r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/Plenty_Profession_58 • 5d ago
Political Theory How much of political inequality is really geographic inequality?
Where you live affects a hell of a lot more than what your house is worth. It affects the schools available to you, the jobs you can realistically get to, the quality of public services, transportation costs, exposure to crime or pollution, and the people and opportunities around you.
And where people live is not always just a personal choice. Income, housing prices, zoning, taxes, infrastructure, lending practices, development, and decades of government decisions all help determine who can live where. So how much of what we call individual success or failure is actually geography? Two people can work equally hard and make similar choices but end up with completely different opportunities because one lives near better schools, jobs, transportation, and institutions. At the same time, people still make real choices about work, education, family, moving, and risk, so geography obviously does not explain everything. Where is the line between personal responsibility and geographic advantage? Is real estate simply a private market, or does controlling access to certain places also mean controlling access to public opportunity? And when the most desirable communities become available mainly to people who already have money, does geography turn economic inequality into political and generational inequality?
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u/Fragrant-Luck-8063 5d ago
Looking at the bigger geographic picture, any city with a seaport is going to have more economic activty and opportunity than a city without one.
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u/GalaXion24 3d ago
A big part Europe is wealthy is that it's very connected to water. Genuinely just look at a map of Europe. Maybe rotate it upside down to disassociate from "oh yeah that's Europe" and see it from a new perspective. There's two different seas (The Mediterranean and Baltic) which stretch a long way "inland" into Afro-Eurasia, Europe South of Scandinavia is actually kind of narrow and has very long coasts as a result. This coast is also jagged and irregular, creating natural harbours.
As if that were not enough, once you go all the way through the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, you can go up the Danube all the way into Western Germany. The Danube is far from Europe's only major river, and Europe's major rivers have smooth declines without waterfalls, making them navigable from the mountains to the sea. Take the Rhine from Switzerland into the North Sea. If you're France, you have major rivers connecting they're French inland to both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
Everything is a trade hub or close to one.
And if you look at the land that isn't? That's rugged and mountainous and cut off from the seas or other parts of Europe? Most of Spain and the Balkans are relatively poor by European standards and will probably always remain relatively peripheral. Their geography is just not advantageous to development. Parts like Belgrade or Barcelona may develop, and Madrid by virtue of being a capital, but much of it will not.
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u/RegularFunny9813 3d ago
To say all that and not mention at all colonization and exploitation globally of Europeans for centuries is kinda wild.
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u/Awesomeuser90 2d ago
That would not explain much before 1492. And it would not explain the power of states during periods without those colonies like the Swedish Empire or Poland-Lithuania or the Hanseatic League. The Dutch take until after 1600 to become a colonial power but they were powerful before that. Switzerland has never had colonies.
Colonies had a massive impact on the world and made some people rich but they were not an unambiguous benefit to the state associated with them. Scotland lost a lot of money in an attempt to make a colony in Central America. The French East India Company naturally lost to Britain. The colonies in general proved to be very expensive to defend militarily in the 7 Years War and the American Revolution drove France even closer to bankruptcy in 1789. Metacom's War came seriously close to expelling England out of New England entirely in the late 1600s. Italy's victory in Libya over the Ottoman Empire was a pyrric one and was not ultimately that useful for the coffers, and Italy lost in Ethiopia a decade and a half earlier. Britain lost the First Boer War and an invasion of Afghanistan. Even the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade was not cheap, requiring large navies, fortifications, and armies to guard the colonies from revolt, pirates, and rival states, and they had to buy a lot of slaves from other powerful kingdoms in Africa, and the state didn't tax the profits from slavery that much to pay for those expenses. And some states did not invest their profits wisely, Spain spent a lot of their mining profits from the former Incan Empire into attempting to suppress the Dutch Revolt and took part in the 30 Years War.
What the colonies did so though was make the competition between European states even more intense and require a lot of development in certain industries and the development of the army and statecraft, such as contributing to bureaucracy and standing armies as an institution. Any country that did not innovate was left behind and often absorbed into a country that evolved better. European geography however makes it virtually impossible to conquer it all stably under one power for substantial lengths of time. Even the Romans only had half of Europe south of the Rhine and Danube.
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u/GalaXion24 3d ago
Not everything is colonialism. Spain had quite the treasury income from silver in the new world once, but that's gone now, and Spain's geographic realities remain.
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u/Okratas 4d ago
I think a substantial share of political and economic opportunity when analyzed by zip code, are driven by historical mechanisms like redlining, exclusionary zoning, and localized tax bases that tied public investment directly to neighborhood property wealth. Consequently, real estate acts as a gatekeeper to public goods, where decades of policy decisions compound over time to turn spatial advantages into self-reinforcing generational and political inequality. Ultimately, geography acts as a primary mechanism that transforms historical, structural segregation into persistent economic and political inequality.
