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Re:For a Better Economy, Add Commuter Rail? by colechristensen on Saturday August 13, 2016 @09:00PM (#12283828)
Who says that consolidation will lead to a better result or that it is zero-sum?

There is a reason that the world isn't run by a single person, why separate countries succeed, why most countries share authority with smaller sub-governments (state and local in the US. There's a reason why each species isn't a single superorganism, but individuals within species tend to cooperate.

"Life", evolution, or survival of the fittest -- clearly isn't a zero sum game. Over billions of years it's clear that it's positive sum. Blindingly obvious.

Adjacent governments too may well fit the bill. Too much competition can suck all the excess value out of the situation, but so can too little. The ideal form of government might be an angelic dictator, but you don't see the world full of them, do you? Healthy competition can find the optimum much better than singular good intentions. Partially because it allows experiment with real world results. With n=1 you can enact policy but you can only guess what effects it might have had because you have no control, no basis for comparison.

It's all about _healthy_ competition, and it's the basic idea that our republic was built on which can be seen everywhere in the constitution.

Re:For a Better Economy, Add Commuter Rail? by __derek__ on Saturday August 13, 2016 @09:43PM (#12283938)
It's a big leap to go from proposing more regionally-appropriate subdivisions of government to a single global government. I understand what you're trying to say, but there is no meaningful competition here. Boston is the region's center of gravity, and neither Providence nor Manchester threaten that. Meaningful competition comes in at the inter-regional level (e.g., Boston vs. New York).
Re:For a Better Economy, Add Commuter Rail? by Retric on Saturday August 13, 2016 @09:50PM (#12283959)
Bostion is not a single entity, it's an interconnected network of many types of entity's and local governments etc. Each of those local governments both compete with and help each other.
Re:For a Better Economy, Add Commuter Rail? by __derek__ on Saturday August 13, 2016 @10:09PM (#12283999)
Yes, the point was that the status quo is strange. See the GP.
Re:For a Better Economy, Add Commuter Rail? by colechristensen on Saturday August 13, 2016 @10:12PM (#12284009)
Why can't meaningful competition happen at every level from between nations to between neighbors?

Sure, you can propose I merge my family with the family next door as a more "regionally-appropriate subdivision", but how can you justify it (or justify against it)?

It can make a lot of sense for different sections of the same metropolis to compete for residents, businesses, etc. The dynamics of which competition is healthy and constructive and which competition is unhealthy and destructive is an interesting problem, and it isn't settled by personal opinions of "common sense".

Re:For a Better Economy, Add Commuter Rail? by __derek__ on Saturday August 13, 2016 @10:39PM (#12284066)
Oh, absolutely. I don't mean to suggest that that sort of local experimentation* isn't valuable: as you say, removing the ability for variation reduces policy to guesswork. It seems to me that that's more possible in a situation with a clearer idea of success (i.e. a stronger regional economy) than is possible with states that have competing priorities.

* In re-reading, I think my bias is to call that local variation experimentation rather than competition. I'm a technocrat at heart.