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July 30, 2007
Progressives
Megan writes:
[The progressives'] good goverment reforms (combined with the legal culture changes in the 1970s), are the reason that it takes about seventy years to get anything done at any level of government. My father likes to point out that had George Bush come into office saying "Shoring up the levees in New Orleans is my #1 priority" and proceeded to act on that, by the time Katrina hit the Army Corps of Engineers would probably have just about finished the Environmental Impact Analysis on the preliminary bids.
If there had been no lawsuits, that is.
There are always lawsuits.
Does anyone actually believe this? Does Megan? Or does it just sound sort of cutting and droll?
And incidentally, her post, which is another in the genre of "the historical progressives had pretty wide streaks of racism and eugenetics running through their movement" strikes me as very, very weak. Conservatives -- and not just "historical" conservatives, but still living conservatives, like Bill Buckley -- fought to preserve segregation as the law of the land. Fought viciously for it. And then spent 45 years determinedly taking advantage of the passage of the Civil Rights Act to gain lots of votes among quiet racists.
But tell me again how the progressives had "streaks of racism." And tell me again how much conservatives suffer from not only those linguistic associations with their forebears, but their more contemporary attempts to eke a political advantage out of their party's legacy of racism.
July 30, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
re- disaster relief
And talk about picking a piss poor example. Disaster relief worked under Clinton, but not Bush- what does that tell the objective minded
Posted by: akaison | Jul 30, 2007 5:21:29 PM
Cut 'n' drool, indeed.
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Libertarians don't understand the whole appeal of "it's better for everyone if government is run well," since they want government run badly enough that the oppressed masses will rise up against their Social Security overlords.
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Finally, the right is barking up the wrong tree in thinking they can demonize "progressive" in the same way they demonized "liberal".
And they're barking up the wrong tree for a reason much of the left doesn't seem cognizant about: liberalism has always been an unpopular self-identification. Even going back to the 60's, it's never gotten much more than 20% of the electorate, with both moderate and conservative both always getting much higher percentages.
"Liberal" was unpopular before the right's campaign began, and they didn't move the count very much. But "progressive" is very popular, and operating from the liberal example, they likely won't be able to move that very much either.
Posted by: Petey | Jul 30, 2007 5:24:20 PM
For some time now I've been trying to figure out why you bother reading that blog. Today's post is not helping me understand.
Posted by: TRM | Jul 30, 2007 5:24:27 PM
CalTrans had the MacArthur Maze meltdown repaired in a month and did a neat job documenting the whole thing.
Posted by: Megan | Jul 30, 2007 5:35:46 PM
. Conservatives -- and not just "historical" conservatives, but still living conservatives, like Bill Buckley -- fought to preserve segregation as the law of the land. Fought viciously for it.
Conservatives expressly sought to capture the South from the Dems on the basis of racial animosity, and, having successfully done so, have turned their party over--willingly or not--to that same Southern Conservative base. See 2000-2006. And, if you're hoping to smear by affiliation, it probably helps not to have supported the Bush Administration for six-odd years. At least with 70% of the American public. With the other 30%, you're gold.
Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Jul 30, 2007 5:46:48 PM
She probably believes it in a casual, don't-spend-any-time-at-all-thinking-about-it, kind of way.
I'm an environmental lawyer. It should take 9-18 months to do an Environmental Impact Statement (not an EIA, there's no such thing) on the proposed project (not the bids, that's not how it's done) for a major project.
No, there isn't always lawsuits - I've wanted to bring lawsuits before and hadn't had the opportunity.
Finally, the controlling environmental law, NEPA, contains an emergency exemption allowing an agency to do work first and then do the environmental documentation afterwards. Probably inapplicable to a major reworking of the levees, but if they wanted to do some quick preparations in the advance of a forecasted bad hurricane season, it might well apply.
She's got nothing right.
