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Saving Our Cities
Over the last few decades we’ve all been watching as many of the major cities in the US have been going downhill. Violent crime, poverty, filth, decay, unemployment, homelessness, riots, addiction. It’s terrible.
And it’s not getting better. Nobody is even talking about it getting better.
San Francisco is crawling with homelessness, addiction, and poop.
Detroit is apocalypse porn for French photographers. (Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, click image for their site.)
Drugs turn people into zombies in Philadelphia. (Click image for “Streets of Philadelphia, Kensington Ave. Documentary.”)
And so forth.
And it’s making our country look really bad. Looking like a cross between a third-world nation, a Soviet state, and a dystopian, post-apocalyptic movie.
So what exactly is going on? And who is at fault? And what can we do about it?
People will blame it on racism, the police, capitalism, inequality, or whatever excuse might be politically advantageous at the moment. It would seem better to blame the city governments, as running a city is their job. (As in, “You had one job.”) But those governments are elected by the people who live in those cities. Are the citizens of the city, then, to blame?
Running a city isn’t difficult. I mean, people have been running cities successfully for a very long time, usually with far less to work with. There are lots of working examples out there. It shouldn’t take enormous amounts of money or resources.
It seems you would have to try to have things turn out this badly.
Now, I don’t claim to have any firsthand knowledge in this area. I’ve always lived near major cities, not in them, and I’ve never been involved in municipal politics. But I think we can all see a pattern here.
One more example… This set of tweets from lifelong Democrat Michelle Tandler summarizes the frustration many are feeling:
Here is what confuses me about San Francisco.
We have the most liberal, left-wing government & population in the country.
We have a $13B budget.
And we have 8,000 people sleeping in the rain this week.
Can someone please explain this to me?
— Michelle Tandler (@michelletandler) December 26, 2021
First, I want to talk about The Curley Effect. It has nothing to do with our favorite stooge, but rather it is a political strategy named after James Curley, the four-time mayor of Boston. Read all about it here:
The Curley Effect: The Economics of Shaping the Electorate
The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization
Edward L. Glaeser, Andrei Shleifer (Both with Harvard and the National Bureau of Economic Research)
Abstract:
James Michael Curley, a four-time mayor of Boston, used wasteful redistribution to his poor Irish constituents and incendiary rhetoric to encourage richer citizens to emigrate from Boston, thereby shaping the electorate in his favor. As a consequence, Boston stagnated, but Curley kept winning elections. We present a model of using redistributive politics to shape the electorate, and show that this model yields a number of predictions opposite from the more standard frameworks of political competition, yet consistent with empirical evidence.
Basically, the Curley Effect states that there are two ways for the mayor of a city, once elected, to be successfully reelected. The traditional approach is to do an excellent job running the city, letting businesses thrive, managing the revenue, growing resources, pleasing the electorate, and then bringing in the most votes on election day. Basically, like you’d play “Sim City.”
So traditional.
But there is another approach pioneered by James Curley, to “shape the electorate.” That is, to drive the people who are likely to vote against you out of the city, and recruit new residents who are more likely to vote for you.
This is called The Curley Effect, and the article goes into some detail about it.
Note that the authors are economists, not politicians or historians, and this is an analysis from an economic incentive point of view. It has nothing to do with left or right political ideologies, and has everything to do with working the system.
There are lots of ways to drive voters out of a city. You can do it by taxing one group and providing services to another. Crappy schools will drive people out. Or crime; the district attorney could adopt a policy of not prosecuting crimes in specific neighborhoods. Or NIMBY (“Not In My Back Yard”) projects; strategically create the worst NIMBY projects and place them… precisely… in their backyards. And then shame them when they complain.
It’s easier to do in cities where the people who would vote against you can move just outside the border, into the suburbs, while still retaining social, recreational, business ties, and many of the other advantages of the city.
