Pretty good article but how spread a population is shouldn’t really matter. You don’t put a price on people. You also invest in public infrastructures because they’re necessary. Especially when you can just shell out a trillion a year on weapons.
The problem is that at a certain low density, things like water/sewer systems and roads cannot be maintained. There simply isn’t enough of a tax base compared to the amount of infrastructure needed. The book Strong Towns goes over the idea. The suburb development pattern has the US on borrowed time for affording necessary maintenance. Not even eliminating the armed forces completely could avert that problem.
Pretty good article but how spread a population is shouldn’t really matter. You don’t put a price on people. You also invest in public infrastructures because they’re necessary. Especially when you can just shell out a trillion a year on weapons.
The problem is that at a certain low density, things like water/sewer systems and roads cannot be maintained. There simply isn’t enough of a tax base compared to the amount of infrastructure needed. The book Strong Towns goes over the idea. The suburb development pattern has the US on borrowed time for affording necessary maintenance. Not even eliminating the armed forces completely could avert that problem.