Whether you celebrate Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, the Winter Solstice or just the blessing of a couple of days off work: Have a great one!
Or–as my favorite holiday greeting this year put it–Heathen’s Greetings to you and yours!
CommentsExit, Voice and Reform
Albert Hirschman, an eminent economist and political thinker, has died. He was a towering figure, an economist who refused to reduce human interactions to commercial transactions, and who understood that human behavior is motivated by more than a desire for comparative advantage.
The book for which Hirschman is best known is his classic Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. The Economist gives a good summary of its basic argument:
Mr Hirschman argued that people have two different ways of responding to disappointment. They can vote with their feet (exit) or stay put and complain (voice). Exit has always been the default position in the United States: Americans are known as being quick to up sticks and move. It is also the default position in the economics profession. Indeed, when his book appeared, Milton Friedman and his colleagues in the Chicago School were busy extending the empire of exit to new areas. If public schools or public housing were rotten, they argued, people should be encouraged to escape them.
Mr Hirschman raised some problems with the cult of exit. Sometimes, it entrenches the status quo. Dictators may rule longer if their bravest critics flee abroad (indeed, Cuba uses emigration as a safety valve). Monopolies may have an easier life if their stroppiest customers find an alternative. Mr Hirschman got the idea for his book during a ghastly train journey in Nigeria: he concluded that the country’s railways were getting worse because the most vocal customers were shifting to the roads.
Exit may also reinforce the cycle of decline. State schools may get worse if the pushiest parents take their custom elsewhere. Mr Hirschman worried that a moderate amount of exit might produce the worst of all worlds: “an oppression of the weak by the incompetent and an exploitation of the poor by the lazy which is the more durable and stifling as it is both unambitious and escapable.”…
But Mr Hirschman’s overall point was not that exit is bad but that exit and “voice” work best together. Reformers are more likely to be able to fix an organisation if there is a danger that their clients will leave. The problem with Friedman et al was that they focused only on exit and not on how exit and voice could be used to reinforce each other.
I’ve quoted a rather long segment of the Economist’s piece, because Hirschman’s point is critically important, and all too frequently ignored.
Without the right to exit, there can be no freedom. But if our only choice is between shutting up and leaving, there can be no progress, no institutional improvement. That’s the great virtue of dissent, of voice–something the “love it or leave it” folks seem unable to grasp.
Sometimes, we want to remain in a situation–a marriage, a job, a country–because we care enough to want to improve it.
CommentsAngry, Frightened and Armed
Several people have asked me why I haven’t blogged about the massacre in Connecticut, or about creepy Wayne LaPierre’s press conference. There are two reasons: first, plenty of other people have commented, analyzed and basically said anything I might have said. And second, what’s the point?
One of the saddest aspects of our contemporary politics is the utter lack of dialogue. We are all preaching to our own choirs. If the NRA’s press statement (hard to call something a press conference when the press isn’t allowed to ask any questions) proved anything, it is that the massacre hasn’t changed that. We are all invested in our own points of view–I certainly am–and for some issues, that investment makes it impossible to understand the opposing perspective.
I know it is fashionable to bewail this state of affairs and to lecture anyone within earshot about the virtues of “going halfway,” of making the effort to see the perspective of the other. And there are definitely areas where extremists on both sides of the ideological spectrum need to get over themselves and do just that. But let’s be honest: right now, there are some positions that reasonable people ought not engage, or take seriously.
Arming America is one of them.
I understand that there are a lot of people–make that a lot of white guys, mostly middle-aged and older–who are angry because life hasn’t turned out the way they thought it would. There are a lot of people who are frightened and disoriented by the pace of change. When President Obama made his “gaffe” about those people clinging to their guns and religions, the remark was politically damaging, but no less true. And those people are not going to enter into a conversation about what reasonable restrictions on gun ownership might look like.