Now…
Unfortunately, the Glaeser/Shleifer paper doesn’t go into the consequences of the Curley Effect. I don’t think anybody has. Our most revered economists (Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman) have always reminded us to ask, “What happens next?”
What exactly does happen as a result of shaping the electorate?
I’ll suggest:
- Future elections will be heavily biased toward the party of the mayor and city council. And the party will continue to win every election. That’s one-party rule.
- A changed electorate is a long-term affair. Once started, the shaping process and the effects of that process can continue decades after the election. The people who left are unlikely to return, there are a backlog of people in the planning stages of a move, the policies in place will continue to drive targeted people away, and bring other targeted people in.
- Competent, capable people from the opposing party will be discouraged from running as their statistical chance of winning steadily falls. Any that do try will likely be nonserious candidates. Financial backing becomes more difficult.
- Political offices will effectively no longer be determined by a vote of the people, but are rather selected by the party.
- You no longer have the core essence of a Democracy. No checks and balances. No way to “vote the scoundrels out.” In short, you no longer have a Functioning Democracy.
- And no incentive to do a good job. Graft, corruption, bribery, fraud, waste, mismanagement can all thrive unchecked, and without limit. Federal financial assistance will be requested and squandered.
- Doomed. It’s basically stuck. Over decades you’ll see rising poverty rates, crime rates rising to 10 times the national average, unemployable people holding official positions. And you’ll see the population dropping as people move out, and the city is unable to attract new residents or businesses.
And this leads us back to the source, James Curley was also extremely corrupt. (“How corrupt was he?”) He was elected to Boston’s board of aldermen in 1904 while serving time in prison on a fraud conviction. And he spent part of his last term as mayor in prison.
So corruption can run rampant when the democratic process is crippled.
And this is completely consistent with what we’ve been seeing over the past 50 years.
An upcoming article will propose a solution.
Also, check out my previous article, Well, This Is Fascinating, which was basically a warm-up for this.
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But if they depopulate maybe the whole world, who do they then rule?
People in big cities vote D because the alternative would be to vote for people who hate cities and want to see them razed and salted. Anyone with an R appended to their name wants to destroy public schools so people are ignorant and thus malleable to whatever the capitalists want; they want to starve funding for social services because they hate anyone who isn’t white a and cis with 2.5 children, and want them to perish. Or move; whatever works. They will raze homeless camps without a thought of the systemic causes, believe it is possible to not become addicted to drugs (it’s not a choice, it’s a disease) and worship Reagan, who personally closed all the mental health facilities, locked the doors, swallowed the key and crapped out stock options for Purdue. Also, they make sweetheart deals with real estate developers to build luxury housing.
Basically, Rs don’t understand why things are bad. Ds do, but are hampered by the unwillingness of society to increase spending on everything 100X, dismantle the oppressive systems, atone for historic injustices, and embed equity into every aspect of civil society. If they fail, it’s because they’re too weak, don’t push, go-along-to-get-along, and also half of them are really not progressives at all, because look at that, the police are still funded, and the pigs cleared out a camp of homeless the other day. (Granted, there was that murder, and three nearby houses burned down when squatters got careless, but it’s still part of the War on the Poor.)
Basically, if there’s a guy leaving a bowel movement in the dining room of a Starbucks, it’s Adam Smith’s fault.
What kills cities is disorder. Unpunished crime. Miscreants who operate as they wish. The switch from proactive policing to reactive policing ensures more disorder; the tolerance of the mentally ill living on the streets tells people that their safety is a secondary concern. The presence of encampments is an endorsement of the idea that public spaces exist to be despoiled at will by people who have no involvement in the social compact.
And the mental illness problem, I’m convinced, is less and less due to people who have bad wiring, but people who fried their skulls on the new meth.
With a fertile population of 500 million, you could sacrifice 25,000 people a day, without losing your workforce.
Mr. Smith would beg to disagree: “Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.”–Adam Smith
It being Chicago, perhaps it’s just an ongoing scheme for personal enrichment.