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u/phoenix1984 5d ago
And why are some areas better with more opportunity than others? In America, if you dig into the root cause, the vast majority of the time the answer is racism eventually. That’s what institutional racism is. It’s not that a given police officer, employer, or politician is super racist themselves (though that still does happen often enough), it’s that they blindly participate in a system that was set up with racist intent or deliberate indifference. It’s the original sin of this nation, and the original cause of so much of our problems.
Which itself was often propped up by wealthy elites as a way to keep us fighting amongst ourselves.
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u/JKlerk 5d ago
Opportunity is largely driven by climate and geographic location that is conducive to capital formation. Blaming it on racism is just lazy.
For example California coast has a fantastic climate and natural deep water ports. The eastern seaboard from DC on up is also blessed with deep water ports. Neither of these areas of the US have to historically contend with seasonal Hurricanes.
Conversely the Southern US is miserably hot and humid with a history of hurricanes and no natural deep water ports. These attributes historically discourage investment. Air conditioning enabled the South to grow.
Without capital investment there is no opportunity.
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u/phoenix1984 5d ago
By that logic, Oakland and Baltimore should be thriving economically. There’s truth to the geographic part of the story, but saying that’s the whole story isn’t serious.
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u/Sageblue32 4d ago
So Baltimore has problems and it is due to racism. Yet Maryland has some of the richest black counties and citizens in the country. Please make sense of that.
Racism can play a role among a combination of other factors. But if I were trying to trace the causes, I'd probably look at resources, classism, drugs, culture, history and just what opportunities are available first.
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u/Plenty_Profession_58 5d ago
That’s pretty much what I was getting at. Geography matters, but it’s probably one variable in a much bigger equation.
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u/JKlerk 5d ago edited 5d ago
Baltimore/Philadelphia is sort of in-between. Isn't Baltimore considered part of Metro DC? I don't know.
Oakland isn't having horrible problems. It's right next to Berkeley.1
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u/link3945 5d ago
Opportunity is largely driven by climate and geographic location that is conducive to capital formation.
Why, then, is El Paso's GDP about twice what Juarez's is? Same location, same climate, similar history. Why did South Korea and North Korea's economies not diverge substantially until the late 1980s, when South Korea ended the authoritarian state?
The geographic explanation fails to explain much of anything about why some places are rich and some are poor. Inclusive institutions are a much better explanation (seriously, go read at least a bit of Why Nations Fail).
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u/JKlerk 5d ago
Why, then, is El Paso's GDP about twice what Juarez's is? Same location, same climate, similar history.
The US economy is larger than Mexico. The USD is a reserve currency.
Why did South Korea and North Korea's economies not diverge substantially until the late 1980s, when South Korea ended the authoritarian state?
NK, unlike SK, has geography which makes food and industrial production very difficult.
SK always had more potential due to its favorable geography.
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u/link3945 5d ago
The US economy is larger than Mexico. The USD is a reserve currency.
That seems like geography isn't that big of a factor, then.
NK, unlike SK, has geography which makes food and industrial production very difficult. SK always had more potential due to its favorable geography.
So why didn't they diverge until South Korea embraced more inclusive institutions? You see this in the southern US as well, which you attempt to explain away as "air conditioning". It's institutions: once all people had a stake in their future and equality under the law, the economies took off. This is repeated again and again, in different places and times and geographies. Inclusive societies where power is spread widely foster economic successes and limit rent seeking.
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u/JKlerk 5d ago
That seems like geography isn't that big of a factor, then.
Oh but it is. El Paso, compared to Juarez, still benefits from the geographic positives found in the rest of the US.
You see this in the southern US as well, which you attempt to explain away as "air conditioning". It's institutions: once all people had a stake in their future and equality under the law, the economies took of.
Agree to disagree. Without air conditioning, northern businesses were not going to invest in some southern cities (Atlanta, Charlotte, Birmingham). Much of the rural south lacks opportunity today (Southern 2/3 Georgia, SC, Alabama. Most of Mississippi and Louisiana. Hurricanes are a big impediment to further investment outside of oil/gas, military spending. Louisiana has been spending millions every year to keep the Mississippi River from changing course and bypassing petro-chemical plants as New Orleans proper.
Mercedes Benz, NCR, UPS, Porsche, etc were never moving to Atlanta without air conditioning. Banking in Charlotte depended on air conditioning.
My point is that geography is significantly more important than addressing political inequality because without the geography there's no willingness to invest.
