boldilocks wrote:Would you prefer racially homogenous? They are a people of a common genetic ancestry of a relatively small people in a limited geographical area. And I can assure you there is a swiss people.
I think we need a definition of the word "ethnicity" and "people".
An ethnicity is a bunch of persons with a common race and
language. A people or "nation" is an ethnicity that shares a common culture. Europeans divide along language (ethnic) lines rather than racial lines (which is more common in the US). Asia is it's own, extremely complicated thing....
boldilocks wrote:Carving california up into ethnically discrete blocks would probably improve conditions a great deal, especially if you could ensure a complete disconnect between rural and city politics. (Ie, ensured that one couldn't affect the others, with water rights belonging to the closest polity to the source of water, effectively giving rural areas control over the water supplies.)
I agree. The politics of it would be really complicated though....
Werra wrote:If there wasn't a Swiss people, the country would divide itself between Germany, France, Italy and Austria. Something seems to bind the Bergsepps, even if its only stubborn refusal to be anything else.
Culture and history is what binds them. But that is not enough to make a "people". What it does make is a nationality.
Werra wrote:The Swiss model would never work in Germany for example, because Germanies geography forces it to expand.
How so?
boldilocks wrote:Oh I don't agree with that at all. American cities have grown increasingly bold in their arrogance, and I've noted the same problem locally in my own country.
It's where we are in the tech tree. It's a cycle. Look at history: the first cities sprung up in the wake of the Chalcolithic, in the various cradles of civilization (India, Mesopotamia, etc) and developed into hydraulic states that build the first kingdoms on the backs of bronze and chariots. They ruled the world for nearly 3000 years, before collapsing in the Bronze Age Collapse, due to the popularization of iron tools and weaponry (which is far more readily available), leading to a 1000 year period where they became insignificant and rural lives were prevalent. Then the Classical ancient city-states rose up and once again power was vested in the cities, who now had the ability to build empires due to advancement in technology. These city states once again collaped as the introduction of steel and horsemanship lead to them becoming prime targets. They stayed down for the rest of most modern history, before once again being on the upswing today. It's a pattern that gets reproduced anywhere there is technological advancement (though with different flavors; the Americas never really progressed beyond the Neolithic, but rather developed that specific strain of technology to a high level).
Modern technology and economics relies, above all else, on human capital, and cities, by their very nature offer that in spades. Technology has advanced to the point where they can also be self-sufficient (large scale desalination, solar, wind and nuclear, vertical farming, in-vitro meat, and other such technologies; cities are affluent enough to build those) to a larger extent. Human are gregarious, and modern communications and transport have made them even more-so. It's where our path takes us (and it'll be even more prevalent in space; rural communities are impossible in space per se). We can protest, but that didn't help Rome or the Chinese Principalities, did it?...
The upshot is that urban centered periods tended to be quite good development periods (some rural centered ones were as well, but to a lesser extent).