Oddbean new post about login | logout @Sick Burn, Bro Cities have always been important. The US was healthier when the wealth was more spread out. Small and mid-sized cities used to play a big role in the US economy. For trade, manufacturing, even design/innovation and white collar occupations, smaller cities played a big role. The US economy was more diverse. Today, we’re very reliant on a few ‘industries’ which aren’t really productive (tech, finance, health, government), which produce the majority of our GDP and are concentrated in a few cities. If one of these failed the others would likely go too. The barrenness of huge swaths of what used to be an amazingly productive country, even back to the 19th century, isn’t something to brag about.
@Sick Burn, Bro Baltimore is the quintessential example of this. It used to have all kinds of factories. It had the port. It also had a lot of culture, a lot of rich people built really beautiful mansions around it. It used to be called Charm City, it used to get visitors all the time. It was a bustling, lively city. In the 19th century, it was the #2 city behind New York. Now it’s dead. It has the port, the medical/university system, government offices, and that’s it. It’s been stripped to its bare bones. It’s a skeleton being held together by string. Soon, it’ll likely just be ruins. If ZOG is lucky, it’ll still have functional railways and they’ll be able to ship through it, so Amazon isn’t disrupted. That’s it.