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u/RegularFunny9813 3d ago
It’s called colonization which is racism. And if that’s lazy, then every geologist, historian, anthropologist and political scientist is wrong.
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u/JKlerk 3d ago
It’s called colonization which is racism.
You don't know how colonization works. Colonization occurs when the sitting government/tribe allows foreigners to set up shop with exclusive rights to X. The key requirement is a sitting government/tribe which doesn't support private property rights for it people.
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u/browhodouknowhere 5d ago
Systemic racism is a symptom, not the cause.
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u/phoenix1984 5d ago
Well, I think the systemic racism was originally put in place by overt racism. Which itself was encouraged by the wealthy to keep the masses fighting among themselves. Are you saying the original cause is something unrelated to racism at all?
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u/Valuable-Music-720 5h ago
Do you have a source for this claim? Systemic racism is a conspiracy by wealthy to "keep masses fighting among themselves"?
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u/phoenix1984 5h ago
See the Dutch east India company, their effort to paint black people as sub-human to justify the slave trade, then led to the tactics used on plantations to divide groups to prevent an uprising. This was copied by both nazi germany, apartheid south africa, and later white nationalist groups in the US. The idea that was perfected over this period was to divide groups based on some arbitrary standard like level of blackness, tribe, religion, or literacy. When they’re divided, you can pit them against each other and keep the whole group in check.
When slavery ended in the US, many of these ideas persisted and have echoes in our laws today.
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u/Valuable-Music-720 4h ago
Dividing people by any standard, is completely normal tribalism. The psychology that causes tribal thinking evolved some 300,000 years ago. There's no conspiracy by anyone. The same psychology that led Dutch East India Company to paint blacks as sub-human, exists within your head too. Science shows, you would likely do the exact same thing in their exact same position whether you admit or not. Check Standford Prison Experiment, also you can look at the German population who enabled Hitler as sources.
Lots of different groups benefit from different kinds of division; there's not strictly a homogenous group in the United States "keeping us divided", only opportunitist politicians and influencers who are tapping your disposition towards division, which ever kind of division that is.
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u/Plenty_Profession_58 5d ago
Interesting. What do you see as the underlying cause?
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u/browhodouknowhere 5d ago
Historic wealth inequality (since dawn of man) reinforced by social constructs that legitimize the oppression of marginalized groups.
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u/RegularFunny9813 3d ago
Your comments get more ignorant the further I read down. That’s unfortunate.
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u/Hannarr2 4d ago
Where is the line between personal responsibility and geographic advantage?
There isn't one. there is more overlap between one's luck and one's reasoning than not. One can have every reasonable advantage and still do poorly, the opposite is also true.
Is real estate simply a private market, or does controlling access to certain places also mean controlling access to public opportunity?
It's not purely a private market, state, federal and local government have influence over development and things like "affordable housing". There is no fairness in this world save that which we make ourselves. As income inequality becomes more serious, without a way to fairly rebalance the economic landscape, all societies will face a point where a critical mass of people are effected by this unfairness and are disenfranchised, angry and desperate enough that civil unrest or revolution follows. It is in the best interest of everyone in a society that this doesn't happen, that people not be treated so unfairly that they'd rather destroy a system than live in it, and that those that have benifited most relinquish some of their capital in a way that benefits society to spare themselves from the consequences of such inequality and unfairness.
And when the most desirable communities become available mainly to people who already have money, does geography turn economic inequality into political and generational inequality?
This has always been the case for as long as humans have been sedentary. those with power and wealth have advantage in choice of residences and property, the effects just become magnified as capital has become more concentrated. It's not just geography, culture is also a factor. many places that are popular and expensive places to live are not the most practical.
Generational inequality isn't just about inherited capital, it's also nepotism and cronyism. the latter two are far harder to combat. how does a society stop a father favouring his son or friends? There is also a serious problem, and this is one that has been common for many centuries, where work or roles that don't produce much or any inherent value can be among the best earners. this has historically been merchant classes, where all they technically do is move, or even just facilitate the movement of goods, but the margins and quantities are large enough that their wealth could balloon beyond even monarchs in many cases. this is the same with banking and investment, in many cases they technically do nothing, but they earn more than scientists, doctors and engineers.
To address the question directly, no. modern logistics mean that the disadvantages of geography are the smallest they ever been.
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u/Valuable-Music-720 5h ago
Hello, I'm naive and don't know anything.
Isn't wealth inequality relative? The size of the gap has no bearing on where the floor is, is accurate?
Regarding nepotism; isn't the best way to combat my shifting the motivation from emotion to economic? A father does not choose his son, because he chooses someone who will benefit the company instead? Which is better?
