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The genius of capitalism is not that it promotes or allows expression of greed but that it promotes expression of opinion through prices.
The genius of democracy is not some theoretical notion that "everyone should get a say" but the very practical one that the free expression of ideas leads to better decisions.
Keep busy (while I am gone skiing) with Gordon Price's incisive Price Tags.which focuses on marvelous Vancouver, BC.
Issaquah Highlands embraces stylish nostalgia. So says Lawrence W. Cheek:
When a house is designed from the outside in -- meaning that all its functions must be juggled and packed into a shell of a predetermined size, shape and style -- there's literally no way to think outside that box. Which is exactly what's needed in home design today. Twenty-first century families need flexibility in interior space (movable walls, maybe?), lots of storage, ways to express and nurture individuality, and above all, better value. It's time to rethink the house, not recycle antique thinking.
I debate this fellow's premise. Yes, we have smaller families now and fewer servants than did people in the 19th and early 20th century. But do we need more flexibility, more storage. "more ways to nurture and express individuality" and better "value" than did people of the past? Do we really need to "rethink the house"? I doubt it. I am usual suspicious of critics who call for more imagination. That sounds to me like archi-babble. But go read the whole thing and make up your own mind
The more significant question raised is whether designing from the inside out to produce (supposedly and dubiously) "imaginative design" is possible within the context of creating the uniform platted streets which are essential to an urbane neighborhood. (Believe it or not, even though this project is 20 miles away, I haven't seen Issaquah Highlands so I can't judge whether Cheek's criticism are valid or not.) But overall the tone of his criticism strikes me as from the "artier than thou" school and of little relevance in building interesting neighborhoods.
Deny it if you like, but the sixties were both seminal and largely positive for America. Here's a sweet little insight into the real core of that era: traditional values of hard work and right livelihood but without the sanctimonious conservative BS. (Yeah, with just our own sanctimonious liberal BS.)
Dont' miss Ted Barlow's astute remarks at It's your money.
Bottom line: the more you look at private accounts, the worse they look.
...you could build a road. It would switch back and forth and back and forth, and there would be bridges every few hundred meters -- really scary bridges, with sheer drops on one side and, like, much bigger empty air terrifying sheer drops on the other -- and then those would alternate with tunnels and with alarming-looking cuts where thousands of tons of rock were very crudely blasted out of the mountain. It would skip from ridge, over chasm, and to ridge again like a mountain goat, zigging and zagging as it rose towards the crest. It would be expensive and it would be dangerous and it would be completely pointless, but you could do it.
If you had a country at your disposal, and no restrictions but your own sovereign whim.
Tyler Green writes:
MoMA must also try to figure out why it is so clueless when it comes to the art of the present. Lots of museums do a good job with the art of the last 20 years so there's no reason MoMA can't.
Hmmm...Art of the present...
(Of course I assume that when Tyler is talking about "art of the present" he means brand new faces, not the later works of a master..say a Picasso etc etc. which I guess could also be "art of the present" if recently made even if the artists has been around for 50 or 60 years.)
Should museums be involved in anointing "art" before the collective judgment of many individual art buyers has had a chance to play itself out? I would have thought that it was a blessing that museums are not "first-reactors," out at every gallery opening, to try to find the "next big thing." (Or are they?) Their role, I think, should be to sit back and see what emerges from the hurly-burly of individual -- not collectivized & institutionalized -- taste over at least one generation. I can't quite pin a down but there seems to be something unseemly -- robbing the cradle? -- about a museum putting art from the beginning of a career into a sanctified place.
•••
It's so odd that some of the most marvelous things in the world -- say, paintings and skiing -- seem to be associated with some of the most pretentious, strained and uncomfortable social environments. Standing in a ski-lift line (not always but sometimes) reminds me of drifting around at an art opening -- a brittle, too-aware, "Bon soir!...Rem!" pretension. Oh well, one suffers for sport as for art.
It's odd that Tony Judt would single out coffee, and Starbucks (International Development) in particular, as a metonym for a discussion of Europe vs. America.
Consider a mug of American coffee. It is found everywhere. It can be made by anyone. It is cheap—and refills are free. Being largely without flavor it can be diluted to taste. What it lacks in allure it makes up in size. It is the most democratic method ever devised for introducing caffeine into human beings. Now take a cup of Italian espresso. It requires expensive equipment. Price-to-volume ratio is outrageous, suggesting indifference to the consumer and ignorance of the market. The aesthetic satisfaction accessory to the beverage far outweighs its metabolic impact. It is not a drink; it is an artifact...
.......But something has gone wrong with this story. It is not just that Starbucks has encountered unexpected foreign resistance to double-decaf-mocha-skim-latte-with-cinnamon (except, revealingly, in the United Kingdom)....
America, crude; Europe, refined. Sounds like a bit of cant, to me, as a general proposition. And then to use Starbucks as an example of the failure of American culture...very strange.
Starbucks, much to the chagrin of its detractors, has had a dramatic and positive effect on American sensibilities and introduced a new phenomenon to American life: the daytime hangout, the public cafe, the third-place, which if there is anything which brings us visibly closer to "European lifestyle," that would be it. I can't speak to Starbucks success overseas but it seems that the company is proceeding vigorously ahead with international expansion and I assume that their sales justify the investment.
Of course I am not speaking to the thrust of his review -- that America and Europe are diverging, not converging . That may very well be true; it's not something about which I pretend to have any expertise. But it sure seems odd to me to use coffee, of all things, as an example. One of the most obvious changes in the USA in the past 20 years is that you can get a good cup of coffee just about anywhere, even at the Super Target in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Anyone who has traveled the USA over the past 40 years will have to acknowledge that if there was one thing which distinguished the entire country west of the Hudson River, it was bad coffee. And no place to just hangout except smoky bars and country clubs. That's not true nowadays, at least not everywhere.
