One of the peculiarities of the US is how you guys managed to effectively bootstrap industrial districts at continental level for the weirdest meta-stuff, from newspapers to movies to corporate accounting.
When it comes to running a business in the US, it’s almost better to think about each state as if it were its own country because you’re subject to a substantial amount of state laws. You can’t incorporate at a federal level—only state level.
Federal law does it exist, but it feels like more a set of minimal standards. Most of the differences that people pay attention to are state laws because they usually go above the federal laws and regulations.
Funny enough, it's a rather common trope in fiction, which loves to stereotype people into stratums by any imaginable criteria. IIRC blog posts were pointing out the geographical specialization in Hunger Games and saying that it's pretty ridiculous because not fault-tolerant. Basically, if California were to break off and fall into the ocean, a huge chunk of US tech and entertainment sectors would disappear.
Ah, and the second objection is cost of transportation, I think. Which is probably the main real-life reason to have at least some finance and law firms in CA and not shuttle all documents to NY or Dover and back again.
You really don't think that the US exports a ton of media and entertainment? And that, for example, it happens to impose and protect copyright laws to make sure those profits continue?
I have trouble finding the export figures, but there's this:
> The global media and entertainment market was worth $1.9 trillion in 2016, with extrapolations ranging to $2.14 trillion by 2020. About one third of the total ($735 billion in 2017) is made up by the U.S. entertainment industry.
Newspapers? I would have said those were pretty distributed. Yes, a couple of the big national ones are in NYC, but that's where the population is. Finance is certainly another example. Obviously at least a certain subset of tech. Oil.
Is this really that unusual though? And, to the degree it is, how many other large countries have the same sort of distributed large population centers?
> And, to the degree it is, how many other large countries have the same sort of distributed large population centers?
Despite Australia seeming like the perfect candidate for this due to having approximately five cities of note, all spread out over an area larger than the contiguous US, there's basically no industrial specialisation on a per-city basis here.
Here's the closest examples I can think of:
The area surrounding Brisbane/Gold Coast is home to a large number of the nation's major theme parks and similar attractions (think any things named "<Noun> World"), but that makes a lot of sense for tourism purposes.
Melbourne is the sporting capital of the world, but every other city in Australia also has an extremely strong sporting culture, so even though Melbourne has most of the biggest events (Australian Open, AFL Grand Final, the F1 race that they stole from Adelaide, the Boxing Day Test, etc), everywhere else is usually still packing out 50,000+ seat stadiums for various football codes or cricket on a weekly basis anyway, so it's definitely not anywhere near the level of exclusivity that somewhere like Hollywood enjoys.
Then you've got theater in Sydney, but like theme parks that's fairly normal for the industry, and it's not a permanent exclusivity but more of a timed thing where shows start to travel after having been exclusively in Sydney for a certain period of time.
That said, my understanding is that China is a very close fit to this discussion. Unfortunately I only know enough to list one example - Shenzhen, the place where basically every cheap electronical component is made - but I've definitely seen dozens of articles about various different hyper-specialised cities in China. I suppose it helps when the government can just go "hrm, we want to be better at this industry, let's build a 1mil population city specifically focused around it".
>Despite Australia seeming like the perfect candidate for this due to having approximately five cities of note, all spread out over an area larger than the contiguous US, there's basically no industrial specialization on a per-city basis here.
Funny you should mention Melbourne. It is a good historical example of a city fueled by an industry. It grew out of the Victorian Gold Rush in 1850's and 60's.
Melbourne went from less than 75k population to 500k in a 10 year period which was massive growth.
At one point it was the richest city in the world. The legacy from all this still exists today. It is why a lot of Australian banks etc are Headquartered in Melbourne, because they have their roots in gold rush.
I couldn't reel off the details but China is probably a good example. As you say, it probably comes pretty naturally in a command and control style economy.
Yeah, my marvel at the US is how these districts emerged largely outside government intervention. Nobody in Washington “created” Delaware, Hollywood, or Las Vegas - although it’s true that tech in California was kickstarted by federal contracts, and oil is where oil is.
> how you guys managed to effectively bootstrap industrial districts at continental level for the weirdest meta-stuff, from newspapers to movies to corporate accounting
This is a common market flexing its economies of scale. India and China do similarly. If the EU could get its act together, it, too, would reap these benefits.
Federal law does it exist, but it feels like more a set of minimal standards. Most of the differences that people pay attention to are state laws because they usually go above the federal laws and regulations.