I don’t think people run for office with a secret desire to destroy the cities they want to run. Best case scenario, they get accolades and nice no-show jobs afterwards and get to attend events in tall buildings where everyone’s dressed nice and there’s someone with a tray of bubbly making the rounds all the time, and then there’s a speech where someone says something about all the wonderful things the foundation has done to help people, and you feel very good about yourself for being part of the people who care. And look at the view from up here! What a great city.
They’re not that smart. Our betters are shallow, credentialed, mid-grade narcissists enabled by a system that does not challenge their intellectual deficiencies or precepts.
I prefer the Welth Of Nashuns, by Edmund Wells. (A bit of a Monty Python reference, for those in the know.)
(I’m not claiming to be a Sen scholar or anything, and I’d love to hear from folks who know more, but my understanding is…)
He used the phrase “functioning democracy” to mean a form of government where the government is answerable to the people. Where the people can vote out a government that is doing a crappy job. Where the government has an incentive to do a good job. Where others who have better ideas can make their case and be voted into office.
Sen noted that, historically, famines involved not only a scarcity of food, but also really bad distribution, that caused starvation. Food availability goes up and down, but the really bad distribution happened in cases where the government was not answerable to the people.
And we’re seeing a similar mechanism in our major US cities. The cities have “food” available (revenue, assets, businesses, people, etc.) but it’s being managed really badly by leaders who are clearly incompetent and likely crooked. And they have no incentive to do a good job, as their reelection is guaranteed thanks to the reshaped electorate.
I’ve always thought of government as a hierarchy of functions serving the hierarchy of needs.
Further down, you have things like provide for the welfare and at the bottom you have virtue signalling.
Start at the top and work your way down. If you can’t do a number, work on that until it is under control. By not enforcing the law and not defending their citizens, city governments are massive failures, worse than many medieval monarchs and some dictators. It’s like a doctor who has a great bedside manner but knows nothing about anatomy.
Another side of the city is the idea of value for your money. If I go to McDonalds, I will get a cheap burger for a cheap price. If I go to a fancy steakhouse, I expect to pay a lot of money and get an awesome steak. If I go to Texas de Brazil and drop down $50, and they provide me with a happy meal, I’m going to be infuriated.
Living in Chicago felt like that. Lots of fees and taxes, but everything is run down. Potholes fill the streets and crazy people run rampant. It’s just a bad deal – is it it any wonder more people are rejecting it?
“Public goods” only. Some economists think that, in aggregate, 80% of government is non-public goods.
Beyond that, you sort of have to have Social Security and Medicare. The problem is, every single government actuarial system turns into a nuclear bomb.
I think this is why it’s so hard to make things move right. Politically, you just can’t structure the conversations like this to the extent that is needed.
Government Is How We Steal From Each Other™
Speaking of running out of town the voters you don’t want? Today’s Dems are importing the voters they do want, from third-world countries, who speak no English (so are easily manipulated); have little to no education (again making it easier to manipulate them), and will be grateful to them for letting them invade our country. However, once those new voters have been here for awhile, they seem to want to be productively employed to provide for their families and improve their lot in life. Notice how Hispanics seem to be leaving the D’s lately?
Seattle is also a perfect example of a declining city, with one-party rule. It’s got a bad homeless problem, but when camps are removed the “residents” do not have to accept shelter or any other services, so they just move a few blocks away. The people who run for city council are all left or socialist. The city council tried to defund the police, and now policemen are leaving in droves, because they all know that the city does not have their backs (and neither does the State, which has passed multiple laws restraining police procedure). The city council then notices that crime increases, police response-time goes way down, and they get concerned. They then vote to increase police pay, and give signing bonuses to new recruits. However, they can’t get new recruits, because everyone who might want to work as a police officer is well aware that the city council really still thinks of them as “pigs”. Signing bonuses go begging, and no one wants to join the beleaguered Seattle Police. Same with the fire department-firefighters are also leaving in droves. Oh, and I forgot to mention another reason. Covid Vaccine Mandates. Both police and fire departments have lost dozens of employees who refuse vaccination.
