Michael Maiello's picture

    Central Planning Envy

    I'd be way late to the game if I tried to mock the recent David Brooks column where he says we need less democracy at the top and more Simpson-Bowles commissions.  It's all been said and I didn't blog about it right when I read it because you've heard it all from me before. Anyway, here's a good way into the issue, if you're interested.

    Even asBrooks got things comically wrong (Simpson-Bowles was effective?) I think I'm somewhat interested in how he got there.  It was, he says, jealousy over the perceived effectiveness of China and Singapore and other authoritarian governments.  You know, in New York City we have two decrepit airports (and another in New Jersey) and there's no simple way to rebuild them or to add new commuter rail services to attach them to the city because there are so many vested interests involved.  But in China, if the government says it wants a brand new airport and that airport should sparkle, that it what is (seemingly, to outsiders) exactly what is done.

    This glosses over a lot of corruption, of course and it glosses over all the mistakes that are made to build that new high speed train, dam, bridge or airport quickly to please the powerful government officials who have demanded it.  The truth is, if the United States tried to build a Death Star, the project would never get off the ground. First, all of the defense contractors would have to bid and then a bunch of Senators would squabble about whose state should get all the jobs and finally there would be a big debate about whether it's a moon or a space station and thirty years later we'd still be arguing about it.

    China could build a Death Star but the fearful and abused laborers would probably overlook a small exhaust porthole that, if shot by a single-manned star fighter, could blow the whole thing to smithereens.  Brooks envies China because they can make a Death Star and he thinks we're a failing nation because we dither.

    He's not alone.  This is the sentiment that Thomas Friedman indulges every time he marvels at the pristine airport terminals of Singapore or Dubai.  This is the sentiment that everybody feels some time at the office when they wish the group would stop debating and follow one person's direction because this meeting has leaked over into lunch.

    In a lot of ways this is the businessification of American politics.  We wish for a CEO who will make decisions without so much interference and we wish that this CEO will be nice about it.  Good luck with that.  Fortunately, every Death Star has its gas port.

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    So wait, you think the Galactic Senate made a mistake by granting emergency powers to Palpatine?

    My favorite line from the Brooks column is his recommendation "to use elite Simpson-Bowles-type commissions to push populist reforms." Brooks wouldn't know a populist reform if it stuck a lightsaber up his ass.

    PS Am I correct in sensing a new Maiello-mash, David Brooks on Galactic politics?


    Brooks, Friedman, et al share the conceit that their opinions are endorsed by the masses, the "square people" as Friedman has taken to calling them.

    Why, then, has our popularly-elected government failed to implement the "populist" ideas promoted by such august thinkers? Obviously because our democracy has been hijacked by special interests. If the square people massed in Washington, they would cry Simpson-Bowles! Simpson-Bowles! Simpson-Bowles!


    Yeah, this speaks to the misuse of the term "populism."  Some dudes at Princeton did a pretty good job figuring out why popular ideas don't become law.  What's weird is that Brooks took an elite failure for his model and his editor said nothing to him.  If I could be editorial page editor of the NY Times I'd actually have my novel finished by now.


    That's a darned good idea... "Sure, he's a Sith and shoots lightning out of his fingers, but he turned the Jedi Academy into a charter school!"


    One has to take into consideration, too, the whole filibuster fiasco that has taken over Congress.  We can't even get to a vote on something when one party has a majority because it doesn't have a super majority.  On a local level, special interests, some of whom are truly worthy of respect, make doing anything nearly impossible. 

     

    Here is a great article on San Francisco's housing problem: How Burrowing Owls Lead to Vomiting Anarchists (or SF's Housing Crisis Explained) that I posted on one of your other blogs.  It really highlights the problem in a place like the bay area.

     

     


     

    Why does reading this cause my mind's database to access the name of Robert Moses?

    Moses was the 'master-builder" who destroyed whole communities in order to give us Worlds Fairs and highways only where he wanted them.   He also was instrumental in sending the Dodgers to Los Angeles because he insisted the Brooklyn team could only build a new stadium in Flushing Queens rather than in Brooklyn.   Seems to me that Robert Moses was a good example of the concept of less democracy at the top ... with a personal vision that falls far short of populism even as it pretends to be 'for the people.'


    Silicon Valley may have other plans than the businessification of American politics. Some of them do not think they need America at all.

    Rise of the Bond villains

     


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