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Nornagest comments on Non-standard politics - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: NancyLebovitz 24 October 2014 03:27PM

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Comment author: taelor 24 October 2014 10:50:45PM 0 points [-]

In general I agree with this. However, I am also in favor of government subsidy on moving between jurisdictions (though, not a full subsidy, as that would cause moral hazard problems). Uprooting your life and relocating to a new location is costly, in time, money, effort, and social ties. These costs will be disproportionately borne by people with values far from the mean of their cultural/geographic locale. Without a subsidy to help Texans with California values and Californians with Texan values relocate, Federalism will essentially develve into a large welfare redistribution to individuals with values close to their jurisdiction's mean from individuals further from that mean.

Comment author: Nornagest 24 October 2014 11:10:07PM *  2 points [-]

If we were to decide that local homogeneity of values is something we wanted to encourage -- which I'm not sure of -- a subsidy for moving costs would probably help, but I don't think it's sufficient to overcome the inertia that keeps e.g. Texans with Californian values in Texas. People have lots of ties to a place besides the purely financial: moving implies leaving friends and often family, finding a new job and new housing, probably learning a certain amount of new cultural content, etc.

Comment author: taelor 25 October 2014 04:01:45AM 3 points [-]

I wouldn't expect such a subsidy to overcome inertia in all cases. I expect it would help on the margins, though.