Time for the Reverse Great Leap Forward/Cultural Revolution (which needs a better title)

I was thinking about this article from the Brookings Institute over the weekend:

Biden-voting counties equal 70% of America’s economy. What does this mean for the nation’s political-economic divide? 

Here's an extract:

...the stark economic rift that Brookings Metro documented after Donald Trump’s shocking 2016 victory has grown even wider. In 2016, we wrote that the 2,584 counties that Trump won generated just 36% of the country’s economic output, whereas the 472 counties Hillary Clinton carried equated to almost two-thirds of the nation’s aggregate economy.

A similar analysis for last week’s election shows these trends continuing, albeit with a different political outcome. This time, Biden’s winning base in 477 counties encompasses fully 70% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,497 counties represents just 29% of the economy. (Votes are still outstanding in 110 mostly low-output counties, and this piece will be updated as new data is reported.)...

So, while the election’s winner may have changed, the nation’s economic geography remains rigidly divided. Biden captured virtually all of the counties with the biggest economies in the country (depicted by the largest blue tiles in the nearby graphic), including flipping the few that Clinton did not win in 2016.

By contrast, Trump won thousands of counties in small-town and rural communities with correspondingly tiny economies (depicted by the red tiles). Biden’s counties tended to be far more diverse, educated, and white-collar professional, with their aggregate nonwhite and college-educated shares of the economy running to 35% and 36%, respectively, compared to 16% and 25% in counties that voted for Trump.

Trump's appeal to the less well educated was well documented.    And his appeal to less economically important regions seems to be shown as well.

Trump/Republican belief in conspiracy theory is not just dangerous to democracy, it's dangerous to the globe, given they treat climate change as a fraud conducted by socialist scientists.

In Australia, you see a similar dynamic - climate change denialism is biggest in National Party members, isn't it, and they come from rural electorates.

The irony in all of this is that the actual socialist revolution disaster of the Khmer Rouge was all about depopulating cities to get everyone farming.  (The Chinese attempts at farming collectivisation in the Great Leap Forward and subsequent Cultural Revolution being the inspiration, also with terrible results.)  

But now, all the bad ideas come from the rural and less educated areas and have undue influence over how us reality based, city sophisticates, need to run the place. 

I like a drive through the countryside as much as the next city slicker, but if I were trying to organise a better world now, I think there's a good case for depopulating the countryside and rural towns.    

With automation we probably need far fewer people on farms anyway. And cities are supposed to be much more efficient for energy use.   And they vote for fewer numbnuts. 

So, here's the plan:  minimum city size of 1 million.   Round up people from the smaller, non-viable towns and make them live at least 50 km from the nearest city.   Those who must stay on the land for the good of the nation (vineyard growers, for example!) must agree to send their children to university.

The countryside to be reserved for day trippers.   (OK, I'll allow weekends.)

Farming to be more automated than ever before.  (If mines, mining trains, and container shipping ports can be as automated as they now are, there's room for a lot more automation in the fields.)

We have to give up on it being a good idea for people to live in the country.  It's clearly dangerous and a breeding ground for bad ideas.  

OK, and before you say that the failed communist plans were due to city elites sitting around and having bad ideas about how they could control rural populations and activities that they didn't understand at all :   yes true - but my Revolution is about not leaving a rural population there in the first place.   And all I am saying about farming is not that we need more, or less of it, or that it needs anything radical - just that it can be done with a lot fewer people given modern technology.

Of course, those who oppose such a plan - such as the IPA - I make a special exemption for them living in the city.   In fact, they are the only ones who should be forced onto the land.   Sinclair Davidson, John Roskam and the smarmy kids waiting for Liberal pre-selection who work there would do well trying to run a sheep station near Longreach, on quasi-libertarian principles, I'm sure...

You know it makes sense. 

Now for a better name.

Update:   this post was also inspired by my sympathy to takes like this on the American election;