Posted by: Brian Schmidt | Jul 30, 2007 5:52:29 PM
I get it... republicans where (are still) racist... but what about her point? Is there something wrong or incorrect about it?
megan,
but they're killing it with that 101/880 interchage.... been working on that one since I was a kid, and I'm not young.
Posted by: hmmmm | Jul 30, 2007 5:57:47 PM
What she really doesn't understand is that it takes a long time to get things done in the private sector, too. I'm always amazed at how libertarians and other conservatives romanticize the supposed flexibility of the private sector. They clearly have never worked for a corporation (large or small -- and no, working for the Economist doesn't count).
In any private business, trying to get a new initiative, etc off the ground takes months.
Posted by: think twice | Jul 30, 2007 5:58:28 PM
As to the supposed streak of racism among progressives, I would say this: what polical movement from the 19th century is not tainted by racism, or sexism or anti-semitism? There were even numerous racists among the abolitionists (remember, one argument against slavery among some abolitionists is that slavery caused too much interaction of whites with blacks with detrimental results, including miscegnation).
Posted by: think twice | Jul 30, 2007 6:05:43 PM
Wow, how the hell did we ever win WWII when we were being ruled by some actually pretty left wing folks? (Oh and now that I think about it, the actual Progressives themselves did a pretty fair job with World War I. Enough to prompt the Germans to surrender in 1918.) I'm surprised we managed to build a single plane or launch a ship or two, not to say the most extraordinary armada the world has ever seen.
The great part of being Megan is you don't actually have to know anything to spout off definitively. She went to all the right schools and such. But Jesus, how can anyone take these people seriously? Moreover, her commenters are as pig ignorant as she is - conflating Progressives with Populists, which is just so wrong for so many reasons.
Megan adds to the incoherence with her pretense to deeply valuing process -- no Roe or Griswold for our girl -- which is exactly what the Progressives were rather big on.
Posted by: Klein's Tiny Left Nut | Jul 30, 2007 6:21:33 PM
Don't forget that at the root of the destruction of the Justice Department is a desire to prevent black people from voting-- firing USAs who decline to pursue bogus "voter fraud" cases for which there's no evidence, and promoting Bradley Schlozmans in their place.
Posted by: Elvis Elvisberg | Jul 30, 2007 6:25:35 PM
There was a progressive movement around the turn of the 20th century. Remember Teddy. Did accomplish a number of good things too. But they were composed mostly WASP upper middle class types with roots in New England. And of course they were Republicans. I think Meagan must be referring to these people many of whom gravitated towards eugenics in the following decades. Eugenics was being used as a club to keep out all those unwashed immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. The real left was found among these latter groups.
The term 'progressive' began to take on more populous and socially conscientious connotations much later in the 20th century.
Posted by: syvanen | Jul 30, 2007 6:51:11 PM
Klein,
Talk to the Brits.... we were late for both wars.
Posted by: hmmmm | Jul 30, 2007 6:58:16 PM
ah...hmmmm...
yeah, we were "late for both wars" because the isolationist conservatives were against our getting into them. The politics of the first world war made getting into it not much of a lock for either progressives or conservatives, of course, since it was a massively stupid war and well understood to be a rich man's war. But the second world war? It was the pro-german conservatives and isolationists who kept us out of it.
aimai
Posted by: aimai | Jul 30, 2007 7:23:50 PM
She is really a moron. The plans were ready, it was the Bush administration that refused to fund the work.
She seems to think she's a liberal, though, and I think that is a pretty good explanation of why people don't like liberals.
Posted by: serial catowner | Jul 30, 2007 7:25:39 PM
My father likes to point out that had George Bush come into office saying "Shoring up the levees in New Orleans is my #1 priority" and proceeded to act...
Well, my father likes to point out that had Lincoln not been assassinated, the US would've never have gotten involved in World War I. Goes on at great length about it, the old man does. But--take note, Jane Galt--I don't go presenting his post-prandial speculations as profound and relevant thinking.