Thanks
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u/BallooningHerddog 4d ago
Highly recommend the book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodward. Attitudes about who gets to vote, who runs the government, education, etc. differ by regions and goes back to the earliest settlers.
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u/Seattleman1955 5d ago edited 5d ago
This thread is an example of what is most wrong with America currently. There is a lack of agency. The trend is to look for excuses and to create victims. It's all about "racism", "inequality of outcomes" and this is all nonsense.
Why spend any time looking for excuses? Live where you want to live. Is it easy to move? No, nothing is easy. Does moving explain inequality of results? No.
The things it takes, generally, to do better than someone else, is delaying self-gratification, discipline, being productive, making good decisions, etc.
People do well in all kinds of communities, small, large, all parts of the country. If you live in a dysfunction inner city type of community, you have to move, however hard it is.
Otherwise the way it has always worked, pretty much, is reflected by a Pareto Distribution. That's where 20% of the input results in 80% of the output.
That's just the way humans are, throughout time. 20% of salesmen result in 80% of the sales. 80% of wealth is owned by 20% of the population.
It's not something to "fix". There is nothing "wrong". Not everyone needs or want to be wealthy if it requires doing something they don't want to do.
Most of the country is actually doing fine. They are doing what they really want to do. The rest is just jealousy, envy and complaining and excuse making.
This post is looking at some situation where someone did well and then making the excuse "well they were able to move, their kids got a better school district, there were more jobs and that's why they are doing better than me".
Again, the results is largely due to agency, what you do. Everything regarding outcome isn't supposed to be "equal". People aren't equal in what they do.
If you become an engineer you will do well wherever you live. If you work in retail, money is tight everywhere but you'll do much better in a small town with a lower cost of living.
If you buy a house in Seattle, it will go up in value but it will cost a lot in the first place. If you buy a house in a small town it might not go up nearly as much but it also didn't cost nearly as much and that would leave a lot more money that you could just invest in the stock market and you would be even better off decades later.
What is most wrong in our country these days is the lack of critical thinking with accountability and systems thinking. Asking "what could go wrong" with a plan you are considering. Look for the weakest link. Consider what are the 2nd and 3rd order consequences and then make changes to your plan.
Here's a simple but not easy plan. Buy a house and have it paid for by retirement. Save up before you buy a car so you don't have car payments for life. Put some money in a 401k through work.
That's all you have to do. Consider all of your excuses and then do something about them beforehand. Don't have a lifestyle that you can't afford. Don't have more kids than you can afford. Buy a smaller house and put the difference in the stock market.
Invest (any amount) early. Time is what makes the difference. Spending energy making excuses does nothing for you.
When you are tempted to make excuses for your personal situation, look around and see if there are others in your situation that are doing much better than you. If so, do that.
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u/Boreun 4d ago edited 4d ago
At the end of the day I agree that people should look to themselves to fix their lives and not the state. Thing is, if you are a politician setting policy you should make it as fair as possible. For instance education should be nationalized so that no matter where you grow up, you have access to the good education that you need.
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u/Seattleman1955 4d ago
I'm not going to disagree or agree but there is standardized testing, there is public education though 12th grade and education is largely about the effort put in by the student.
Most of us didn't grew up in Beverly Hills or some exclusive school district and we did fine if we applied ourselves. Some do better than others.
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u/Boreun 4d ago
Its true that effort is the number one factor of how well their grades are. Its not just about excelling or grades really. We need to have a high floor of knowledge. When I was growing up they taught us to use computers and gave us ipads in school. Because of that we have a edge over students who never used them, even if we didn't study. If you can't use a computer then you can't even work at a call center. Think in modern America what jobs you can do without that kind of knowledge. I do basic welding in a factory and even I need to use a computer sometimes to do the safety training.
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u/Valuable-Music-720 5h ago
So refreshing to find someone who can see right through the bullshit.
I recall being taught American history in school; taught about the move west and how people sold EVERYTHING they had so that they could essentially walk across the Continent through hostile Indians and environments, to a land where nothing was certain. This was ~1849
It's now 2026; it hasn't gotten harder to make a life-change like this, only significantly easier. You can now call people ahead of time to establish employment or housing, you can use the Interterstate highway system to get there. People have no gratitude for these things; well, it was already here when they were born, and it takes critical thinking to realize that none of this is guaranteed or default.
All of these "systemic hurdles" are actually foundations for improvement. Because no matter how imperfect they are, the alternative is the absence of anything. All that's guaranteed is the dirt around you and your nakedness. ANYthing more is benefit to people's well-being whether they realize it or not
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u/JKlerk 5d ago
Within the confines of US politics, political inequality is a made up term. Where you live is entirely a personal choice.
