Last month, the Atlantic Cities reported on a very interesting study by Harvard researchers linking the distance of state capitals from major population centers to corruption. Generally speaking, the more remote the capital, the more corruption there was in that state (as measured by federal convictions). As ever, correlation is not causation and there are plenty of outliers, but the findings are intriguing nonetheless.

They also got me to thinking: beyond its potential role in facilitating the occasional corrupt act by an individual or small group of individuals, could the isolation of state capitals have an impact on the average quality of all bureaucratic talent? Corruption is obviously a big deal, but usually limited in scope; a systemic under-recruitment of talented, ambitious public employees at the state level could have far more devastating effects in the long term.

To see why our remote capitals might be doing a disservice to good governance, we don't even need to look at government employment. To some extent, publicly- and privately-owned businesses are already responding to the heightened attraction of the "major population centers" those Harvard researchers were referring to: Twitter decided to locate in San Francisco, Google put offices in New York City, Amazon is rapidly expanding operations in the core of Seattle. These are expensive markets, and superficially it might seem like a waste of money, but these major corporations have reached the conclusion that they need to be located in dense, walkable, transit-rich cities if they want to attract the talent they need to continue to be successful. Why should it be any different for state employees?

Of course, there are plenty of highly qualified and capable people that actually prefer to live in the smaller-city/suburban atmosphere. That's fine. In cities like Albany or Olympia or Sacramento, though, you're significantly limited in the type of lifestyle you can lead. It's basically suburban car-dependence or bust. And while there are many millions of people who want exactly that, there are as many or more who don't want anything like it, or at least wouldn't rank it highly if they had complete freedom of choice.