Posted by: James Gary | Jul 30, 2007 7:31:56 PM
aimai,
didn't the liberals/progressives run both branches of the gov't at the time? i'm trying to think of how much sway the two groups you mention had and I'm guessing: not a lot.
re: WWI.. yes it was a dumb war. Still, ask a brit and we were late to both.
Posted by: hmmmm | Jul 30, 2007 8:07:22 PM
Wow, how the hell did we ever win WWII when we were being ruled by some actually pretty left wing folks?
If only we'd outsourced World War 2 to the private sector. They would have completed it in half the time and under budget. By the way, did young Megan have any links or figures to support her assertion that government actually is slower than the private sector? Just wondering.
Posted by: d0n camillo | Jul 30, 2007 8:38:14 PM
hmmmm,
I think the merits for entering into each war were radically different. However, I think in both instances the US entered as fast as it could have from a political perspective. If you want to check out a rather good treatment of this issue with respect to WWII, I recommend Ian Kershaw's latest.
My real point was that the mobilization of the U.S. economy by our left wing, planning obsessed government in WWII (where unions had equal input with management for the most part) was extraordinary and occurred in part before the actual military intervention occurred.
don camillo,
LOL. Well of course the gliberterians are now taking the view that Roosevelt fucked up the Great Depression too -- if he had just left it up to the private sector it would all have sorted out much sooner.
These people are exceedingly silly in addition to being historicallt illiterate.
Posted by: Klein's Tiny Left Nut | Jul 30, 2007 10:33:19 PM
Klein,
Thanks for the pointer on the book. The original comment was mostly in jest. I could take it a step further and note that it wasn't like we beat Microsoft at war. We beat another, largely screwed up, command and control gov't! :)
Posted by: hmmmm | Jul 30, 2007 11:10:30 PM
Posted by: Klein's Tiny Left Nut | Jul 30, 2007 10:33:19 PM
I think the merits for entering into each war were radically different. However, I think in both instances the US entered as fast as it could have from a political perspective. If you want to check out a rather good treatment of this issue with respect to WWII, I recommend Ian Kershaw's latest.
...
And note that the US tends to have a better record with wars that it enters into after a tremendous amount of initial reluctance than with war that it enters into with tremendous enthusiasm.
Posted by: BruceMcF | Jul 30, 2007 11:12:00 PM
I can't believe what assholes you guys are. I mean, "her daddy" told her these things.
You guys are a bunch of fucktards.
Posted by: anon | Jul 30, 2007 11:26:34 PM
Wow, many, many misunderstandings here.
Serial Catowner, you are seven kinds of wrong. There were no "plans"; there were plans to talk about getting plans.
Environmental lawyer: yes, the EIA only takes 9-18 months. But you're on crack if you think you could do one without a lawsuit on the levees in New Orleans, which is, AFAIK, one of the top two or three things the ACOE does. Plus, the EIA is only one part of it. There's the RFP, the public hearings, reconciling the appropriations process in committee . . . it takes a very, very long time to build stuff the government wants built. Yes, the private sector takes a long time to build stuff too. But mostly because they're waiting for the government to hand out permits.
More broadly, that's a critique from the left, not the right. There's no particular reason, even for libertarians, that the government must be slow (inefficient is a different question). My Dad's a Democrat, the former head of a trade association. He's not complaining that the government is inefficient, per se; he's complaining that the US government is much more inefficient than it needs to be for procedural reasons linked to our obsession with review. There's simply no question that government projects take much, much more time than they used to because we're so obsessed with stamping out every last vestige of possible corruption and abuse that we've essentially stripped discretion from everyone. That was the progressive vision of a technocratic, rules-driven civil service, but the result has been, not paradise, but a bureaucracy that trips over itself whenever anything at all changes. This is a critique from the left about process, led by Philip Howard ("The Death of Common Sense", etc), not a critique from the right about government scope or efficiency in general. And I'm definitely not the first to make it.
