Rule 6: Break up the Blue Zones

When I read the deeper reaches of the far Right blogosphere, I come across writers who are ready to break up the United States: let the Blue states become part of Blue countries and let the Red states become part of Red countries. I find this line of thinking unduly pessimistic and downright dangerous.

The Red states aren't all that Red, as we recently saw with Georgia and Arizona in the 2020 election. And if you look at a Red-Blue map using counties instead of states, you will find that the Blue states aren't all that Blue -- geographically. The split between Republican and Democrat has become largely a split between rural and urban. Unless we come up with a viable system of independent city states surrounded by a vast rural and suburban imperial republic, a proper Red-Blue split is not viable. Somehow, we need to get along with each other.

I see three viable ways forward:

1. Republicans relearn how to govern large cities.

2. We get an urban-friendly sane third party to give the Democrats some real competition in urban areas.

3. We make Urban America more like Rural America.

There are limits to the third option. Cities are inherently different from the surrounding countryside. For example, noise and air pollution are a really big deal in big cities; many city dwellers really like electric cars for these reasons. Conversely, electric propulsion is absurd for those who drive trucks laden with tools down country roads. Urban dwellers are thus more predisposed to believe in global warming than rural dwellers.

Cities are inherently more socialistic than rural areas. When people don't have their own yards, they really need the government managed commons. And there needs to be more regulations on all sorts of behavior when people live close together. Outdoor burning, free range pets, noise, etc. affect people outside of property boundaries. And recreational machine gun practice is far more risky in Manhattan than in the mountains of rural Kentucky.

So why can't we use federalism? Let the cities be governed one way and the rural areas governed a different way. Why does Blue America insist on centralization, on governing everything from Washington DC?

Possible answer: big city dwellers have no true experience of federalism! For them City Hall is just as politically distant as Washington DC. "You can't fight City Hall" is a big city saying. Thanks to the fact that we do have two viable political parties at the central government level, federal bureaucrats can be more accountable and easier to deal with than the "local" government.

Let's do some simple math. Suppose half the population in a polity votes, and suppose it takes a 5% change to swing an election. Now suppose that a mildly annoyed voter can affect 50 votes by simply working her personal contact list. Under such conditions a government has easy first order accountability if it has 2000 (= 2 * (50/0.05)) residents. A really annoyed voter could go door-to-door and directly affect something like 5-10 times as many votes. So we tenuously have first order accountability when we go up to something like 10,000-20,000 residents. Beyond that, you really need a political organization to have an impact.

I'll call it second order accountability when a personal sized social organization can swing an election when motivated. Suppose we use Dunbar's Number (150) for the organization of activists, and suppose the activists can swing 50 votes each. We get impact in a polity of up to 2*150*50*= / 0.05 = 300,000. Beyond this, politics is going to fall into the hands of professional fundraisers and political machines.

Indeed, that 300,000 figure is probably too generous based on my personal experience. Suppose we use Dunbar's number for the number of active members of a political party -- the kind of people who will distribute yard signs, work polling places etc. And suppose each party tries to canvas half the voters. This gives 300,000/(2*2*150) = 500 voters to canvas per activist. That's expecting a bit much.

My intuition says that if we want true Government of the People, then we need to get all direct elections down to districts of 100,000 residents or less. But then I realize that this would make for a very unwieldy House of Representatives if applied to the federal government. Even shrinking House districts down to 300,000 would give us over 1,000 Congresscritters. That's too big for proper floor debate. Completely different parliamentary procedures would be needed. And we would need a new Capital building. (Maybe we should move the capital of the US to someplace more central, such as in Missouri or Nebraska...)

But we can definitely move many city functions down to the community level, where communities are generally much less than 100,000 people. And in any state controlled by a Republican legislature with a spine, we can make it happen whether big city mayors and machines like it or not. Even better, many old school Progressives will join in the fun. True Progressives like real democracy. So let's give those Progressives what they like, good and hard.

This is Part 1 of Rule 6. I'll give specific ideas in parts to come. I'm trickling this one out so I can spend more time finishing to book or getting readers vs. posting everything for free to a tiny audience. So spread the word and get ready for paid subscriptions. Enjoy the freeness while it lasts and act on what I've already posted if you want to keep your freedom. Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 are now up.