Anyway, Judt's use of coffee as his leading image struck me as worth waking up (momentarily) from my blogging vacation. And to anyone who might remark "Hey! It's just a cup of coffee -- What about health care?" I'd suggest that the comment be directed to Professor Judt. He is the one who both perceptively -- details like a cup of coffee are indicative -- and incorrectly -- misunderstanding Starbucks' significance -- used that very cup of coffee to initiate his article.
Via Crooked Timber's The centrality of coffee.
This blog will be on vacation for a while.
Take care.
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But is there room for improvement? Probably. No human system is perfect and there is always room for tinkering. But of course the problem with asking such a question now -- and it is not an unfair question -- is that it opens the door for Republican misrepresentation...uh, lying. It's not unfair, for example, to raise the question whether we should be care one wit about old people who have made their own unwise choices in investments. But it's not cricket to raise the issue by claiming that Social Security is failing. Whether we should care for poor old people or not is a legitimate social/moral question which stands on its own.
But such is the reality of mass politics: legitimate political/philosophical questions — what duty do we owe to others? — get lost when the discussion is founded on George Bush untruths. If conservatives want to raise the question of responsibility frontally, well and good. Each generation has the chance and even obligation to reconsider the proper ordering of society. It's not illegitimate -- though I think it heartless & unwise -- to suggest, as is explcit in the idea of "private accounts," that we have no responsibility to vulnerable populations i.e. old poor people, orphans etc etc. But to raise that discussion by fabricating a problem with Social Security is chickenshit.
Kevin Drum wonders why Bush et al are pushing Social Security privatization.
Maybe a head fake of some kind?...This time, though? What's the point of loudly pushing a proposal you're going to lose? What's behind it all?
Yes, a head fake is a good way to put it. Here's my theory:
1. They know they will lose on individual "private accounts."
2. But there is still the now-undiscussed issue of where/how the Social Security Trust Fund (i.e. the huge surplus we've been building up for the past 15 or so years) can be invested. Right now it is only, I believe, in Treasuries.
3. They think the political compromise will be to allow some portion of the Social Security Trust Fund to be invested in broad market Indexes.
4. (And that may not be a bad idea, actually.)
5. Such an investment in broad market Indexes acts as a floor on stock prices...kind of a "price support" for equities.
6. What better way to protect a Dow 11,000 than to have a vast flood of new money come in to the market?
7. At least that's one theory.
•••
Nathan Newman also has a theory. So does MaxSpeak, as does The Decembrist.
But most folks seem to miss the big "head fake" i.e. that the issue is not whether the SS Trust Fund gets divided up into millions of little accounts ("dsaggregation") but whether the Fund in any form can be invested in stocks & corporate bonds. That's the issue which we are all missing.
And I think that's the gracious fall-back position for Bush when he loses on "private accounts," which I believe on reflection is a throwaway proposition. The real prize is to use the SS Trust Fund to buy into various market Indexes and thus, by the sheer weight of dollars, provide a "floor" under the market. (And btw, I am not saying that investing some small portion of the Trust Fund in the broad market is a bad idea; in fact it might be a very reasonable idea. But my guess is that's where we'll end up on this issue. It's just too bad Bush is so devious about getting to it.)
Steve Gilliard has a similar perception (as to the impact on the stock market) but thinks it's a Plot to steal your future.
Very funny, too: Christo & Jeanne-Claude Most Common Errors.
For example:
Christo was born in Bulgaria NOT IN SEVEN OTHER COUNTRIES
The Game of Errors: There are six errors in the following published short sentence.
"Christo wrapped some islands in Florida, off the coast of Miami in Key Biscayne with pink plastic."
• 1.-2. Christo and Jeanne-Claude never wrapped any Islands. They surrounded the islands. Most journalists do not understand the difference between wrapping and surrounding even though they should know that the United Kingdom is surrounded by water, it is not wrapped in water.
• 3. There were eleven islands surrounded, but because in two occasions 2 islands were surrounded together, there was a total of nine configurations on a span of seven miles.
• 4. Not off the coast. Off the coast would be in the Atlantic Ocean, east of Miami Beach.
• 5. It was in Biscayne Bay in the heart of the city of Miami, between Miami City and Miami Beach. Key Biscayne is miles away from there.
• 6. Not plastic - FABRIC, woven polypropylene is a man-made fiber, and is woven. Plastic usually refers to a film, not woven. For instance, women who wear nylon stockings are not wearing plastic stockings.
What I love about them (as projected in their website) is the tone of humor, commonsense exasperation and their willingness, nay, pleasure, in dealing with their "art" factually, directly and simply. No gushing talk from them of "flow" etc etc...
•••
Contra, for example, Andy Goldsworthy.
I just saw a DVD about him and starring him (as much or than his works) titled Rivers & Tides. And I like his work -- I had never seen it before -- but as I was watching this DVD I kept thinking "Fewer words and more information."
As the film's images accumulate, the movie becomes a sustained and ultimately refreshing meditation on surrender to the idea of temporality. So much art is an egotistical attempt to leave behind something that will be contemplated for generations and theoretically for eternity. If Mr. Goldsworthy's humility in the face of change reminds us that all is vanity, his playfulness also reminds us that a fervent engagement in the moment is in its own way infinite.
