Reply #43: You're close ..... [View All]

[H2O Man]

but the city doesn't "produce" the food. The rural areas do. Think of the grains, such as wheat and corn. Or the beef or dairy farms. The food is produced in the rural areas. It is then transported, generally in mass, to the urban areas where it is processed. The processed raw materials, no matter if they are food, wood, or metal, are then sold/traded back to the rural areas.

Because cities have "industry," which can include anything from a flint factory to a metal industry, can mass-produce, they create a product they can sell/trade for a cheaper amount.

The cities also produce the technology that allows the rural areas to produce a higher amount of resources to trade/sell to the city/state. More, the city trades "luxury" items that tend to speed up the pace of rural life in such a way that the rural folks become dependent on that technology -- or at least they think they are. What actually happens is the rural area trades its self-sufficiency at the exact rate that it becomes dependent on the urban luxury items.

However, it is an error to think that cities produce the raw materials. They don't.