Ezra, my point is not that current progressives are racist or eugenicists, or whatever; my point was that they're *not*, so why take on the name of the group that spearheaded the social hygeine movement? It wasn't an attempt to tar current progressives with the same brush; quite the reverse. Conservatives have the excuse that they've always *been* conservatives. Progressives, on the other hand, are pretty much rescuing the name from the ashbin of history, so it's worth asking the question: is this the right name?
As for whether people believe that there are serious process problems that slow down things like infrastructure works, go ahead and ask anyone who works on infrastructure. Yes, you can get things repaired fastish if they break in a calamitous way. Which is to say, they could have quickly rebuilt the levees to withstand a Cat 5 hurricane--right after they were destroyed by a Cat 5 hurricane. Getting stuff done in advance is very slow and painstaking, and the bigger the project, the longer it takes. Is anyone on this thread with experience of government projects *seriously* going to try to argue otherwise? I'm not just spouting off here; I've spent a good portion of my life at the fringes of the government construction industry. Let's compare the repair of a meltdown to a new project, like the Second Avenue Subway. The Second Avenue Subway was first proposed in . . . 1929. But a lot's happened since then, and there was a depression, so no points off for that. Anyway, it was proposed for the last, and most successful time (we devoutly hope) in the early part of the new millenium. In 2005, the matter finally went to voters, and was passed. Just a short two years later, groundbreaking happened, except then it was delayed by contract arguments. Anyway, the first leg will allegedly be completed by 2014, if there are no overruns, lawsuits, etc. By 2020, it should be complete.
The construction of the entire initial IRT system took four years. And yes, it was in dense urban areas and required, as now, opening up the streets and/or very expensive tunneling.
If you are a member of the part of the bureaucracy in charge of some review process, this seems right, natural, and vital. If you are a user of the services not being provided because we have to review everything, it's a little more frustrating--and I'd agree with those who say that the review, and the emphasis on rule-driven civil service, have gotten to much weight in the balance between public accountability and government effectiveness. But read Philip Howard's book. It's a very sensible read, and I promise, not a libertarian idea anywhere.
Posted by: Megan McArdle | Jul 30, 2007 11:51:40 PM
Isn't it possible William F. Buckley and all the rest, who you say attempted to keep institutional racism the status quo, were being honest when they said they were fighting in favor of states rights and not in favor of racism?
There cannot be a valid exchange of ideas if one side accuses the other of lying about their motives.
Posted by: Stan | Jul 31, 2007 12:31:49 AM
There is an apparent contradiction between the claim that progressives are excessively review oriented as opposed to liberals who get things done fast, and Noah Millman's claims about liberals weighing ends and means while progressives see only ends.
Posted by: Consumatopia | Jul 31, 2007 1:06:05 AM
Stan: Isn't it possible William F. Buckley and all the rest, who you say attempted to keep institutional racism the status quo, were being honest when they said they were fighting in favor of states rights and not in favor of racism?
Well, one way to determine whether they were being honest is to see whether they were consistent in their alleged support of "states' rights." Did they support that principle when it was politically inconvenient to them?
Most conservatives fail this test. Witness the conservative response to assisted suicide laws in Oregon and medical marijuana initiatives in numerous states. There was no talk of "states' rights" from the conservative crowd when these issues came up. If someone talked about "states' rights" when segregation was the issue and yet favored imposing federal power on these other issues, then yes, they are dishonest racists.
Posted by: Josh G. | Jul 31, 2007 2:50:24 AM
So wait. If I understand Megan correctly, the evidence for a politics of "eugenics" can be seen in the historical opposition to urban political machines, which catered to urban ethnic groups.
Wow. That's a breathtakingly irresponsible and content-free argument. People take her seriously?
Posted by: Martin | Jul 31, 2007 4:31:51 AM
Megan: In reality, George W Bush came into office saying (or at least thinking) "We should invade Iraq as a priority" - and, lo and behold, not much more than two years later, there we all were. And there we are today.
