11/ A strong case could be made that big, dense, urban cores are going to remain economic (and increasingly, climate-response) engines. Reverse migration driven by big-city problems actually delay the return of economic vitality and climate sustainability.
Conversation
12/ The deeper problem with Little Sky Country optimism is that it has Jeffersonian axioms, while the economy still has Hamiltonian axioms. Ie, the "Real America" today is NOT Little Sky Country at all, but the Big Sky part.
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13/ The Big Sky part is not just a bunch of toxic conversations and partisan discourses in DC and the media. It is not ephemera on top of the sum-of-little-towns populated by self-absorbed WHCD attendees.
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14/ This is where the analogy to 1831 breaks down. Trump = Jackson, Fallows = Tocqueville, but 1831 economy != 2018 economy.
1831 was peak Jefferson, trough Hamilton. 2018 is the exact opposite.
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15/ I laid out this thesis in my 2015 Aeon article, American Cloud. aeon.co/essays/america
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16/ This means a) that the problems at Big Sky Country level are FAR more consequential than just some discourse toxicity, and b) Little Sky Country ain't gonna save us.
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17/ The core issue here is where you think American strength truly lies: in the romanticized Tocqueville small-town yeomanry with its storied highlight moments like the homesteading movement? (Jeffersonianism)
Or the talent for scale? (Hamiltonianism)
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18/ I think the evidence of history is unequivocal. The *average* mediocre gold-rushing, land-grabbing, manifest-destinying American contributed far less to America's greatness than the Hamiltonian types who dreamed Big Sky dreams.
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19/ From the mass manufacturing revolution at Springfield and Harper's Ferry, through the wartime mobilization, to the Internet and Apollo, America's great contributions have been, well, Big things involving massively large-scale collaboration.
Not narcissistic homesteading.
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20/ And perhaps no greater Big Sky project exists in America than the great coastal cities. The Interstate system of the human soul, if I may be forgiven a bit poetry.
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21/ I mean, I'm sympathetic to the plight of the little guy, seeking his (and it's mostly men) little homestead-scale American dream, and wish him all the best in carving out a little place to call his own in the emerging economic landscape...
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22/ And certainly, as it always has in history, Little Sky country will serve as the source of Big Sky dreamers (like Robert Noyce from Iowa to SV), who have always left the "heartland" to migrate to places where Big Sky thinking is appreciated, enabled, and rewarded.
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23/ But I think it is dangerous to let this instinct of kindness towards small dreams lead us towards overstating the importance or history-shaping potential of that cultural force.
America has simply never worked that way. It's just a comforting myth for a lot of Americans.
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24/ Obviously, I haven't read Fallows' book since it isn't out yet, and I'm totally behind the attempt to provide a healing, positive narrative of local agency and empowerment to a forgotten/ignored demographic.
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25/ But bottomline: America isn't Little Sky country. 100,000 locally flourishing little Thornton Wilder tales don't add up to a new kind of American mass flourishing.
The problem is with Big Sky country, and the solution needs to be found there.
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Move to a big city, for as long as you can afford it. The mind-expansion is permanent even if you don't stay there permanently.
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