If there were ever an example of the adage that artists should be silent about their own work, then this one is it. Goldsworthy's art is sweet and charming, mostly avoiding the sentimental and saccharine, but his attempts to explain it are boring and moralizing and pretentious.
Watch the DVD with the sound off. You won't miss anything as the voice-over contains little of value.
Arts & Letters Daily linked to this article: The Frivolity of Evil by Theodore Dalrymple. It's a critique, sorta, of British society. Here's the beefiest passage I could find:
There has been an unholy alliance between those on the Left, who believe that man is endowed with rights but no duties, and libertarians on the Right, who believe that consumer choice is the answer to all social questions, an idea eagerly adopted by the Left in precisely those areas where it does not apply. Thus people have a right to bring forth children any way they like, and the children, of course, have the right not to be deprived of anything, at least anything material. How men and women associate and have children is merely a matter of consumer choice, of no more moral consequence than the choice between dark and milk chocolate, and the state must not discriminate among different forms of association and child rearing...
Can someone interpret? What is he talking about? Does anyone of any substance -- and I don't mean the people, Left & Right, who spread rumors that Dick Cheney was involved with 9-11 -- support the specific policies to which he so vigorously yet vaguely alludes? Do any of the Brits here know anyone who believes that "How men and women associate and have children is merely a matter of consumer choice, of no more moral consequence..." Do you know someone? Seriously? Does anyone take them seriously?
Dalrymple rants but -- as usual with the right-wing intellectuals -- in the vaguest and most non-specific way possible. A&LD may think it's noteworthy; I suspect it's angry cant.
I live in a city -- BlueSeattle -- that I suspect Dalrymple would destest, full as it is of liberal pieties. So when I read articles like this one, I look around my block and I wonder what people he is talking about. With respect to the sentence I quoted immediately above, the whole of American family law is built around the idea of the best interests of the child. Whether the Legislatures & Courts pull it off is one question; but that it is the pole star of thinking about family life is undeniable. And I would suspect that the same is in Britain.
So what are these middle-aged intellectuals -- ranting on about "the moral cowardice of the intellectual and political elites...responsible for the continuing social disaster?" -- really talking about? I wish they'd get down to specifics. Do he and I live on the same planet? An characterization like this one --
"...the policies of successive governments, all in the direction of libertinism, have atomized British society, so that all social solidarity within families and communities, so protective in times of hardship, has been destroyed."
-- mystifies me because it lacks any reference to specific policies.
Oh well, politics is mostly code words.
The worst structural abuse of eminent domain is its use to take private property because someone else's use of it might be more profitable. (Follow the link for some background.) The legal issue turns on the definition of "public use" which can be defined so broadly as to include condemnation of land for a new shopping center. You get a lot of that with public Port Districts where the Port condemns the land and then turns around and leases it long-term to a private shipping company. That passes for public use.
And what's really shocking is to read that D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams thinks that prohibiting such use of eminent domain is a bad thing. It pains me to read that he supports such a truly hideous and bankrupt policy. I hope that he is not typical of Democratic Party thinking on this issue. The irony of course is that the likely gainers (from such abuse of eminent domain) are fat-cat corporate-Republicans who claim that they will "bring jobs" etc etc in their quest for government advantage such as being able to assemble land outside the market.
When will Democratic politicians see through this rubbish? There is certainly common-ground to be made on this issue with the more rational right-wing private-property enthusiasts; and that's what politics is all about -- trying to strike deals on issues with people you might otherwise detest. Democrats should make those deals rather than leaving the field to the Republicans.
•••
Here's more background: Panelists discuss eminent domain.
People who favor giving government power to seize land for new houses and stores pleaded their case Wednesday in Cleveland, but they won't have a say when the nation's top court hears the matter early next year. Panelists at Cleveland State University exhumed and dissected Lakewood's Issue 47, which was narrowly defeated last fall. Voters were asked whether the city should be allowed to use its powers of eminent domain to take land after paying fair market value so private developers could build upscale housing and shops in the West End neighborhood. (emphasis added.)
It amazes me that people can even think that the matter is worthy of discussion. Here is where we see the worst synthesis of government and capital (shades of those "public-private partnerships" -- what a euphemistic & soothing term).
Ian Bertram asked a good question: "... how is the value of land assessed when eminent domain is exercised in the US? Who sets the value, what appeal rights etc exist?"
My return comment was so long that I might as well post it.
•••
.....I have never been directly involved in a condemnation action, so this is all third hand, but my understanding that in most of the American states the process is something like this:
A duly-empowered PUBLIC body -- say a Port or Park District -- develops a plan for, say, a new Port or a new Park. It designates the boundaries. It approaches each property owner within those boundaries and says that it is implementing the plan and it needs to acquire the owner's property. It does or has already had an appraisal done to determine Fair Market Value for each parcel so it quotes that figure as the purchase price.
The property owner either accepts that figure as truly Fair Market Value or tries to negotiate by hiring his own appraiser to come up with what he thinks is the correct value.
Both parties know that at some price the owner must sell -- that's the whole point, of course, of eminent domain -- to the public body.
If the public agency's appraiser can be persuaded that the new appraisal is more accurate -- perhaps some attribute of the property (such as a good view) had not been considered in the appraisal -- then the sale probably proceeds.
If the parties cannot agree, then the public agency has to bring a court action and there is actually a trial in a court to determine the fair market value. Conceivably that value could be even lower than the public agency's appraisal because I don't believe that the court simply says "Which appraisal is better?" but it can start the valuation process afresh, de novo. So there is some real strategizing to be done by both sides. The agency doesn't want the political fall out of a trial, the dealys etc and the owner may end up getting less than initially offered if he goes to Court.