And the council passes the “Amazon Tax”. And businesses pay it.
What is this? I thought they gave up on passing that head tax, which is what I understood this to be.
So, basically any government that allows an honest vote regarding the leadership and the questions of the day?
Does “protect human rights” fall under number 3?
Mark Steyn had a great piece a few years ago about how New York couldn’t salt the roads when it snowed but it planned on ending global warming. He concluded that focusing on big virtue signalling stuff made government dumber. I think Solzhenitsyn said something similar.
This is probably off-topic but I don’t know where else to ask it. If in a utopian society the structure is “from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs” who determines who needs what? Everyone needs to eat, but if I feel the need to eat a lot and grow thick and slow, does this count as a need? What is the acceptable body shape? And how does one know, by monthly BMI counts? By monitoring the miles one has walked as China apparently does with cell phones?
And what if I need to express myself artistically (as did the poor swamp prince ably documented in the Monty Python film) and “I want to sing!” does this get approved and encouraged? Or is the determination made by others that this is not an approved need?
I’m sure if I asked a liberal friend this he would say, “Well, I’m sure they would take that into account and work out something.”
(I don’t think I like Marxism.)
Maybe that’s because when they can’t get the roads salted, that proves incompetence NOW, but claiming they’ll have something fixed 20 or 50 or 100 years from now, nobody can hold them accountable for that NOW.
I think that is rule 2. We are talking about the English rule of law here.
Marxists don’t like Marxism either, not for themselves.
This is largely what the head tax mentioned in #43 is about. If you want to stop the long march to communism, you better figure this out.
Yeah, I guess it all depends on what your preferred style of government is, and your point of view; principally whether the individual exists to serve the government or the government exists to serve the individual.
I was intensely interested in the head tax when they were trying to do that in Seattle. I think it’s a tax based on the number of employees you have. I’m pretty sure when you think it through it’s actually a wealth tax.
If you need a wealth tax, you did something wrong decades ago.
So employing someone isn’t enough, now you have to pay the government to employ someone? In the US you have to pay Soc. Sec. for every dollar each employee makes. Now they want you have to pay a tax just for the right to pay someone for labor?
They have a screwy tax system in Washington state. I think it’s no income tax and 100% sales tax. So because of the federal reserve and technology, real estate is going to the moon inside of the city but they don’t have any money to solve the social problems that flow from that. So it’s a way to steal the wealth that is created by bad public policy.
That might not be perfect, but it’s pretty close.
The whole system is long on asset increases and low on actual cash flow from productive things. It’s insane. Inflationism.
Socialism and populism are a problem because of bad public policy.
Yeah, I would always get irritated with people who claimed that Marxism was “good in theory, but didn’t work”. Its always been horrific in theory.
David Mamet said that leftists don’t see individuals. Rather they see groups. In theory, it starts off with denying the uniqueness and inscrutability of every human soul.
I lived in New York City when it was bad.
I watched it get better—a lot better.
Now I’m seeing it get bad again.
What I am coming to realize, in my old age, is how blind we are. How easily we can be led into the abyss.
I remember one of my professors at seminary—with very different goals, of course—having the class play a game in which each team fielded a fishing fleet and tried to maximize its catch. The secret—which of course wasn’t secret at all, but in plain sight—was that the fish were a limited resource. Unless the teams cooperated, and figured out a way to share the resource, the fishery would crash and everyone would lose. Naturally, we crashed the fishery, killed all the fish, and the oceans boiled and nature died, with the professor shaking his head more in sorrow than in anger…
In San Francisco, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit… they’ve crashed the fishery.
https://www.biblestudytools.com/jeremiah/passage/?q=jeremiah+2:4-14