Regional Government and Taxes: Fuck That!

Cities are maladaptive and seem to suffer from some underlying physical or systemic defect that prevents "economies of scale" from being realized. The claim about cities is they're more "efficient" at providing individuals what they need to live, but that doesn't ever seem to work in practice. The net result is the appetite of the city for resources and money can't be satisfied.

Some cities managed to impose regional taxes and government on adjacent counties to help pay for infrastructure or to subsidize projects that would otherwise be uneconomical. Often these projects are sold as "investments" in the future of the city or the region... If they are good investments, why do they need taxpayer funding? This is a question that can be asked about almost any publicly funded or subsidized endeavor or business:

• If EVs are so great why do they need taxpayer credits?
• If having a for profit sports team in a city is so great why does a stadium need taxpayer funding?
• etc... 

Anyway, it's pretty clear to me that regions like Northeast Ohio should steer clear of taxpayer funding of projects in Cleveland. If the projects are uneconomical without taxpayer funding, they're just uneconomical. Also, any push to build new big infrastructure projects in a rust belt city seems completely insane and out of touch... Cities like Cleveland or Detroit are basically strangled by old failed infrastructure that couldn't be supported by the population that remained after de-industrialization. The lesson from that was to be smaller and more adaptable.

Also, a more important point is the US transitioned from one economic model: brick and mortar and physical infrastructure, to an Internet based model in recent years, so why build more city infrastructure? My local school district voted down a tax levy to build a new public school a few years ago, just before covid hit. The public was a lot wiser than the school board leadership.

A distributed, decentralized model for almost anything will work better than centralized, top down controlled system.