But bear in mind, I have no direct experience. I do know that it can be a very messy and unfair process and public agencys, though they claim the high moral ground of "the public interest." can nevertheless actually be acting on behalf of (in fact) very private interests. I am not even talking any illegality but simpy the fact that it is well-known that public bureaucracies very often get "captured" by private groups.
Condemnation doesn't (I believe) really take into account the value to (say) an ongoing business of the value of a particular location, much less sentimental value for a homeowner and of course you don't usually see condemnation in rich neighborhoods so the poor usually suffer most.
My defense of eminent domain has never been that it is a good thing but simply that it can be (and some, at least, of its abuses could/should be eliminated) the best of many bad ways to create infrastructure. And for certain public facilities like a road or rail line, I am not even remotely persuaded that some of the Rube Goldberg alternatives which are routinely set forth have any chance of working. So society is stuck with balancing benefit to the majority with trying to be fair to the unwilling seller. It's not pretty; but many of the benefits of our society -- I think the creation of Central Park in NYC involved condemnation -- could not exist without it. So take your choice.
I think that's the gist of it but then again I don't know that much about the mechanics.
My post (a few days ago) about toll roads and eminent domain sparked some imaginative commentary. One reader left this intriguing remark:
"...if eminent domain didn't exist there are probably a lot of ways the market could solve the problem."
Uh...wait a second. The market existed long before eminent domain. That's anthropological fact. People were trading long before government at all.
Eminent domain came about precisely because the market could not solve the endless bargaining problem. Eminent domain was not part of some original condition given to us by God and from which we have to escape. It was adopted by human beings to solve a problem. You may not like eminent domain and indeed it has been and is abused and needs reform, at least in the USA. But let's start our discussion with reference to reality, not fantasy. Eminent domain is itself a solution to market imperfections. Eminent domain came into use precisely because the market could not solve the bargaining problem and so it conjured up a deus ex machina to intervene.
UPDATE: The issue is not whether you oppose eminent domain but the historical issue of how it came about. This post was not meant to ask whether you like it or not, but whether opposition to eminent domain can be squared with our history and how eminent domain came to be used.
Believe it or not, one self-proclaimed pro-capitalist is upset with a bookstore chain for firing a staff member.
Sacked for blogging. A blogger who worked for Waterstones bookshop has been sacked for "bringing the company into disrepute", reports the Guardian. Judging from the quotes given Joe Gordon of the Woolamaloo Gazette swears too much but the comments that got him fired were trivial. Waterstones should grow up. Waterstones should learn the phrase unintended consequences.
Hey. It's Waterstone's money. Why shouldn't it be able to fire someone at will? Even for a stupid reason? It's called capitalism. If you don't like it, become a socialist and whine about "greedy employers." It's so cute when right-wingers complain about, of all things, unfair labor practices.
Lies and damned lies
Nothing gets the political class to lying their faces off like the chance to spend your money on their legacy.
I agree (with the conclusion about the idiocy of a lot of "legacy" projects) but who is this damned political class? Is it a euphemism for something? A contrivance? Who else but someone in the political class would even know to use the term? I suspect it's one of those meaningless phrases which is used by one part of the political class in order to diminish another part of the political class....sorta like all those people on the Right (many of real talent and skill even if sadly misguided) who really against elites and elitists, maby of whom are their own classmates. Silly stuff which diverts from substantive discussion. You will not find me using that phrase "political class" except to make fun of it.
It could be used as a test: "Will people not members of the political class raise their hand?" Most folks just look bewildered; someone says to a neighbor, "I voted last election. Does that mean me?" Anyone who raises a hand must knows what the political class is and therefore must be part of it.
White House says Iraq weapons search is over.
WASHINGTON – The search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has quietly concluded without any evidence of the banned weapons that President Bush cited as justification for going to war, the White House said Wednesday
(Ed. Note: I have put this post back up to the head of the list for a few days because it should not be missed and on a blog, as in the supermarket, placement make a statement.)
•••
In terms of politics, basically no one.
I am in favor of home-ownership for the greatest number of people. Home-ownership promotes social stability. Owning rather than renting gives people a great psychological stake in their community. That’s the old saw and I believe it, even though I really don’t know how I would prove that it makes sound public policy. Home-ownership is a means (though not an exclusive one as communities of renters can also be quite dynamic) to further social and political stability. Thus I believe that the issue of making housing affordable to the widest number of people is a vital, real and compelling goal.
(Ed note: The paragraph above is filled with the sort of banal platitudes with which it is traditional to start a talk so that people can bond with the speaker. Read further; it gets much better.)
With that said, let me voice some concerns.
Underlying much current interest in ‘affordable housing’ is the implicit assumption that there is some set of government programs or actions which will be able to solve or at least ameliorate the problem. Putting that larger premise aside for the moment, any governmental action will require a political consensus. Does such political consensus—i.e. to ‘do something’ to make housing more affordable—now exist or appear likely to be formed? Do people really want affordable housing? i.e. is there an emerging political constituency behind ‘affordable housing?’
I suggest ‘NO.’
City Comforts Blog (11/22/04) - Do you like Iraqi food?
So I hope Iraqi food is good because I foresee -- and I do hope for their sake, more than ours, that I am wrong -- a lot of Iraqis emigres living here and making their way by running restaurants serving their national food...
VDARE.com (01/09/05) - Get ready—because here they come!
I hope Iraqi cuisine is tasty, because a lot of Iraqi collaborators will probably end up running restaurants in America once one group or another of fanatically anti-American insurgents ends up in power in Baghdad.
I guess great minds think alike except when they come to different conclusions.
