The Distributed Capital

Washington DC and many other world capitals were built in the days before the telegraph, much less phones, radio, and the Internet. Back then, all the important functions of the government like the White House, Congress, Supreme Court, etc, had to be close together to be able to communicate at all without waiting for the Pony Express to shuttle letters.

This of course leads to problems: having all the important centers of government in one place leaves it very vulnerable to attack, especially now when a single nuke could take out all the seats of power and seriously cripple the nation.

So here's my idea: create a distributed capital throughout the country, with secure telecom links for communication. Keep the White House in Washington DC, move Congress to LA, Supreme Court to Dallas, etc. The FBI can go to Chicago, CIA to Seattle, and so on. Everyone will still be able to communicate in real-time via teleconferencing links, but there's no single point of failure, and no big target for terrorists or other enemies.

There are a few problems, from having to build new offices all over the country, to different time zones complicating matters a little bit. But in a global economy, time zones mean very little--crises arise at all hours anyhow. We could keep all the monuments and buildings such as the Capitol still in DC -- as a tourist destination and symbol of power -- but move the actual important functions of government all over the country.

That way, there's no obvious target for terrorists: they might get their hands on a nuclear weapon and take out Washington, for example, but Congress and the CIA would still be fully working the same day! They could take out the Pentagon in St. Louis, but so what: the White House would still function.

As an added side benefit, the politicians might be a little more mindful of their obligations to the public, since they wouldn't all be able to hide out in Washington, insulated from real people.

And, it would stimulate the economy in the short run, since a lot of new buildings would have to go up, lots of offices moving across the country, etc. And it would help in the long run as well, with the bi-annual change of government bringing in fresh people and money to all corners of the country.