Firstly, there is no way that American or European cities are going to secede. Secondly, if they did it would be catastrophic to the economic opportunities and well being of the vast majority of people not living in them. What would become of the "rump"?
I think the notion that certain large cities are uniquely connected to the world and a hard requirement for business is outdated and flawed. The only unique thing about San Francisco versus a similarly sized city with sufficient infrastructure and educated workers(like Dallas or Philly) is that power brokers and the uber rich have arbitrarily made that a home base.
The reality is a company can invent things, hire people, ship things, connect to the web, defend themselves with the law, without needing an Alpha world city for anything except the capital investment. And there is nothing magical about that wealth in those large cities, at the end of the day it can only exist because of the opportunities and security provided by the military and legal power of the larger state.
To cheer on the secession of the global elite is to cheer on massive inequality and a loss of opportunity and prosperity for the majority.
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i think city-states are the most natural economic arrangement across the world and across time since the rise of recorded civilisation. many american states don't make any sense as economic units, and often their governors don't properly represent the most critical business interests in the states located in the cities, and putter around a lot with rural special interests for political reasons.
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For that period of history such civilizations also relied heavily on slavery and colonial exploitation. Might not want to bring that back.
Back prior to the rise of modern Republics, a city state might have been the only place that could support commercial activities because the hinterland was governed under a feudal system incompatible with trade activities, or was populated by a bunch of bandits and warlords, or both. Later on cities were the only places with docks and shipping hubs and still offered protection.
But after the industrial revolution all that changed, and now large states comprised of many cities with rural areas in between could offer everything old city states offered but at a larger scale. And with that more military might.
Cities aren't that strong either. Hong Kong is helpless against integration with mainland China. Istanbul used to be cosmopolitan but now Turkey is headed towards autocracy. The sun is setting on London's empire with Brexit.
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Google’s digital products don’t have a physical supply chain. Facebook doesn’t have dispersed manufacturers.
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But they are platforms with ecosystems. Other people and companies produce content and apps that they deliver. Their users are also their product. Google and Facebook do experience borders. Neither has much of a presence in China because the government there wants to impose its censorship and protect domestic web companies. Both rely on a huge workforce beyond their official employee count and need talent from all over the place. Consumer facing tech names are really just the tip of the iceberg. The infrastructure and code needed to make the modern web work is huge and complex and there are giant companies you as a consumer don't interact with doing the heavy lifting. Oracle and Cisco are just as important to Silicon Valley as Apple or Twitter. A lot of that back end work is done in places like Dallas and Austin .
To run with the author's shipbuilding analogy, this is a lot more like Maersk being based in Copenhagen despite that city turning its docks into places where hipsters ride their bikes and get coffee and pastries. The warehouses and burly men loading crates onto ships may be gone but There are more ships and people who build ships and people who operate ships and cargo transported by ship now than at any point in history probably, just because you don't see it doesn't mean its not there. You might say that this proves that cities are more powerful since they can profit from a huge trade deficit by having a big company whose operations are all located on other continents headquartered locally. But its just a 'legacy' that the company is there. It is outnumbered by competitors closer to the action in South Korea and East Asia, and nothing lasts forever.
Google might not want to be headquartered in an insular city state, but rather a large country or supranational bloc that can impose favorable trade conditions with the rest of the world and can tap a deep talent pool. If Silicon Valley starts to fade because the high costs or lack of talented people moving there or lack of innovation in local companies, the big boys will still live on for some time, but they'll just be a vestige at that point and at some point erode away and vanish. It should also want to be part of the same cultural fabric as the people who use and make things for it to thrive. It is a US company, then a multinational, then a Mountain View company, in that order.