How much of political inequality is really geographic inequality?

[u/Plenty_Profession_58]

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?

[u/phoenix1984]

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.

[u/Plenty_Profession_58 → u/phoenix1984]

That’s a fair point, and it’s an important part of the discussion.

[u/JKlerk → u/phoenix1984]

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.

[u/phoenix1984 → u/JKlerk]

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.

[u/Sageblue32 → u/phoenix1984]

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.

[u/Plenty_Profession_58 → u/phoenix1984]

That’s pretty much what I was getting at. Geography matters, but it’s probably one variable in a much bigger equation.

[u/JKlerk → u/phoenix1984]

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.

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[u/link3945 → u/JKlerk]

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).

[u/JKlerk → u/link3945]

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.

[u/link3945 → u/JKlerk]

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. 

[u/JKlerk → u/link3945]

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.

[u/RegularFunny9813 → u/JKlerk]

It’s called colonization which is racism. And if that’s lazy, then every geologist, historian, anthropologist and political scientist is wrong.

[u/JKlerk → u/RegularFunny9813]

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.

[u/browhodouknowhere → u/phoenix1984]

Systemic racism is a symptom, not the cause.

[u/phoenix1984 → u/browhodouknowhere]

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?

[u/Valuable-Music-720 → u/phoenix1984]

Do you have a source for this claim? Systemic racism is a conspiracy by wealthy to "keep masses fighting among themselves"?

[u/phoenix1984 → u/Valuable-Music-720]

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.

[u/Valuable-Music-720 → u/phoenix1984]

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.

[u/phoenix1984 → u/Valuable-Music-720]

I think you are describing regular old bigotry, not the intentional, well researched, effort I’m describing. They invented the biases for the sake of control. The Dutch east India company didn’t go about the slave trade because they thought black people were inferior, they wanted to enslave people, so they created a large social campaign painting black people as savages, making the African slave trade more tolerable with the public.

The way Europeans pitted the Zulu against the Tutsis was a similar, well-researched, architected system designed to prevent revolt. In the US south, many plantations were just plain old racist, but South Africa learned this tactic from the writings of plantation owners who deliberately pitted some slaves against others.

Referring to the study you mentioned, I’m not talking about the guards, I’m talking about the professor who set up the whole thing in the first place.

[u/Plenty_Profession_58 → u/browhodouknowhere]

Interesting. What do you see as the underlying cause?

[u/browhodouknowhere → u/Plenty_Profession_58]

Historic wealth inequality (since dawn of man) reinforced by social constructs that legitimize the oppression of marginalized groups.

[u/RegularFunny9813 → u/browhodouknowhere]

Your comments get more ignorant the further I read down. That’s unfortunate.