I don't think there's one in life and nor is there one in this wonderful movie -- Dirty Pretty Things -- which I saw over the weekend. Some view the movie as having a political message about illegal immigrants but I think that's incidental. I saw it primarily as a low-key (i.e. little violence) thriller about how some very appealing, very real people to get out of trouble. Except for the jerks from British Immigration, everyone else in the movie -- even the one rogue -- is charming; you care about them. So that broadest sense -- "illegal immigrants are people, too" -- I guess it's a political film. But I didn't see much more than that.
The Macworld event is an annual rite for the Mac faithful, who accord the conference a reverence approaching that surrounding baseball's spring training. Each year there is impassioned speculation about what Mr. Jobs may or may not be planning for the coming year. In recent years a handful of Macintosh rumor Web sites have fed the frenzy by publishing ostensibly leaked product descriptions of the coming announcements.
I'd like Jobs to announce An Idea Whose Time Has Come Back:
the iPod Reader .
UPDATE in response to first comment: And I'm thinking of a screen a bit larger, maybe suitable for middle-age eyes and the reading of a book. But thanks for the tip and I guess your larger point is that the current iPod is on the trajectory and could well become a reading device.
(Btw, my own particular interest in the matter, beyond the obvious one that it would a convenience personally, is that I would like to "port" my book City Comforts to ebook format.)
...this Map of the Great Plains:
Credit University of Nebraska Press
(Don't miss the very thoughtful comment from Chris D.)
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Department of You-heard-it-here-first: The Great Plains will be The Next Big Thing. I don't know exactly it will manifest itself but The Great Plains are coming back as some sort of "item." For those who are curious about the region, follow this blog.
His characterization (unless it is tongue-in-cheek and then the joke is on me) is yet one more indication that libertarians' lack perspective. And such lack of perspective is yet another reason why -- to our universal detriment, (assuming one can frame things in terms of universals when dealing with extreme individualists) -- libertarians have virtually no influence in politics.
UPDATE:
1. Anyone who thinks (seriously now) in such hackneyed, simplistic, 1950s terms as "collectivist" should not be reading this blog. I like to think my readers have subtle, supple, adult minds and are reality-based.
2. Anyone who thinks that I am a "collectivist" has obviously not been reading this blog (or my book) and has zilch knowledge of what I write. (Read this blog for a while before you comment, please.)
3. Anyone who speaks and writes a language and yet who thinks in terms of "collectivist" should actually start thinking about what they are doing. With every thought, every word, every sentence, (such as they are able to form), they themselves are taking part in the original collectivist enterprise: language. So get real. If you don't like being part of a collective, stop talking. (Or make up a new language all your own and talk only to yourself.)
Securing the corridor is not just a military problem.
Alex Tabarrok writes blithely in Toll Collect:
I see toll roads, most privately operated and some privately owned, as the road of the future. Road pricing can not only reduce congestion it can also help with accident externalities.
The libertarians at Samizdata and Transport Blog are also dreamily infatuated with this model; but the one flaw I see -- and no one seems to be able to answer it except by waving their hands wildly and talking about "mutual advantage" -- is how do you secure the corridor without government's power of eminent domain? Talk all you like about negotiating with private property owners; the transaction costs involved cannot be surmounted; you need the government's heavy hand of condemnation to secure a road in and between metro areas -- which is of course exactly where you'd want to put the new roads, if you could garner the political support to put very many new roads anywhere.
I might like to believe otherwise but I am a realist.
And if you are merely talking about private financing of roads already designed and with a route secured by the government, then I don't think that's much of a big deal.
(Note: This post doesn't reach the issue of pricing road use, which I think is another one of those attractive ideas with superficial appeal and which also faces insurmountable practical, legal and political problems.)
UPDATE: The very interesting commments buttress my point. In order to avoid condemnation, eminent domain, you have to come up with a Rube Goldberg set of assumptions about how to create a rather vast transport corridor through the negotiation (along with feints and counterfeints) of rights and options. The suggestions, while having some theoetical appeal, seem to me to ignore the difficulties of negotiating with thousands of owners as well as the practical limitations on where new corridors could/should go.
I suggest that anyone familiar with the very reality-based world of real estate will see what I mean.
The Frank Ghery-designed "BP Bridge" at Millennium Park in Chicago has been closed due to snow. The bridge, which connects the park with the eastern section of Grant Park, is made of a Brazilian hardwood that could be damaged by applying the ubiquitous salt that is used in Chicago to prevent pedestrian slippage.
One would think that an architect of Ghery's skill would recognize the climatological particularities of Chicago and the ways in which Chicagoans negotiate with the harsh winter climate
Such SSB concerns.
•••
Further comment at
AmShazam.: Gehry in winter and
Why LA architects should not be allowed to design buildings here.
Elephants saved tourists from tsunami.
Agitated elephants felt the tsunami coming, and their sensitivity saved about a dozen foreign tourists from the fate of thousands killed by the giant waves.
Christo & Company is, so far as I can tell, the first real estate artist. Some people -- snobs -- sneer at that; I admire the judgment & skill & daring it takes to pull off their projects (i.e. Christo and his wife work as a team).
Tyler Green takes note of the Central Park Gates and also NEW CRITERION'S (extremely predictable) bleats.
Me? It's a great excuse to see New York City this winter.
More opinions on the Gates: here an old con and then a more recent pro.
UPDATE: We'll be in NYC on February 15-16 to see The Gates!
