Is geography a realistic governmental determinant?

About three years ago, I saw Lech Walesa, former Polish prime minister and solidarity leader,… About three years ago, I saw Lech Walesa, former Polish prime minister and solidarity leader, speak at a small college outside my hometown. I didn’t know who he was, but his introduction proclaimed he had played a key role in bringing about the end of the Cold War. So, I figured it might pay to listen fairly carefully.

He spoke in Polish, with an enthusiasm that occasionally flustered the translator. I’ve forgotten most of the speech by now, but one part has stuck with me. It wasn’t the conclusion of any reasoning he presented. It was more of an aside. In the midst of talking about progress and the future of the world, he questioned the effectiveness of geographical sovereignty. He said that perhaps a change would be necessary.

I tried to get him to elaborate, but the line for questions was long and time short. I left struggling with the question of what he could have possibly meant by that. I’ve been mulling it over for the past few years.

The idea of sovereignty being geographic grew out of common sense. My country is between this mountain and that river. That seems an acceptable way of doing things. People between this mountain and that river will live and work between this mountain and that river. They will pay taxes to me, will be provided for by me, and we will be a city or a state.

On the other side of the river is another city or state. We don’t have much to do with them. Our business is here, we have jurisdiction here. I can’t take over that country without physically invading it. And each established area would be, for the most part, self-sustaining.

It’s this understanding of sovereignty and invasions that we have been taught and raised with. Now, it seems the world is moving away from that. The age of globalization has ushered in a new sort of invasion, an invasion that doesn’t require a physical marching across borders.

It’s an economic imperialism. It results in just as much control by the conquering nation, or nations, but without all the blood and politics of war. It’s more subtle, more cunning and hard to even notice unless you’re the one being taken over.

But over 40 Bolivians have died in the past month protesting just such an invasion by the United States. Of course, we’ve had practically dictatorial economic control there for a while. It was more of an insurgency, a colonial uprising against the local governor, President Lozada.

A bit over a month ago, a South Korean man stabbed himself at a World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun, Mexico, in protest of the effects their policies have had on his village. Apparently the victims care. But we weren’t taught to recognize imperialism of this sort. Our imperialism is defined by flags and foreign guns.

But, we don’t have to look to the world as a whole to see the tensions created by our attachment to geography in this post-industrial world.

In Pittsburgh – admittedly not as intense as the deadly Bolivian situation – the tensions are starkly apparent. We have a budget crisis. And while the city doesn’t have sovereignty over its boundaries, it does have some powers of taxation that it can exercise within its geographic boundaries.

The city can tax the 330,000 people who sleep here at night. The problem is, the population of Pittsburgh during the day – the number of people actually utilizing the city – is closer to 600,000. But they mostly live outside the city. So, that old “I tax these people, I provide for these people” reasoning sort of falls apart, and there are unemployed police officers and bus cutbacks.

Sure, we have some nuisance taxes and liquor taxes that suburbanites have to pay when they come. But for the most part, it’s the city folk who pave the roads they drive in on and pay the cops who protect them during their workdays. And it’s only this way because powers of taxation are defined geographically.

So, what am I proposing? I’m not quite sure. I’m not a political revolutionary – at least not yet. I’m just asking you to step back and change the way you think about why things are the way they are.

Will Minton can be reached at wminton@pittnews.com.