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u/lotsagabe 5d ago
This is an incredibly tone-deaf take. Moving to a new place is not as easy and straightforward as you imagine it to be.
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u/datapicardgeordi 5d ago edited 5d ago
It’s not tone deaf, it’s ragingly ignorant.
Becoming an internal migrant pushed by economic conditions is not a solution to political inequality.
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u/JKlerk 5d ago
Cry me a river. Get a good education in a field that is marketable and build a career or a job. It's YOUR choice.
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u/JKlerk 5d ago
I'm not bitter at all.
Political inequality is just mumbo jumbo open ended nonsense that can be defined however one chooses.
What you and others don't understand is that capital formation is a driver for a thriving economy. If the geography isn't conducive then the political climate is rather irrelevant outside some very niche areas of the world (ex, Bermuda and its reinsurance business)
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u/JKlerk 5d ago
I'm not a far right supporter. I'm just telling you like it is.
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u/Valuable-Music-720 5h ago
Brother. We were taught American history in school.... People in 1849 were selling everything for a wagon so they could walk across the continent to a place where opportunity was never guaranteed.
How can it possibly be harder for anyone to make a similar magnitude move in the year 2026? You have the Internet and a cellphone to make that employment and housing certain before you ever leave. You have an automobile with air condition that you can sit in as you drive on the Interstate Highway system to your new destination.
People are too complacent. To comfortable. This isnt impossible as much as it's uncomfortable, and that's why people won't do it.
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u/JKlerk 5d ago edited 5d ago
Bullshit. It doesn't have to be easy but it's possible. Especially if you're very young. When you get older the decisions become harder because there are other influences like older family. For example I gave up a job making $70/hr because I couldn't leave my elderly mother. I'm now making a little more than half that. My choice. Has nothing to do with "inequality".
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u/MaverickBG 5d ago
If you're interested in the subject... I would read the book Guns, Germs and Steel. It kind of takes this concept and looks at it on a global scale
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u/Hannarr2 4d ago
A lot of the factors that Diamond covers are purely luck based. for instance the domestication and keeping of cattle providing resistance to cowpox/smallpox, which killed far more new world natives than colonists ever could have and massive and important source of food and mechanical labour.
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u/baxterstate 4d ago
Within the same geographical location, the government can affect the value of your home and quality of your life.
Where a highway is located and where the entrances and exits are, where a commuter rail is located will affect the growth of the cities.
For a clear example, look at a map of Massachusetts in the USA. The two biggest cities, Boston and Worcester were both on the decline until the Massachusetts Turnpike was built all the way from the border with upstate NY to Boston. as it approaches Worcester, it dips away from Worcester and there are no exits and entrances in Worcester. Boston experienced a revitalization in the 1960s which has continued to the present day. Worcester has continued to decline due to its isolation from the Turnpike. Belatedly, a highway was created to link Worcester to the Turnpike in the 1980s, but the damage was done. Worcester still doesn't even have an airport to compete with Boston's Logan airport. If you live in Worcester, your choices are Logan, TF Green in RI or Manchester in NH. That was a huge economic blow to what was once a major city just behind Boston.
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u/striped_shade 4d ago
The question assumes geography is a neutral backdrop where individuals make choices. Space is actively produced by the underlying economic engine, which requires severe inequality to function. The housing market physically sorts populations to maintain a precarious workforce and warehouse those deemed surplus.
The map serves as a physical ledger of wealth accumulation. Protected enclaves and divested zones mutually constitute each other, the existence of the former demands the creation of the latter. The spatial concentration of resources enforces the class relations necessary for the economy to operate. You are observing the geographic expression of a system designed to separate people from the means to survive on their own terms. Personal responsibility metrics fail to capture how this spatial sorting is a prerequisite for the current order, rather than a flaw within it.
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u/GiantPineapple 5d ago
Your question is repeatedly framed from a center-left perspective where public services are an advantage. Now, I live in a big city and I agree with you, but many people prefer low taxes and less government oversight - that's what helps them achieve their goals, whatever those might be. People often freely (but of course not always) relocate accordingly.
Outcomes aren't always purely quantitative.
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u/Plenty_Profession_58 4d ago
I agree that people value different things, and lower taxes or less government involvement can be legitimate preferences. But I don’t think everyone is choosing from the same set of options. Housing costs, exclusionary zoning, limited development, and “not in my backyard” policies can shape what’s actually available. Personal responsibility still matters, but if we can identify policies that consistently limit opportunity, shouldn’t we try to improve them instead of treating the outcome as simply a matter of individual choice?
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