And, thanks to an alert from reader JTMcCann, I have just purchased tickets for Boozy: The Life, Death, and Subsequent Vilification of Le Corbusier
This old post on "Law and Architecture Revisited" at God of the Machine made me wonder. Aaron Haspel wrote:
What happens if the guy next door decides to sell out to hog-processing plant? The short answer is, too bad. You've chosen to live somewhere he's allowed to do that, and it's his decision, not yours. The slightly longer answer is, if the hog-processing plant is damaging your property, by, say, belching toxic smoke into it, you do the American thing and sue. To the extent that the plant owner damages you — by tortiously interfering with your property, not by lowering the tone of the neighborhood — he pays. For this to work properly would require a major revision of liability law, which is a post for another day.
Perhaps one way to look at is to consider that indeed we followed that path:
"The slightly longer answer is, if the hog-processing plant is damaging your property, by, say, belching toxic smoke into it, you do the American thing and sue."
And we decided as a society that it was economically inefficient to insist that every land use gripe become a court case, and that in fact there are some generalized rules which would be fair to apply to all properties in a given locale. That is the historical origin of zoning and Professor Grant Gilmore wrote about it in a more general sense (i.e. about the birth of the regulatory society) in "The Death of Contract." (Great book, btw.)
In a complex urbanizing society, we decided that it made no sense to insist on making every land use conflict a lawsuit i.e. that we could forestall lawsuits and the economic ineffeciency they bring if we could create general principles in the form of 'zones.'
What goes along with the issue of Flexibility vs. Predictability in administrative systems (and you thought you'd be entertained at CCBlog!) is the issue of corruption. It seems to me that the more discretion you give decision-makers, and the more decisions you give them, the higher chance you will have bribery, corruption and so forth.
I can't agree that we should go as far as this blogger concludes:
The Mayor is eliminating official bribery by radically downsizing the number of petty crimes that are available to extort money over. The first target has been non-criminal traffic and parking citations (drunk driving and other dangerous behavior incidents still draw the police). So far, the experiment is working and a radical experiment of freedom is born, not as classical liberal experiment but as a desperate measure to pry society's official wolves out of the people's wallets.
Next up? Building permits.
But a lessening of the regulatory regime around construction (from where we are now) would be another good idea for Democrats to work into their re-thinking. Fat chance.
Asymmetrical Information says:
Sorry for the inconvenience...
..but we have had to change our XML/RSS pages back to excerpts instead of whole entries. Too many of you didn't come to the site at all and it has killed our blogad revenue, despite continued high bandwidth usage. This is a very expensive site to maintain, unfortunately.
You can scratch the stuff in italics so far as City Comforts Blog is concerned; I have never hit any "excess bandwith usage" so far as I know and have no revenue. But of course maybe that's because too many people browse this blog elsewwhere? I somewhat doubt it but I hadn't really thought through the economic ramifications of aggregators so I shall conduct a little experiment. I mean that is what the blogosphere is all about, isn't it?
Articles about how much congestion is costing us --- I had a link but it expired; I am sure you can find your own hysterical end-of-the-world story-because-of-congestion if you simply watch the penny-press for an hour or two --- make me think.
Obviously people are perfectly willing to live at a far remove from center cities, causing themselves long commutes or else they wouldn't live there. By and large they know that they are putting themselves in a situation where they will spend a lot of time in traffic. They make a rational decision to pay less for a house or to live a certain "lifestyle" in exchange for spending more time travelling.
So what's the problem? I don't think we have any obligation by extraordinary financial measures to accommodate their preference for a suburban lifestyle and for quick access to everywhere in a metropolitan regio . People who create traffic jams by living where they have a long commute are the ones who pay for congestion by suffering in traffic jams. Seems like a pretty self-correcting system. They cause it; they suffer. When they get tired of paying with their time, they will start paying with dollars by moving to a more central and more expensive location.
Of course I could imagine that a State Highway Department will now argue that building more highways to distant suburbs is the best way to create affordable housing. And in an odd way, they would be correct. Individuals gain cheaper housing in far-distant suburbs and pay by suffering congestion in their daily lives on highways which (in theory) are primarily paid for by their own gas taxes. So what's the problem? I guess the problem is when their gas taxes don't really pay for the highways and they want the rest of us to pay.
So to some degree the "no action alternative" is the most rational and least-expensive way to solve the "congestion problem."
No?
City Comforts (not an enviro blog, but I like it anyway).
And of course, thanks anyway. Sincerely.
I was cleaning out some old drafts and I ran into Professor Gary Hack's 'Ten Commandments of Design Review'. I think they are pretty astute so I'll post them. Please note especially #s 7,8 & 9.
1. Design Review is a not quick fix and is not a substitute for rezoning. Design review works best when it deals with how to develop, not whether or what to develop. It is destined for failure if design issues are mixed with basic issues of use and scale.
2. Do not overreach. Don't try to regulate too much. Isolate the small number of critical aspects of design that can make a difference. Ask: "How few rules to set?"
3. Have standards: do not invent them as you go along. Inventing rules on the fly is a sure prescription for a crash landing. There must be precise rules available in advance of using the process.
4. Tell people in advance what you would like to see. You can only review what you get. Provide illustrations, give awards to projects that are sensitive to neighborhood concerns. Providing adequate information will help produce applications that approximate what is desired.
5. Design review inherently involves editorializing. Value judgements and choices must be made. Communities are diverse. Many places have no character or qualities that are desirable to reproduce, and in those cases decisions about the type of design that is desirable must be made.
