(This is what happens when I read books.)

I. Purpose of humanity

The primary goal of a human being is labor. A man derives a certain amount of personal value from the work he carries out. In previous days of human age, you were known as a blacksmith, a farmer, a priest, or of a similar profession. It was normal for sons to follow in their father’s footsteps. With increased education, this field has widened enormously, but the premise still holds. We define ourselves largely by what we produce with our hands, i.e. the results of our creativity, whether it be goods or services.

II. The growth of commerce as a foundation for cities

With productional capacity reaching beyond simple self-sustainment, transportation and logistics become increasingly important to trade or sell produced goods to others. Roads become important; where roads appear, trade flourishes; and where roads meet, marketplaces appear. These start to produce specialization, and densification follows. Although a certain need for services always existed in an purely agrarian society, densification and the resulting spatial organization (building on the transportation network) produce a region, with a hub, in which enough synergistic effects become visible to sustain an increasingly specialized service-based market. We have an embryo of a city.

As the region grows, there will be a gradual growth of services in comparison to goods. As increasing synergy leads to further increases in production capacity, more opportunity arises for people to specialize, allowing entirely new specialized markets to appear. Banks, insurance companies, entertainment industries, restaurants and other diverse markets open up, providing services to the entire region. Competition grows, forcing businesses to become more effective; but as competition in the same field grows, businesses operating in different fields find reason to cooperate in interdependent ways; producing even more specialization.

All this forms the basis of a city, and the larger these forces grow, the more the city will grow.

III. Government

The primary goal of a governing body is to encourage and sustain these forces; and the primary means to do so is to provide a secure climate for business.

External safety is necessary to avoid threats of a disruptive foreign power. Business can only survive with difficulty in volatile regions.

Internal safety is necessary to ensure fairness and to establish justice, building upon a set of common laws which are upheld by a judicial system, as well as a necessary police force. Internal safety also means safety from natural hazards, fires, starvation, disease, and other factors which may hamper the growth of business. These are usually established through one or other form of a political system; and as they are usually costly, are also financed through taxation. This yields an administrative bureaucracy; and building on the synergistic and spatial organization of a region, are usually set up in the cities, for maximum efficiency.

Thus the city comes to function as a center for administrative control, as well as a marketplace for goods and services.

IV. The organization of nations

Thus we find, that cities are a perfectly normal way for human beings to organize, building on regional production and logistics. Cities grow to contain a multitude of services as well as administrative functions for the entire region. These form the collective underpinnings of a nation; identifying itself by a common culture and language. The strength of a nation is directly proportional to the health and vitality of its cities as hubs of trade and commerce; which are able to finance national services: for instance, a unified government, and a military force.