A rancher in Wyoming does not need or have any day to day contact with government to go about daily life. Sure, they want police or fire protection if necessary, but don’t really need goverment for transportation, cleaning the streets, picking up trash, preventing communicable disease, or any of the basic infrastructure only government can provide (or contract out to a third party) that makes an urban area work.

How could a place like NYC survive, for example, without a strong government running things?

When you live in a place where a stonger government is necessary for things to work correctly, then you’re beliefs about government intervention are probably more liberal. If you are a rancher in Wyoming with no real need or contact with government on a day to day basis you are likely to be more conservative.

Seems pretty obvious not only intellectually, but in voting patterns. Not sure where DEM is coming from.

Household septic systems and wells work in rural areas because the costs of the connections to a centralized service for drinking water and sewage treatment is prohibitive and the sparse land use density permits it. In a dense urban setting the exact opposite is true. Connectivity is cheap and dense land use makes household septic fields a serious health hazard to everyone.

Private business has an opportunity to provide services like a water and sewage system, but by and large it’s left to municipal government. The undertaking has huge installation, maintenance and liability costs. The infrastructure presents a natural monopoly. The operation of the service needs special exemptions to access property, rights of way etc.. The service must be provided to the entire citizenry (at low cost) to work. This precludes attractive profitability and lots of liability. There are private firms offering municipal services like security, education even sewer and water treatment. but at some point they fall under the jurisdiction of a level of government when neccessary.

Cholera is spread when sewage comes in contact with drinking water. As long as you can install a septic tank and dig a well and keep them away from each other, you’re golden. No government needed.

And that’s what he’s saying. Greater government intervention is necessary in cities when it comes to things like preventing the spread of cholera because there’s a lot more sharing of resources going on.

If so, how exactly is a political attitude that accepts the need for basic law enforcement and public health one borne of — or even related to — urban density? It would seem clear that it’s not. Rather, it is a near-universal recognition that there are certain core responsibilities of governments. People disagree about whether universal health care is one of those. They don’t tend to disagree about whether arresting criminals is in the same category. In other words, the “gulf” between NYC and Montana isn’t that residents of those places disagree about the need to prosecute theft, but that they disagree over how much more the government should be doing in addition to its core functions.