[crazygringo]

Because we live in a country and state, not just a city.

And very often that requires city policy that is the opposite of what current residents want, but is what other people across the country/state want.

E.g. if current residents don't want growth, but lots of other people want to live there, there's nothing about democracy that says the current residents' preferences take precedence over people who want to be residents.

The entire point of a nation is that it's able to coordinate and redistribute internally, for the good of the country, often against the wishes of a small minority (e.g. the current residents of a city).

Can you imagine if every neighborhood and town and city had veto power over everything? Where would you put landfills? Everyone needs them, but nobody wants them nearby to them.

So the moral authority comes from country-level democracy, and state-level, being able to rightly supersede local level.

[CamperBob2]

Yeah, that's not how it works, at least in the US. You're 180 degrees out of phase with the intent of federalism.

There are other countries that work the way you suggest, but people prefer to migrate out of them rather than into them.

[crazygringo]

What are you talking about? Sure you can focus on the state level if you want instead of country-level, but there's still plenty of room for federal policy that supersedes state/local policy.

So it very much is how it works, but there are technical questions about how much and in which areas.

As for migration, I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about. Most countries don't have a federal structure to begin with, including most democracies.

[lazide]

Think long and hard before you start taking that line - unless you want Trump or Biden or whoever next is in line (or Congress) being able to define your local zoning laws.

Nothing good is going to come from that the vast majority of the time.

Local zoning should be local so costs/side effects/benefits are associated with decisions as closely as possible.

Otherwise, it would be trivial to penalize to the point of almost destroying entire states or regions because they were on the wrong side of some ideological line on another topic. Which would then be paid back 4 or 8 years later, of course.

[crazygringo]

I'm not taking any line, I'm describing the basic principles of representative democracy.

The US is a little bit of an outlier in having a federal system so there are some limits to what Congress can do, but there aren't to what a state can do, and some of our states (like CA and NY) are the size of countries themselves.

I'm not saying the majority of zoning decisions should be taken at the state/country level -- that would be ludicrous simply from an organizational standpoint.

I'm simply describing that states are perfectly free to override local decisions whenever necessary, with full democratic legitimacy. How do you think the interstate highway system got built?

[lazide]

The US is a constitutional republic - currently, the federal gov’t could not do it.

However, almost every state already sets aside the level of control municipalities have explicitly.

Here is Texas’s

[https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/SOTWDocs/LG/htm/LG.211.ht...]

The US is one of a kind, as is every country I’ve run across.

Typically, zoning rules are the way they are (everywhere, and they are almost everywhere) because the benefits of them outweigh the perceived costs for the folks in power over that locality.

Changing them is not taken lightly because a lot of money is at stake and disruption is high.

Lots of people complain of course. But money talks, and bullshit walks.

I’m curious when things will switch from talk to actual change. Next 5ish-10ish years maybe as the boomers start aging out?

How do you think the interstate highway system got built?

[crazygringo]

> How do you think the interstate highway system got built?

The federal government appropriated a ton of land whether local people liked it or not.

Obviously the government didn't want to provoke massive unrest so it did some negotiating, but at the end of the day it did take whatever land it wanted, regardless of local opinion.

Also, regarding states ceding control of zoning to localities -- of course. That's just practical. But what the state gives, the state can take too. I'm talking about basic democratic principles, not what happens to be current law.

[lazide]

Nope - and it isn’t clear the federal gov’t even could. There would be hell to pay if they tried. The constitution allows some wiggle room, but ‘eminent domaining’ large swaths of state land is definitely not one of them! It might even cause a civil war, frankly.

you might find this interesting [https://highways.dot.gov/public-roads/summer-1996/federal-ai...]

There was widespread national (bipartisan) support for it, a clear national military/security need, and it took the political capital of a very popular and trusted president to make it happen - and continuing support by his predecessors. Over 20+ years.

The federal gov’t basically proposed the overall plan, helped co-ordinate between states, and funded about half of it with the states using a cost share program (eventually increasing to 90% in some cases). The states did the actual building (and continue to do the maintenance too!) and things like right of ways, specific plans, eminent domain were handled by them.

No federal forced appropriation I’m aware of. Just co-operation and money.

[crazygringo]

I appreciate the details, and I'm not an expert on the history of the interstate.

But for the purposes of my argument, it's irrelevant whether the states did the eminent domain or the federal government. My point is this whole thread is that a higher power did, and localities couldn't do whatever they wanted. Your town couldn't veto the interstate passing through it.

And when the federal government is doing the planning and incentivizing with federal funds, the question of whether the eminent domain was "really" done by the federal government or the states is somewhat academic.

Again, my original point still stands completely: as a general democratic principle, when a higher level of government makes policy that conflicts with lower levels, the higher level wins. The US federal system happens to have more limits around this than most other democracies, but it's still a general principle.

[adolph]

> So the moral authority comes from country-level democracy, and state-level, being able to rightly supersede local level.

Why stop there? Why not: So the moral authority comes from universe-level democracy, and planet-level, being able to rightly supersede national, provencial and local level.

[crazygringo]

There isn't any reason to stop there, except that we simply haven't gone beyond it yet, except for the EU to some degree.

Absolutely nothing stops a planet-level democracy, except that you've got to get all of the existing countries to democratically choose to join it first. Which is a gigantic historical undertaking that might happen someday, or might never happen at all.

But if you're asking why stop there now, in 2023, it's because a planetary democratic body simply doesn't exist. While countries do.

[adolph]

Ok, what is it about larger aggregations make them have more moral authority than smaller aggregations?

[crazygringo]

Well, the simple fact that if they don't, they literally have no reason to exist. It's not so much a moral question, so much as that this was the decided policy when the smaller units chose to join together into a larger one. It's moral because that's the decision the people made when they joined together.

There are various names for the concept over higher-over-lower power in a democracy -- supremacy, preemption, paramountcy.

If smaller units want to accomplish things together that can't override their individual sovereignty, then they sign treaties, form alliances, and groups -- like NATO or NAFTA and so forth. The thing that distinguishes a grouping that makes an actual state is precisely the fact that it can strike down the laws of lower organizational units when they conflict.

Now, nobody's claiming this power is unlimited -- that would be fascism. There are still rights that exist precisely to limit state-level power. But the general principle of supremacy/preemption/paramountcy still exists.

[adolph]

>>> So the moral authority comes from country-level democracy, and state-level, being able to rightly supersede local level.

>> Ok, what is it about larger aggregations make them have more moral authority than smaller aggregations?

> Well, the simple fact that if they don't, they literally have no reason to exist.

This is circular reasoning. You made an assertion. Either defend it or declaim it. What is the specific moral authority that you claim larger aggregations have over smaller ones?

[cloverich]

1. Many people would have no problem with not stopping there. 2. If we do want lines, we can say people decide on local matters. Which is the primary argument for why this kind of NIMBYism should not be allowed -- it is negatively impacting the surrounding area, and this deserves to be controlled by the larger group (city, state, etc). Beyond the state, and certainly the country level, it is fairly easy to argue for a line at that point under this logic, as the impact is far less direct.

[BobaFloutist]

I mean, yeah, that's the only way to tackle global issues like climate change.