people being disenfranchised, by number, way more people in cities are disenfranchised simply because cities are more populated.
Absolutely, and my point isn't about a "rural vs urban divide" at all.
It is a general argument and principle that can be applied to every action of government.
It doesn't matter if oppression is done by a dictator or by a Majority.
The problem is too much state power.
Being enfranchised in driving the state is only important if the state has a significant impact in your life.
The lower the impact (read, the power) of the state, the lower the need to be enfranchised.
For your example: If the state didn't have law enforcing powers, the states policy on crime wouldn't matter much. You could just hire your own private police to protect your interests.
Then its not the state [0], whatever it calls itself, in the same way that Emporer Norton, despite his claimed title, was not the head of state of the United States.
[0] though it may be part of a larger structure involving elements formally outside of its bounds that together constitutes an effective state.
Plenty of states didn't have law enforcement powers, including the early US. Police is something that only really started showing up in the later half of the 1800s and even then only in certain places.
Having to do something you don't want to do, or not being allowed to do whatever you want, is not oppression.
Because I fail to see any conceptual difference here.
it would be better to give more independence to the sheep so that deciding what's for dinner doesn't need a majority vote of all of them. if we ignore the obvious outcome that the wolves want to eat the sheep, but simply look at the fact that wolves want meat and sheep want grass, it simply doesn't make sense that the majority here gets to dictate what everyone should eat, instead each group should be able to make their own choice.
that means localizing decisions where that makes sense. and not allowing the majority to control resources that a minority depends on. among other things.
Tokyo and the regions could have resolved their differences through the democratic process, in which the regions outvote Tokyo and could have altered Japan’s national tax and economic policies to their advantage. Tokyo obviously doesn’t want this, and instead agreed to an opt-in system which allays some of the regions’ concerns.
Doing some back of the napkin math wrt representatives in the House of Commons and senators, in Canada, the situation probably wouldn't be much different for Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. In a lot of ways, this where the US is. NY (the city) foots the bill for not only most of NY (the state), but also its tax money funds projects and services in other states as well.
Living in a US state's biggest city myself, it is a drag to see the rest of the state constantly block legislation that will help us grow, while on the flip side they are gladly taking our taxes, as we pay by far the most into the state's coffers. What I mean to say is, due to the way we pay local, state/province and federal taxes, the big cities are already a net positive in terms of tax revenue for the rest of the province/country.
The Federal government spends disproportionately outside of cities.