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Economic Development

Jane Jacob’s Cities and the Wealth of Nations provides excellent background on the conflict between nations and their cities. Evolution of governments:

    It is critically important to enforce the US Constitution so cities can emphasize “Making and Trading”.

    • Nations evolved from the “Hunting and Raiding” aspects of human behaviors.
    • Cities evolved from “Making and Trading” aspects of human behaviors.

    Cities individual health, not national policies, is what builds a strong economy. The Interstate Highway system in the US has made unwalkable and decaying cities. Bragdon Report. World Economic Forum. NASA.

    Cities can restore their economic vitality by restoring walkability. Commerce and Community are pedestrian.

    • Reducing imports of oil by powering their city with solar.
    • Reducing imports from automobiles by manufacturing solar-powered transport networks locally.
    • “trading networks of cities are somewhat like baseball or football teams. The players need a team, to be sure, or they can’t play at all, but each player on the team also needs to maintain his own skills. If he doesn’t and he isn’t replaced, the team’s performance suffers. If enough players deteriorate individually, the team is shot. It is this second fundamental need of cities, the need to keep themselves up to scratch individually, which nations serve so wretchedly owing to the feedback flaws that come with the territory.” Jacobs, Jane. Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life (p. 209). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

    Divided Sovereignty of the US Constitution:

    The just purpose of governments is to minimize violence from war and crimes by coercing compliance with law. The US Constitution Divided Sovereignty between

    • The Federal government to coerce war (“Hunting and Raiding”)
    • States to coerce crime and commercial disputes and “We the People” to retain liberty (“Making and Trading”).

    Prior to 1916 American cities were built based on Bottom-Up, local practices. Every US city over 10,000 had one or more privately funded streetcar network providing Mobility As a Service. There were 260,000 miles of freight railroads carrying cargo between cities.

    Using railroads and streetcar networks, the US won World War I and World War II against well-armed, well-prepared, industrialized opponents.

    Federal consolidation and dominance of “Hunting and Raiding” nature undermined cities since The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956:

    Details that have been violated since The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1916:

    • 8 states to 3 vote in the Constitutional Convention that states are sovereign over “internal improvements.”
    • Preamble for the Federal government to “provide for the common defence” and restricts it to only “promote the general welfare”. The Constitution is an enumerated power document. Powers not enumerated as sacrificed by the people and states are retained by the people and states.
      • Innovating the “general welfare” is a function of two aspects of liberty intertwining in a Darwinian crucible of creative destruction:
        • Tolerance of disruptive minorities offering choices.
        • Tolerance of the wisdom of the many sorting choices in free markets and free speech.
    • post Roads, delivering letters to fill the Federal obligation to secure free speech is the maximium limit to road building. With the Internet, there is no need for even post Roads.
    • No Preference clauses forbids the Federal government from building facilities of commerce that tax all Americans to benefit one state over another.
    • Amendments 9 restates the Premable that We the People retain liberty to innovate the general welfare: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
    • Amendments 10 restates the Premable that states retain sovereignty over all powers not enumerated as sacrificed: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
    • Madison’s explanation of that vote in Federalist #45.
      • “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”
    • Madison’s explanation of that vote in Congress in 1972.
    • Madison and other Presidents vetoing Congressional efforts to tax all Americans to build highhway pork projects.
    • Confederate Constitution moved “internal improvments” into their Commerce Clause.

    Cities need nations to protect them from war. Nations need cities to create wealth. Nations fail when their “Hunting and Raiding” nature implements Transactions of Decline that make cities less effective at wealth generation.

    • Transfer payments, draining wealth from
    • Subsidies, distorting the feedback loops cities need to correct imbalances.
    • Grants, distorting the feedback loops cities need to correct imbalances
    • Persistent military contracts, wealth consumption without producing value to the city.
    • Advanced-backward trade, loans to poor nations to buy goods from large corporations. Essential a subsidy to large corporations.

    Violating the Constitution, Federal highways force Americans to buy cars and oil. They block other modes. Highway authorities build more highways to secure their jobs despite the facts that:

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