ctlby

Prosperity is causally prior to taxation, not the other way around. To quote the great Bryan Caplan, "It takes a colossal host to sustain colossal parasitism."

Your argument against minority rule is to invoke... the courts? "Majority rule is great. Except when it does stuff I don't like, in which case I'll lean on minority rule by an infinitesimal number of unaccountable dudes in black robes to override it."

Constitutions are not enough. This isn't an academic question. Throughout the country's history, majorities have consistently trampled the rights of minorities. To me, majority rule looks an awful lot like rampant injustice. Minority rule looks like defense.

You seem to be positing a world where “bad” decisions are somehow kept off the ballot, leaving only a menu of “good” options for the wise majority to enact.

Well, that’s not our world. When a CA gay marriage ban comes up for vote, it’s important to me that the majority not get their way. And unless I’ve seriously misapprehended your politics, I’m not sure why you’re advancing an argument where such a ban is just because “letting the minority prevail” would be worse.

So yeah, it’s a mistake to treat the “what” and the “how” of decision-making separately.

No, not literally a smoking hole (though I believe arson was a problem for a time?) But as close to one as you’re going to get in the USA.

I can’t disagree more with your majoritarian arguments. You (and I) would probably object when, e.g. California voters ban gay marriage. But you cheer when slim majorities attempt to saddle others with heavy economic burdens or interpose themselves in others’ contractual arrangements. I find most democratic decisions illegitimate; how hard is to to just keep your nose out of other people’s business?

The founders were aware of urban/rural tension from the beginning. The system was designed to make it difficult to force obligations on fellow citizens. That means majorities are being thwarted in their efforts, and that’s a good thing.

> doesn’t suggest any useful policy

All good points. Some blue cities do very well and some do very poorly. I have to conclude that the problems are mostly exogenous to policy.

> being “blue” leads to failure

To be clear, I was never suggesting that progressive policies lead inexorably to decline—the most successful parts of the county are blue.

> a pretty strong argument could be made

I’m more skeptical here. The policies you cite are neither necessary nor sufficient for vitality. Most pointedly, progressive values were nonexistent for most of America’s history, and yet it did quite well economically.

> literal “smoking hole in the ground” worse

But my whole point is that it was a smoking hole in the ground! I started this whole thread by responding to a claim about the inevitability of red states going “third world.” To my eye, such a thing has never happened to rural areas, but has happened to urban areas (I might add, with some frequency). Be it density or whatever—there’s something that needs to be explained.

> rural few dictate to the urban many

Agreed. I think it would be equally bad for the urban many to dictate to the rural few. Federal level policy is inappropriate for most things

It's easy to change my mind on this: just provide me a decision rule that'll put rural decay data points on the "failure" side of the classification boundary while leaving urban decay on the other.

I earlier acknowledged the difficulty of coming up with a reasonable definition of "failed." I will say that I don't think it's enough to be simply below-average in literacy or above-average in crime or whatever; you really want a multivariate outlier in the space of social pathologies. I suspect that most ways of operationalizing "failure" will capture primarily urban decay, like the examples I brought up.

Does rural West Virginia rise to that level? Having been there myself, I don't think so, though I could be convinced otherwise. Can you point to large-ish rural areas that match the dysfunction of, say, south-side Chicago? Preferably along with some (crude) quantitative comparisons. I'm genuinely curious here; not trying to pick on progressive policies.

I'm not inclined to think that slow demographic decline constitutes failure. Even if you disagree with that, my preferred definition has the additional "law and order" requirement, and I've never seen a rural example of a "Bronx is burning"-type event.

Not sure why you were downvoted. This is the best answer I've ever received to my question.

I put the word in quotes to indicate the tendentiousness of any potential definition. I personally don't think of any part of America as having "failed," but if you force me to pick, I'd choose any area that suffered from breakdown in law and order and severe de-population. NYC in the late 70s and Detroit's long-running (but hopefully interrupted?) decline especially come to mind. A number of other urban centers could potentially fit too.

These have been the rules for nearly 250 years. Why are you only up in arms about it now?

Curiously enough, the only parts of the country that have ever approached anything resembling "failure" are (heavily progressive) urban areas like NYC and Detroit.