6. Design review needs patronage, a core of supporters who stick with it over time. The support is necessary because in the process a lot of people will not be getting all they want. The supporters will help shore up the process when those who have not gotten what they want from it become frustrated. A review board of highly respected members can play this role, or there could be a group appointed to monitor and evaluate the process that also assumes this role.7. Be prepared to break the rules. The best environments have landmarks, folly and divergence from the norm. This is especially true of public institutions, public locations or intersections.
8. Preserve the future as well as the past. Create some new things--things that are not there today. Remember the importance of diversity and have a vision of what the neighborhood ought to be like.
9. Design review is not about creating beautiful buildings. It is not taste making. It is about creating good street, good communities and protecting important symbols and about determining whether new development fits in.10. Start by identifying the icons and the aliens in a neighborhood. Identify the buildings which give a neighborhood its unique character or serve as significant landmarks, as well as those styles of structure which does not belong. Establish the rules from there.
I first heard them when Hack came to Seattle to give a talk some 15 years ago and they have stuck with me.
When I read that this bridge carried a cable car beneath it, I was astonished.
So I looked a bit further and through the overwhelming magic of the web, I discovered that Transporter Bridges were not at all uncommon or odd, much to initial astonishment.
Ted Mills suggests a cool new (to me) blog :a good place for a cup of tea and a think.
Also, a related blog: eggbaconchipsandbeans.
Andrew Sullivan decides for everyone:
If you are an honest public writer, you deal with the person you are, not the person it would be easier to be.
So therefore everyone who is a "public writer" -- whatever that means; am I a "public writer because I have a blog and a book etc etc?" -- has no choice in what they chose to present about themselves. Weird. What presumption. I don't understand why Susan Sontag should have been under any obligation whatsoever to share her own private sexual preference (or other preference for that matter such as in food or sport or stock brokers) with anyone else -- with one exception: if she had criticized others for maintaining a private life. Otherwise it's her own private business and we should leave her alone.
UPDATE: Just to make it crystal clear, if Sullivan could point to a statement of Sontag's in which Sontag says that an individual has an obligation to make public her private preferences, then of course I would change my position about her. But lacking such a smoking gun, my suspicion is that Sullivan merely wants to denigrate Sontag because of her "leftist" positions. I don't know for sure, of course, but that's what it looks like, especially in light of his praise of Paglia, who I believe is some sort of conservative. (True?)
Geov Parrish says:.
But the greatest artificial hazards in this tragedy are not environmental; they are political. Precious days were wasted, particularly by the Bush administration, while the scope of the crisis facing quake and tsunami survivors became clearer. For five successive business days, the White House, vacating in Crawford, Texas, gradually escalated its response, from a pitiful $15 million with no public appearance by Dubya to the weekend's $350 million with a mass military mobilization. Finally, it seemed, our government Got It.
I wonder about that "Precious days were wasted..." GW Bush's slow response seems irrelevant to helping the people damaged by the tsunami. The only thing which might have been done a few days earlier (that I can see) is to have pushed the US Navy desalinization ships on the way to the stricken areas, for whatever good that will do. Private money was flowing in immediately and I am not aware that the Red Cross or other agencies were short in the first 72 hours. My own take is that a catastrophe such as this one is so enormous that the first few days are not the key ones -- it's like Afghanistan where it is the steady long-term follow-up which is most critical.
The major importance of the slow response seems political i.e. GW Bush looked asleep at the wheel, unconscious. Whether a quicker response -- the President flying to Sri Lanka in Air Force One as a show of support-- would have made any difference in lessening suffering I doubt; but I guess we'll have to wait a few months for an assessment; I am certainly no expert in disaster-response.
And none of the above speaks to the initial bizarre offer of $15 million in aid; that was simply strange and embarassing. But even if Powell had stood up and said "Here's a billion dollars" I can't see that that would have made any difference. The damage was done in, what, 20 minutes?
Let's criticize GW Bush when he really deserves it. (And there are no lack of opportunities, so don't worry.)
UPDATE: Norm Geras also has some thoughts on this matter of finding fault with others by use of the tsunami tragedy.
I glanced at a recent issue ofThe Nation. And much as I have ever-growing disadain for the "policies" (should you want to dignify them) & tone of so-called conservative Republicans, I have to admit that there is a lot of confusion on my side of the table, too.
Islam is part of Europe, historically as well as demographically. It is also the Other against which Europe has defined itself, at least since the Crusades. If the "Muslim problem" is not to become Europe's new "Jewish question," that thorny conversation has to be continued and expanded, openly and without censorship on either side.
First off, I simply don't think it's accurate to say that Islam has been "the Other against which Europe has defined itself." It certainly isn't consistent with what I learned about our European ciultural history and if it has any basis. it's such an important point that it deserves far more than a casual throw-away reference. Moreover, the comparison of the current "Muslim problem" with the "Jewish question" is a viscious canard, unless one buys into lies that Jews, at any time in the last two thousand years, were a threat to European freedom, rationality etc etc much less basic Christian beliefs. And if you believe that lie, you should not be reading this blog. Please.
Oh we have jerks of every party, for sure, and lots of dumb things going on in politics. But people, maybe especially Republicans who play hardball when it comes to seizing power through electoral problems, are overly-suspicious. Sometimes a close election is simply a close election. Some folks do not understand Washington State or King County and are viewing things through their own corrupt prism i.e. "everyone is as dishonest as we are."
But Karyn Quinlan understands. Read Inside the Recount.
Democrat Christine Gregoire was elected governor by 129 votes last month in the third tabulation of one of the closest elections in U.S. history. While many are skeptical about the outcome, I am not among them. I was there at the historic moment the last ballots were tallied. In fact, I personally counted those and more than 10,000 of the 900,000 other ballots cast in King County. Over two weeks, as a temporary county employee and Democratic Party designee, I also learned a thing or two about partisan holy war—and human nature. The Re-Recount of 2004 wasn't pretty, but the system worked as designed. The hand recount gave us the true winner: the voters.
