Your identity is valuable.\u00a0 I’m not just talking about your Social Security number or your Facebook password.\u00a0 I’m talking about the collection of things you identify with.\u00a0 Maybe you’re a vegetarian, a Rotarian, a librarian, or a Libertarian.\u00a0\u00a0 Each of us feel a belonging to a number of groups, the sum of which makes us individuals.<\/p>\n
Humans have always gone to great lengths to define some way to differentiate us vs. them, and among the strongest delineations in American culture are hometowns.\u00a0 In reality, many of us have multiple “hometowns”.\u00a0 The one we grew up in, the one we live in, maybe even the one we went to college in, or the one we used to live in.\u00a0 Those are concrete immutable anchor points in our psyche.\u00a0 This is primarily why people have such a deep visceral reaction to the notion of redrawing village, town, school district, or other identity based boundaries.<\/p>\n
In my own hometown (the one I grew up in), they are currently entertaining the dissolution of the village for economic reasons.\u00a0 The town would simply reabsorb the village.\u00a0 There are lots of practical reasons to entertain the dissolution of the village, and lots of emotional reasons to oppose it.\u00a0 Not that the opposition is entirely emotional, but that side has an emotional component the other side lacks.\u00a0 And that emotion is largely fueled by identity.<\/p>\n
Note that election districts are redrawn all the time and no one cares.\u00a0 This is because no one says, “I’m from District 28, ” or asserts, “I’d never live in District 30!”\u00a0 But we identify with our villages, schools, and other local boundaries.<\/p>\n
Once upon a time, it was two hours by horse to the next village, now it’s a seven minute drive.\u00a0 In a very real sense, the world is smaller than it was when all of these local entities were formed.\u00a0 There are absolutely economies of scale to be had by combining villages, towns, and schools into larger regional organizations.\u00a0 But it feels wrong.\u00a0 Still, in this economy, paying taxes to the village, the town, the school district, the county, the state, and the fed really hurts.<\/p>\n
All of which begs the ultimate question, how much are we willing to pay for that sense of identity?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Your identity is valuable.\u00a0 I’m not just talking about your Social Security number or your Facebook password.\u00a0 I’m talking about<\/p>\n