[hueving]

>Also, it's hard to see how "a few entitled people" control what people are doing with their property, unless that's become new slang for "the majority of voters".

In this case, that's exactly what it's slang for. The only people who can vote for these things are the ones already entitled enough to live in the city. Everyone else that was forced to the east bay and down south has no voice.

[gozur88]

I'm okay with that. Why should people in the East or South Bay have a say in how San Francisco governs itself?

[otterley]

Because how SF governs itself has external impacts upon people living outside SF: traffic, pollution, cost of living, etc.

[gozur88]

Other people will always affect you. That doesn't give you the right to govern them.

[otterley]

On the contrary, that's exactly why we have government in the first place -- because the alternative is war.

For a primer on the philosophical reasons behind government, I recommend _Leviathan_ (1651) by Thomas Hobbes.

[gozur88]

Well, okay. But the result of one group of people being governed by another is also war.

We have different levels of government for a reason.

EDIT: To other points occur to me: 1) I've never found Hobbes very compelling. And 2) If "these other people affect me" is your (not you you, but the general you) idea of a casus belli, you will perpetually be at war no matter how large or small your government.