Kevin Drum post on one of the most egregious examples of "public-private" partnerships -- the phrase itself reeks -- tax concessions to attract corporations. This issue -- along with limitations on eminent domain (i.e. condemnation of private property) to subsidize one private business at the expense of another -- should be in the forefront of urban wonk-think.
Out of the blue on a post at eponymous 2 Blowhards I read a comment which stops me in my tracks:
The Lind reminds me of a posting I was nursing and finally gave up on. Had a great title for it: "Paul Krugman: Godhead or Dickhead?" My point was going to be that the Dems never seem to stop shooting themselves in the feet. If they're to win -- which I assume is something they actually care about -- they need to win over some of the people they seem to take such pleasure in insulting. Krugman, who loves taking the scornful/wrathful tone as he demonstrates his points, may be right in the abstract about everything he says. He may be an econ genius for all I know. But he's obviously an idiot where politics and people are concerned. Most people -- at least from the very Red states -- are going to look at this pompous bigshot, say "What a dick," and choose not to join his team.
But maybe it doesn't take genius to look at people who need votes yet insist on ridiculing the people whose votes they need, and to say, Hey, you aren't going to get anywhere with that approach.
It's so vague yet vituperative -- where is this ridicule which so injures the delicate feelings of tender-souled conservatives? -- that I have to go find a Krugman column to see what Michael Blowhard, author of the comment, is talking about. I find today's, January 4, 2005. I read it. I leave the following comment at Blowhards:
Michael Blowhard. Are you serious? Or just blowing off steam, hard?
I can't say that I read Krugman as carefully as you apparently do as he just slightly bores me but your anger takes me aback. (And of course the (comment's) lack of any specifics, details, examples etc. is puzzling as I know that you have a great eye for them -- your recent post on the blues festival was rich with object & texture.)
But just so I can get a frame of reference for your anger, could you please take a look at his column of today --
Stopping the Bum's Rush
-- and tell me if that one contains the sort of scornful/wrathful tone you find so contemptible. I am trying to figure out what you see that I don't; while one can certainly differ with his conclusion about Social Security, he seems to me to be quite civil. No?
The reason I bring this up (yet again and it won't be the last time) is because one of the things which my Sensible-Shoes Bourgeois attitude gives me is a respect for method and rigor. If I read something which asserts "A" then " I immediately look for the author to show me some examples, some details to support his assertion of "A." Yes, I know. Simple-minded. Totally SSB. Boring. Unimaginative. Dull. Prosaic. The mind of an accountant. But if I don't see such support, I think less of the statement. I especially look for "evidence" when I read people I respect. I want to keep respecting them and I can't when I find them spouting. So you might say asking people for examples to support their statements is my way of "tough love."
•••
UPDATE: Michael Blowhard responds on his own blog and it is pretty skimpy, smarmy stuff. Nixonian. His gist is that if you criticize your political opponents arguments then you are diminishing them personally. It's such a strange argument -- followed to completion it would prevent Michael from writing his own post! -- and so lacking in commonsense that Michael ought to reconsider. I am actually astonished that a clever Blowhard (is that an oxymoron?) would offer such a pathetic, fumbling response. Why can't he just come right out and say "Gee, I was hasty."
Isn't there an old line about "the tree falling in the forest?" I mean at least that is posed as a question. Nevertheless, AC Douglas suggests:
Let me make myself clear about this, if I haven't up to this point (and I think I have), by stating the matter in the bluntest of terms....the audience doesn't count. The actors don't count. The director doesn't count. Even the playwright himself doesn't count. Nothing counts but the created artwork: the play itself and its aesthetic realization; a realization determined -- determined exclusively -- by the requirements and dictates of the play's text alone in which is contained what's necessary for the achieving of the "aesthetic transcendence..." (italics added.)
What's left? I mean, how can the play exist without actors? Without an audience?
Next we'll learn that the same thing applies to buildings i.e. that the architect and the users don't count...that the only thing that counts is the isolated glittering precious-object, (even without doors or windows or watertight roof — for people don't count)...a structure aims to be a pure piece of "aesthetic transcendence" for its own pleasure. Aye, Robot.
Richard Nixon said it best: "We are all Keynsians now."
Consider. Some new perspective (Keynes' economics) or technology (the automobile) comes along. It is so obviously superior that it is adopted and becomes so much part of the landscape (literally) that it is hard to imagine that anyone ever did things differently. (With reference to Keynes, massive governmental intervention into the economy is now accepted as much by Republicans as by Democrats and the arguments are only at the margins.)
So too with "technology." Every now and then I read some reference to environmentalists (and a latter day Nixon could with some justification claim that "We are all environmentalists now") as being "anti-technology." Bosh. How can you be "anti-technology" in today's world? What does such a statement mean? A review of this book -- Nature's Operating Instructions: The True Biotechnologies -- brought such meta-questions to mind.
Read the review; notice the co-publisher: The Sierra Club.
I haven't read the book and it might well be that its ideas are not practical. But it as an example that the conventional characterization of greens as "anti-technology" is such a vast simplification that it is false. Certainly many greens are dubious about certain technologies; it would take a fool to suggest that the use of, say, the automobile has had no downsides. So a certain conservatism and caution is only sensible when it comes to technology, though how to manifest such caution is of course debatable. But to claim that greens are anti-technology in general is, I suggest, simple a useful tactic by people who themselves are advocating certain</