Where's your process and review hurdles now? Isn't the Pentagon a huge bureaucracy?
Posted by: ajay | Jul 31, 2007 5:21:04 AM
Stan,
I'd suggest that you take a look at some National Review issues circa 1960=63 to see if Buckley was merely supporting the prinicipal of State's Rights (which is invariably code for reasons Josh G notes). It is unabashedly racist, albeit with a dash of sophistication to draw a distinction between NR and the cross burners. It's pretty repulsive stuff.
Posted by: KTLN | Jul 31, 2007 7:00:29 AM
There's simply no question that government projects take much, much more time than they used to because we're so obsessed with stamping out every last vestige of possible corruption and abuse that we've essentially stripped discretion from everyone. That was the progressive vision of a technocratic, rules-driven civil service, but the result has been, not paradise, but a bureaucracy that trips over itself whenever anything at all changes.
And here is the central flaw. The progressive vision of a meritocratic civil service that followed the previously agreed upon rules is something we would all should prefer to what preceded it in the United States.
Did the progressives expect that there would be unexpected consequences to that progress, some of which would cause problems, and would require further progress? Yes, of course they did ... after all, progressivism is rooted neither in idealism nor in realism, but rather in pragmatism, including its rejection of the question of an "ultimate" goal as a category mistake.
It is absurd to take the progressive struggle to create a civil service in the context of turn-of-the-last-century America and equate it with an worship of bureaucracy for its own sake. And while some of the things that Progressives fought for at that time turned out to be clunkers ... anyone who regrets the creation of a professional civil service, compared to what preceded it, is simply engaged in fantasies regarding the efficacy of bribery, cronyism and favoritism as ways to get things done.
Indeed, one of the better things we could do to some of the more sclerotic of our bureaucracies, like the Federal Rail Administration, would be to set a full-blooded Progressive era commission to work on the bureaucratic morass, cutting out the obsolete, outmoded and wrongheaded and arriving at a situation where a rail project in the US can be built for a mere two or three times as much as one in Europe.
Posted by: BruceMcF | Jul 31, 2007 7:13:00 AM
"What she really doesn't understand is that it takes a long time to get things done in the private sector, too. I'm always amazed at how libertarians and other conservatives romanticize the supposed flexibility of the private sector. They clearly have never worked for a corporation (large or small -- and no, working for the Economist doesn't count)."
"But mostly because they're waiting for the government to hand out permits."
It is simply not true.
It is more than a little funny. I just dont know who these libertarians work for, because if they had ever worked on a big project, and by big I mean $30M plus, they would know that these projects are just huge and take forever to execute.
For example, I am working now for an exchange and designed a new product that people just love and can't wait to be delivered. Its going to be launched in October of this year. I thought of this idea for the first time in December of 2005. So from thought to delivery is almost 2 years. This is what I would consider to be a small project, but one that has decent odds of making us and many other people a ton of money. It took 2 years to be launched. To build this product to something worthwhile will take another year or so, so 3 years.
Big, real world projects take a long time to execute.
"The Second Avenue Subway was first proposed in . . . 1929."
Common clearing between the CBOT and the CME was first proposed in the 70s. I remember hearing about this holy grail when I first started working on the floor in the early 90's. The entire financial industry except for the CME and the CBOT would have benefited from it. When did it happen? In 2003, and only because of a huge threat from a European company. If you were a user of financial futures in the 90's, you were a frustrated consumer, and not by any governmental blocking of a project.
I worked in a steel mill in the 90s as an assistant engineer. We were putting in a $55M improvement. I came into when the project was roughly 10% done, so all of the planning had been done and the general contractor was chosen, and was onsite. I was there for 2 1/2 years completing it. Now, a $55M project is probably today worth about $100M, so its big but not huge.
Everything big takes a long time to do. Its just part of the process. Complaining that the govt is bad at this is not a sound foundation on which to build a political philosophy.
Posted by: mickslam | Jul 31, 2007 10:11:57 AM
Bruce McF hits it out of the park.
