Back in 2008 or 2009 I gave a Pecha Kucha presentation in Indianapolis in which I said:
Cities can’t survive on gentrification alone. The broad community has to be a participant in its success. That’s why I’m somewhat down on the notion of the creative class. It’s good as far as it goes, but it’s a self-consciously elitist vision. Where’s the working class in that?
Arguing among ourselves [city vs. suburbs] is like beggars fighting over table scraps. We need to build the city up without tearing the suburbs down.
There can’t be a successful Indianapolis with a successful Indiana….While [metro] Indy has 25% of the states’ population, it has 60% of the state’s population growth and 80% of its economic growth. That’s not healthy. Like it or not, we’re dependent on the state for critical infrastructure funds and other things. So our challenge is how to bring the rest of the state along with us.
I’ve long been an advocate for the restoration what I call the commonwealth, the idea that we rise and fall together as a people and all have skin the game. This idea has gone by the wayside to say the least.
It may well be that American society has become irredeemably tribalized. I hope not. At a minimum, there are significant sized groups with fundamentally incompatible ideas of the public good. There’s a lot to unpack in that statement, but not today.
Richard Florida has talked about a “great reset” of the economy. Clearly we need some sort of institutional reset to contain or resolve these differences. We’ve done this before in creating the original Constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation, fighting a Civil War and redefining the federalism of that constitution, the New Deal era changes, and perhaps others.
What that looks like, I don’t know. But if we are to reach it without even more severe upheavals, it’s likely to involve some renewed form of federalism, agree to disagree, live and let live, etc – and on durable basis, not just an opportunistic and self-interested one.
This will involve painful change and difficult decisions. One of them is that we must be willing to give others the freedom to make choices for themselves and their communities that we fundamentally disagree with.
To the extent that we believe all of the big decisions of our society are morally determined, and thus not properly the subject of political debate, this means we are in a winner take all world. If you want that world, you’d better be really sure you are right and sure you are going to win – because you face ruination if you’re wrong on either count.
It also means that we need to figure out how to have both love and accountability towards all of our citizens. Right now that means that rural white Republicans in victory cannot ignore the continued urgent need to integrate urban black America into full participation in middle class success and to address other aspects of what Richard Florida has labeled the “new urban crisis.”
It also means that working class whites must be challenged to change. I have made no secret in these pages that these communities too often have sabotaging traits that really aren’t necessary to cling to – such as the disparagement of ambition for better.
But urban and left leaning populations, including minority groups, need to likewise address travails of the white working class, and be willing to make painful changes of their own.
To be honest, I’m not optimistic. But I am hopeful. The future hold possibilities for ill that we cannot know – but it likewise holds the possibility for good things we can’t yet imagine.
I don’t really know how to respond to this, so perhaps I should remain silent. But… What I see, and have seen for many years now, is the ongoing triumph of radical individualism – every person for themselves, and devil take the hindmost. It’s the sort of model of human behavior I saw endlessly elaborated upon during way too many economics classes. Occasionally there’d be a pro forma acknowledgment of “externalities” or extreme concentration of wealth and opportunity as the logically inevitable outcome of unfettered markets, but then it would be right back into the crystalline mathematical beauty of individual utility maximization, coupled with mathematically convenient aggregation of individual preferences and results, magically transformed into a greater overall good that resolutely ignored distributional issues. Same with demonstrations of comparative advantage, often brought forth to justify free trade agreements, that ignored a key underlying assumption of immobile capital. True enough, perhaps, in Ricardo’s day, but not representative of the immense capital flows we see today. And of course, the elephant in the room: the scale of the human economy relative to the ecological carrying capacity of the Earth. Perhaps I’ve been away from economics too long, and have sunk even further into ignorance. But from where I sit, I think we need a new economics. A new story of how our world works that can better inform public policy discussion. I’ll be quiet now.
Mordant: I think you should speak up, man! Do you have your own blog?
Great comment, thanks, Mordant. I’m with basenjibrian – find a place to publish.
“..the ongoing triumph of radical individualism…” – please keep in mind that this was not just a fallout from economics. Individualism was also a response to the horrid collectivist states of the mid-20th Century, which took over too much of the world, at least temporarily (Germany, Russia, China, Spain, Italy, Japan, many smaller places). We’re still dealing with some of these odious regimes today, or their slightly less horrid follow-ons. Individualism, even of a “radical” variety, was not an irrational response to this phenomenon.
Tamping back that individualist needle a bit may be overdue, but there are 7 billion people on the planet now (to your “carrying capacity” point) – there isn’t enough wealth on the planet to make them all middle class, not by a western definition of middle class anyway – so simply saying “distribution” is not enough. I’d like to see some actual math on that distribution, not just inspiring words. If you just aim to make things a bit easier for the poor, good, but I will have to ask what you personally are willing to give up to help do that, (or how much more productive are you able to be, to help do that). Don’t just dump it all on your neighbors – Bill Gates is only worth $82 billion, divide by 7 billion, it isn’t much. (disclosure: I’m nowhere near the 1%, but I am very wary of grand distributionist schemes, which usually require tyranny to impose).
Thanks for the opportunity to reply.
“Like it or not, we’re dependent on the state for critical infrastructure funds and other things. So our challenge is how to bring the rest of the state along with us.”
This statement seems to imply that it’s Indianapolis that’s holding back the rest of the state from moving forward (or failing to bring them along). But isn’t the opposite the case – that it’s the rest of the state that constantly throws roadblocks in the way of Indianapolis while skimming off as much of the economic growth as possible for their own communities?
Thanks aim, I was going to say the same thing. Big cities and metro areas as a whole are the economic engines of the country, so the fact that they have to jump through a bunch of hoops to claw back their own tax revenue from the state or the feds doesn’t mean they’re charity cases. If Indianapolis was suddenly wiped off the map, those rural and small town locales would be in a world of hurt without all the taxes siphoned away from Indy to support their infrastructure and services.
Aaron, amen. Couldn’t agree more with your overarching theme here. I think the 2 parties are realigning themselves. However, I don’t know that the problem will really be solved until we get a third party in the US.
I don’t think 2 is enough anymore. We’ve sorted ourselves geographically to the point that we all live in political echo chambers. I get it. I’m a guy from CT that lives in exurban Columbus close to Appalachia. I don’t always fit. Sometimes it’s hard.
But the echo chamber causes the politicians to be more and more extreme. Less compromise, more idealistic.
But sometimes I do agree with some of the political stances of my neighbors. But what do I do? Vote for the guy that is so idealistic that I can’t support a majority of what they stand for? Then I look at the other side and see their flaws, but agree with them more than the other guy, so I vote for them. I would rather be a moderate but that’s impossible in today’s political climate.
That’s why another party or parties would be good. More like other countries in Europe where yout must build coalitions to get elected.