I haven't really looked into this but I had always assumed this was more of an artifact of historical circumstances than an intentional decision.

It's so natural for an economic center to become a political center (and vice versa), and so common in the US to see the opposite, that I always assumed it was intentional. I could be wrong though: Can you elaborate on what kind of historical circumstances might account for this happening across so many states?

State capitals are usually established when the state is established (they can occasionally be moved afterwards, but in most cases aren't after the first decade or so of statehood). At that time, there is no economic center to most states, because economic development has not yet begun.

Sacramento, for example, has been the capital of CA since 1854. At the time, the population of Sacramento was 10,000, San Francisco was 34,000, Los Angeles didn't exist yet, and most economic activity centered around gold mining, which usually happened near the Sacramento hinterlands.

Similarly Nevada's capital has been Carson City since 1864. In 1864 the primary industry in Nevada was silver mining of the Comstock Lode, which is right next to Carson City. Las Vegas didn't exist until 1905.

Some state capitals also have rather colorful histories, as well. The capital of Louisiana was moved from New Orleans (the economic center) to Baton Rouge because "New Orleans was too sinful". The capital of Idaho moved from Lewistown (the previous economic center, driven by a gold rush) to Boise (the new economic center, driven by mineral mining) in violation of a court order, and featured the governor fleeing the state for Portland and the state treasury being stolen from his steamboat cabin.

There's a catch-22 for settlement patterns where large-scale settlement and economic development of many states didn't happen until after they gained statehood, at which point the capital is already decided.

The economic center of the state 200 years ago and the economic center of the state today being different cities (for instance, the capital of Florida presumably isn't Miami because the area was a practically uninhabitable backwater in the 19th Century)

One is that the states are often bordered by major rivers or oceans, the economic centers are there, and they want the capital to be somewhere closer to the middle of the state, geographically. Another reason is that it's more secure, militarily.

At the time, Salem had similar economic power to Boston. New Bedford and Portland (then part of Mass) as well. But the British established their seat of governance in Boston, and here we are today.

Sometimes I wonder about that. The US as a whole has the same setup (DC isn't the biggest metro area), and the way the legislative houses and executive branch are usually not controlled by a single party at once. Having that separation of power certainly sounds nice, but if you compare it to other countries where the capital IS the biggest city, and where there's always one party/coalition in control of the entire legislative and executive branches...well, they seem to actually function better, on average?

Like, I'm not seeing the practical benefits here. Does anyone look at how Congress and the Presidency behave in the year 2018 and think, "ah yes, this clearly has the results we want"? It seems to me like the problem of splitting up power too much is that you get fragmentation, and situations where each party just blames the other and it's hard to tell who actually deserves responsibility for anything.

> but if you compare it to other countries where the capital IS the biggest city, and where there's always one party/coalition in control of the entire legislative and executive branches...well, they seem to actually function better, on average?

> Does anyone look at how Congress and the Presidency behave in the year 2018 and think, "ah yes, this clearly has the results we want"?

Here in 2018, we have the executive branch, and both houses of congress controlled by the same party. And as you point out, it's not going well.

Ha, touche. Although in this case, the legislative and executive branches are still separated more than they are in typical parliamentary systems of government, with differing incentives.

DC may not be the biggest metro area, but it's arguably the richest overall in terms of per household or per capita incomes. 5 of the top 10 richest counties in the US are DC 'burbs:

1 Loudoun Co, VA 2 Fairfax Co, VA 3 Howard Co, MD ... 5 Arlington Co, VA 6 Stafford, Co, VA

With Montgomery Co, MD and Prince William County at 11 and 12 respectively.

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/richest-counties-in-the-...

Making it harder to do things makes it hard to do dumb or bad things as well as good things. Not everything government does is good. Americans generally prefer be protected from bad government at the expense of making good government less effective rather than enable good government to do things quickly and risk that it does things they consider bad.

I'm not sure how can you look at the US government and 2018 and say we need to enable these people to get more things done. I think the current administration is a relatively harmless (compared to alternatives) lesson in the importance of checks and balances and not concentrating too much power in one branch of government.

They function more efficiently, sure - but longevity remains to be seen. Our system is by design not the most efficient one.