There is no progressive crisis in the bureaucracy. There is libertarian sabotage and conservative subversion. Efficiency can be improved via a pragmatic approach not a dogmatic one. The bigger point being that what is called the left today, is pro pragmatism and what is called the right, is pro ideology. Unde Bush 43, the results are in and the American left has been vindicated in its approach. We want a professional civil service again please.
Posted by: Northern Observer | Jul 31, 2007 10:19:26 AM
I can remember having that big-picture vision like Megan has. My dad would listen with a half grin while I connected the dots on some subject, because, after all, I was only eight years old.
Reckoning the construction time of the Second Avenue subway from 1929, though, is just breathtaking. That is a span of time that includes:
New York building a different subway line.
The great Depression.
WW II and the subsequent advent of Levittown.
Robert Moses attempting to kill public transit in NYC.
The building of the freeways, white flight to suburbia, blockbusting, and the urban riots of the 60s.
The subsequent bankruptcies of American cities in the 70s.
Yes, for sure, the private sector was a total failure in all of these events, leaving us with bankrupted cities and a suburban-road infrastructure that today needs about $2 trillion in urgent repairs (gee, kinda like New Orleans before Katrina).
But in spite of all this, the public process worked. Individuals came back to the cities and rebuilt them. The businessmen-gang politicians who had bankrupted the cities were cleaned out. The old industries, those paragons of efficiency, went tits up and floated down the river, but government funding for research and development meant that new industries emerged.
And frankly, Megan is a little dishonest here, like the guy who sells a pack of cigarettes with a warning on the box. She draws a big picture of a subway being completed 91 years after it was first proposed, and adds a few disclaimers on the picture frame.
I guess spending a lot of time on the fringes of the construction industry isn't really the same thing as getting a good education.
Posted by: serial catowner | Jul 31, 2007 10:38:14 AM
It is definitely *not* the case that private sector actors are faster, better or smarter than their public counterparts.
However, if they are egregiously bad, or fail to provide sufficiently good service, they go out of business (or should, if venal politicians didn't frequently prop them up--but if the venal politicians had less power, that would be harder to do).
Bad government is simply a lot harder to get rid of then bad businesses. And I think this reflects one of the most fundamental divides between libertarian-ish (with some liberal-technocratic leanings) folk such as myself and liberals/neo-progs.
Very broadly, and with appropriate caveats, libertarians are to be interested in minimizing the damage that bad government can do, while liberals/neo-progressives are interested in maximizing the wellbeing that good government can bring about.
Well run, soundly formulated government policy can bring about great benefit to much of society. I didn't really believe this until I lived in Switzerland for a number of years. It's pretty amazing.
But unless you have the same deeply-ingrained cultural values as the Swiss or the Scandinavians, good government is a transient phenomenon. And the misery which bad government can inflict outweighs (in my view) the good it can do. The bad parts may be few and farth between, but when they arrive, their consequences can be devastating.
People tend to think of these scattered incidents of bad governance in isolation rather than a systemic feature of a government with significant power, but I don't think that's really the case. The simple fact is that every now and again, you're going to get a George W. Bush elected as President and a rubber stamp congress. When that happens, I want the power of the government to be relatively limited, even if it means that the next time someone I like is in power, they can't do everything I would hope.
Posted by: TW Andrews | Jul 31, 2007 10:56:07 AM
Serial catowner, pardon, but you seem to have a slightly tenuous grasp on the actual history of New York City. First of all, I explicitly dated the construction from 1990's, after pointing out that the depression intervened to stop the first round of construction; I included 1929, because when I didn't on my own site, someone dutifully pointed out that this is when it was first supposed to be built. Second of all, NYC's bankruptcy can be pretty directly traced to John Lindsay, who is not widely regarded as having acted for the private (business sector)--in the same way that I am not widely regarded as too short. Third of all, Robert Moses was a creation of the Progressive movement, *not* exactly a great illustration of your point. Fourth of all, you are projecting the story of cities like Detroit onto New York, where white flight was much less pronounced, and the decline of the manufacturing base was actively encouraged by zoning, tax, and environmental policy. "The Power Broker" is not, contrary to popular belief, the only book that has ever been written on the history of New York, or even its infrastructure.
