Winfield Village isn’t nearly as big or as dense as what Steve Randy Waldman means by microcities. But it and adjacent complexes house a few thousand people near a handful of bus stops (along with a grocery store, two drug stores, a shoe store, several restaurants, and a movie theater).

“high density exurban developments, subject to constraints including a minimum population size and, importantly, a requirement that the entire city be built within walking distance of a central transit station.”

Source: interfluidity » Microcities

It is perpetually tempting to imagine letting the red states (whose voters imagine that they are getting the short end of the stick, when in fact they are vastly subsidized) go their own way. Tempting, but both impossible and harmful.

Much better, as cogently explained here by @interfluidity, is to build things up in the red states, so that their citizens perceive that they have an economic and political stake in the United States.

Fix the Senate II: Integrate

“The only way to mitigate this tendency towards corrosive crisis is to ensure that differences of interest between larger and smaller states are generally modest.”

On one of my top-two issues when it comes to means-testing benefits, @interfluidity gets it just right:

“Requiring demonstration of inadequate means up-front, rather than on the back-end, creates at best a delay between when a shock is experienced and when it can be ameliorated. “Delay” can mean your kid skips meals, you start rationing your insulin, or your family is evicted from its home. It’s a big deal.”