Fortunately, not all armed Americans are fanatics. In fact, if polls are to be believed, most members of the NRA do not inhabit LaPierre’s alternate universe. There are plenty of gun owners who do favor background checks, who agree that American sportsmen do not need Uzis and assault weapons capable of mowing down dozens of people without reloading. Those are the people we should seek out; the people we can and should talk to.
The others–the ones screaming that Obama is coming for their guns, the ones stocking up on ammunition, the ones demanding that we arm teachers or post armed guards at every classroom door–are quite simply beyond the ability to reason.
CommentsWhy Can’t Indy Do Stuff Like This??
Trust Neil Pierce to give us a peek at what cities can be. And of course, New York is leading the way–under a Mayor who has done an incredible job of making the Big Apple both livable and hip. Pierce describes the new touch-screen kiosks that are being unveiled first in New York’s Union Square–new technology that will not only make city life more convenient, informative and safer, but will generate revenue to boot.
Whatever your impressions of Mayor Bloomberg as a person or politician, his impact on the daily life of the city is undeniable. Since our middle son moved to Manhattan, my husband and I get into New York a couple of times a year, and we’ve seen the changes: bike paths everywhere; inviting riverside parks; pedestrian-friendly walks and mid-street cafes where horn-honking cars used to dominate. The city is rolling out a bike-sharing program with an initial supply of ten thousand bicycles. It is well into the redevelopment of west-side Manhattan–our son lives in a spiffy new tower, complete with doorman and upscale amenities in a neighborhood I wouldn’t have walked in ten years ago, not far from the triumph that is the High Line.
In fact, the High Line is a perfect symbol for the City under Bloomberg. It was an eyesore–an abandoned elevated train track. Most cities would have torn it down; New York turned it into a park so successful that it attracts tourists from around the world and has generated some two billion dollars in adjacent redevelopment.
A city that can turn an eyesore into an amenity is worth emulating, even if you can’t get a 32-ounce soda there.
Next month, we’ll be visiting our son, and I’m making a beeline for Union Square. I’m going to be one of the first to try out the new kiosks. I’ll need to do it there, because if the past few years are any indication, it will be a long time before Indianapolis gets them. We were late getting even the few bike lanes we have, and no one has even suggested that we introduce a bike-sharing program, although cities from New York to Charlotte have done so. Our parks depend on charity for their continued existence. Public transportation is next to nonexistent. On a per-capita basis, New York is safer.
When we do something big, like hosting the Super Bowl, the impetus and the execution come from the private sector. If anyone in the Mayor’s office or on the City-Country Council is thinking big, or proposing innovative ways to improve livability in our city, they’re keeping it a secret.
Of course, we can buy really big sodas.
CommentsCliff Notes
Unbelievable.
I actually feel sorry for John Boehner. He presides over a Caucus that isn’t simply stubborn or contentious–thanks to its most ideological members, it is simply ungovernable. These members are unwilling to move an inch for the good of the country or even their own party. It’s stunning.
What I don’t get is the fanatical refusal to raise taxes even a small amount for even a few of the very richest Americans. Boehner’s “Plan B”–which crashed and burned thanks to that refusal–allowed the Bush tax cuts to expire only for those making more than a million dollars a year. Protecting those few Americans from a slight raise in the marginal rate was evidently so important to the Tea Party fanatics that they were willing to knock the props from under their own party’s leader and reinforce a growing public perception that the GOP has become far too extreme. (A recent poll found that 52% of Americans hold that view of the party–and that was before this latest embarrassment.)
Presumably, Boehner’s inability to get what he wanted from his caucus will strengthen the President’s hand as the fiscal “cliff” nears, although it’s increasingly difficult to predict anything in the Never Never Land that is Washington, D.C. The only thing that seems certain is that we’ve elected a lot of people who haven’t the faintest idea what governing is all about.
If I could explain why they are willing to go down with the ship rather than raise taxes on anyone, I’d be delighted to share that explanation in this space, but I can’t. I’m baffled.
Comments