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Its hard to get a sense of Oren Cass, for example, at the bottom of this post he recommends this essay Aaron Renn linked to here commonplace.org/2025/01… But this essay is ahistorical, erroneous, and misleading because as treats the current hub-and-spoke system as an inevitable, natural phenomenon rather than the product of the forces of…
Its hard to get a sense of Oren Cass, for example, at the bottom of this post he recommends this essay Aaron Renn linked to here https://commonplace.org/2025/01/28/red-states-rich-in-votes-poor-in-power/ But this essay is ahistorical, erroneous, and misleading because as treats the current hub-and-spoke system as an inevitable, natural phenomenon rather than the product of the forces of political and economic centralization. While NYC has indeed been the largest city since the first census in 1790, population size alone does not inherently dictate economic dominance or cultural centrality in the way you imply. Historically, the USA had multiple thriving regional hubs with significant economic, political, and cultural autonomy, fostered by decentralized governance and localized financial systems. The concentration of hubs and the contrived number of them today result from decisions made over the past several decades: including but not limited to the elimination of internal capital flow inhibitors, the centralization of federal authority, and the financialization of the economy. This process hollowed out local and regional economic ecosystems, contriving power towards a small number of dominant cities. Its not something we just have to accept as the natural order; it’s a structural outcome that can be altered through policy choices that restore regional autonomy, diversify economic centers, and reverse the centralization trends that have artificially contrived this situation.
Or look at the substance of Oren Cass’ essay here, he fails to mention how we had a highly successful and adaptable decentralized education system prior to the post war consolidation that not only accomplishing its base tasks very well but also played important roles in, among other things, error correction and testing in regards to knowledge, yet he strongly implies not only 1) a continuation of our deeply centrally controlled one with near zero variability and 2) that almost all human beings in the country will continue to have not ability to contest or even comment upon policies and decisions.
In short, who really is Oren Cass?
It’s a lot easier to understand people when you don’t try to fit the entire world into a red box or blue box.