Mickslam, I was speaking of construction projects, which seem to be the most comparable class. Private ones move a lot faster, except in Manhattan, where the zoning and parcel assembly can take 20 years. Do you really see no difference between 2 years to get a software product to market, and 25-30 to build an eight-mile subway line?
Northern Observer, if you think the problem in NYC government is conservative/libertarian moles gumming up the works . . . gosh, I don't even know where to start. If you can find me a conservative or a libertarian in New York City government, I'd be more than a little astonished.
Bruce McF, I'm sympathetic to your argument, but I'm not totally sure. Yes, Jimmy Walker was corrupt, but the corruption was more complicated than it is currently portrayed, and there is a reasonable argument that we spend much more, in time and money, fighting the corruption, than the corruption used to cost us. Plus, it's not exactly like we've gotten rid of the corruption; we've just beaten it back some.
Posted by: Megan McArdle | Jul 31, 2007 11:02:42 AM
It's rare to find so much to make fun of in one comment.
Take Megan's assertion that government projects take longer today because we're obsessed with avoiding corruption.
Well, we sure didn't do that in Iraq.
In fact, the actual "experiment" in Iraq is such a stunning exposure of Megan's nonsense that it might lead us to ignore her larger ignorance.
There are two main reasons it takes longer to do things today (apart from the Bush administration putting every possible roadblock in the path of doing the right things).
First, people don't want to invest money in the kind of business failure or swindle that cost us so much in the past. So today there are regulations intended to make sure that buildings will stand up when a full gale blows, and even to some extent efforts by financial groups to make sure that the project might actually be financially viable.
Secondly, we realized that the way we did things would kill us. Bulldozing construction waste into the river wasn't just unsightly, it poisoned us, killed the fish we used to eat, and transformed resources into liabilities.
Today a lot of construction begins with a plan for cleaning up the big toxic mess the builders left in the 'good old days', when we didn't have intelligent regulations or controls.
You would think that anyone over the age of seven might have some clue about this. Heck, the fourth-graders in my county learn why we shouldn't poison our rivers. But they're in public schools, where the community can maintain some standards. Seems to be working better than whatever Megan thinks of as education.
Posted by: serial catowner | Jul 31, 2007 11:05:14 AM
Well, Megan, if you don't wish to appear duplicitous, you must make an effort to make your real point cleanly, without the hood ornament and tailfins someone in the styling department might like to add. (Ha ha, my spellchecker doesn't recognize 'tailfins'.)
For example, saying that Robert Moses was a creation of the Progressive movement is a bit of a stretch. Can you actually show some Progressive caucus or resolution demanding that new roads in New York City be built with bridges too low for a bus to pass under them? I doubt it.
So, as I say, that's a bit of a stretch, but making that statement and then just leaving it there with no accompaniment- well, that's just plain wrong. The reader at least deserves to know that by the mid-50s Moses was getting big money from GM and aggressively pushing a value system that had little or nothing to do with Progressivism.
And blaming Lindsay for the financial condition of New York after Moses built his freeways- well, that's just plain mean.
Posted by: serial catowner | Jul 31, 2007 11:26:37 AM
Fascinating. Megan actually suggests that indemic corruption might be preferable to Government regulation.
Reminds me of a Science Fiction novel called The Syndic a Right Wing Libertarian once recommended to me. It postulated a future where organized crime took over the country and everyone was better off for it.
The current regime would seem to refute this thesis.
Posted by: WB Reeves | Jul 31, 2007 12:07:46 PM
There's a world of thought to be explored from Megan's comment that white flight didn't occur in NYC in the 50s-60s.
