On the one hand, I am a deracinated individual. I live in a building with about a thousand other people, I don’t know any of them, and I don’t want to know any of them. I am only a little more connected to the city and state that I live in, because I don’t like the city and the state (whereas I simply don’t care about my neighbors in the building). Therefore, I am inclined to count people equally because
communities of place, belief and walk of life
simply don’t exist for me (at least not in the physical world).
On the other hand, I hate being told what to do, and I especially hate it when someone far away feels that his principles entitle him to interfere in my business. The state-level fight for high-density zoning in California is a good example of this. Towns vote against permitting high-density zoning, but people far away who don’t know or care about the residents of those towns want to force the towns to permit that high-density zoning in order to accomplish the things that the people far away want in the abstract but the people living in those towns would actually have to suffer the consequences of. This perspective does lead me to feel that small areas where people with a minority opinion actually form the majority do need to be protected.
I think the ideal solution would be to elect a president via a nationwide popular vote but also to make a deep commitment to libertarian principles of leaving people alone to live their lives as they see fit. (I expect that the latter is even less likely than the former.)
I am of two minds about this.
On the one hand, I am a deracinated individual. I live in a building with about a thousand other people, I don’t know any of them, and I don’t want to know any of them. I am only a little more connected to the city and state that I live in, because I don’t like the city and the state (whereas I simply don’t care about my neighbors in the building). Therefore, I am inclined to count people equally because
simply don’t exist for me (at least not in the physical world).
On the other hand, I hate being told what to do, and I especially hate it when someone far away feels that his principles entitle him to interfere in my business. The state-level fight for high-density zoning in California is a good example of this. Towns vote against permitting high-density zoning, but people far away who don’t know or care about the residents of those towns want to force the towns to permit that high-density zoning in order to accomplish the things that the people far away want in the abstract but the people living in those towns would actually have to suffer the consequences of. This perspective does lead me to feel that small areas where people with a minority opinion actually form the majority do need to be protected.
I think the ideal solution would be to elect a president via a nationwide popular vote but also to make a deep commitment to libertarian principles of leaving people alone to live their lives as they see fit. (I expect that the latter is even less likely than the former.)