Of course it didn't occur as it did in a city like Seattle, where entire prosperous white neighborhoods were simply abandoned by whites to penniless black people in a period of about ten years.
That happened mainly because of two things- the building of freeways, done so illegally that the courts eventually stopped the freeway builders and made them obey the law, and a Seattle city government run by business men and their stooges, that decided Seattle would be the place for the dirty industries the suburbs didn't want.
And it turned out that cleaning up the Seattle city government resulted in stupefying prosperity- stupefying, I say, because Seattle has not invested in parks or transit, but home prices today are ten times what they were 20 years ago. That's a pretty good return on a program that's 90% reform and anti-corruption, with an almost trivial investment in infrastructure.
That kind of white flight couldn't happen in NYC in the 50s-60s because prosperous white people had been leaving NYC for 50 years already. By 1900 the commuter railroads were carrying people to suburbs and a half century of outward migration followed.
By 1960 you might fairly characterize the whites remaining in NYC as 'virtual Negroes'. They were regarded by upstate NY, NJ, and Long Island as 'swarthy', not speaking good English, 'ethnic', etc etc. Whether by purpose or design they paid higher prices for food than suburbanites. The police were apparently almost entirely corrupted and the whites got the same protection, or 'protection', from them that the blacks did.
Still, the enormous size of the city meant that whites still lived there, learned to get around with what was probably a majority of minorities, and thus lived to earn the most opprobrious of labels, that of 'liberal'. They also became the fall guys for the fact that Moses-style development failed entirely to understand the changing nature of world manufacturing and shipping. The days when stevedores used cargo hooks to unload bales of cotton on the west side of Manhattan were at an end. Instead of passenger liners, travelers now used (ironically?) La Guardia Airport.
So, no, white flight didn't occur (by which I mean that the amount that did occur was statistically insignificant) in NYC in the 50s-60s, but what happened to the city was much the same as what happened to other American cities in that period, but buffered by the large numbers of population and the long period of changes.
'Nuff said.
Posted by: serial catowner | Jul 31, 2007 1:05:27 PM
"It is definitely *not* the case that private sector actors are faster, better or smarter than their public counterparts.
However, if they are egregiously bad, or fail to provide sufficiently good service, they go out of business (or should, if venal politicians didn't frequently prop them up--but if the venal politicians had less power, that would be harder to do)."
So can we count the days until Microsoft goes out of business?
Posted by: H.L. Mencken | Jul 31, 2007 2:29:57 PM
Megan says that the reason projects take a long time in the private sector is because of waiting to get government permits. That may be true for building/construction, but that is simply not the case in all of the private sector. I work in the financial industry and if we start a new project it takes an enormous amount of time to get it off the ground. Yes, part of the delay will be legal/compliance issues, but the biggest delay is the way business itself operates.
People like Megan who like to glamorize the private sector because it has "accountability" miss the catch-22: precisely because there is accountability means that there is usually extreme caution about everything. It's always easier to keep doing what you're doing and not risk being fired rather than try something new, see it fail, and get fired. That's the truth of the private sector.
Megan, here's my unsolicited career advice: quit journalism (it's a dying business anyway) and go work in the private sector for five years. Then if you want, go back to journalism -- you'll be a better writer, and thinker. (For what its worth, that's what I did, with a little side trip into politics.)
Posted by: think twice | Jul 31, 2007 2:38:46 PM
Megan, I told you there's no such thing as an "EIA" under federal law, so please get it right. And if you're claiming now that you already knew it doesn't take 5 years to do an EIS, then why did you make the opposite claim in your original post?
As for the time spent on the rest of the process, it's beyond my expertise so I can't make generalizations (unlike Megan). I will say though that here where I live in South San Francisco Bay Area - an environmentalist hotspot - many of the levee repairs motivated by Katrina have already been done. Not all, but many of them, and no lawsuits.
Posted by: Brian Schmidt | Jul 31, 2007 7:58:38 PM
