Monday, December 28, 2009

If we can't do it here...

...why do we keep trying to there? This post chronicles "highlights" of the terrible mismanagement of San Francisco, CA. Given the seeming impossibility of improving governance in a state that by itself has a larger economy than many countries, why do we imagine to ourselves we are capable of telling other countries how to run their governments?

And while I'm on my soapbox why do so many people continue to have so much faith in government to solve any problem any time? Successes are possible and good examples are out there too; but the presence of examples like these really ought to suggest that naive trust in governments is as misplaced as naive trust in markets or any other merely-human endeavor.

Governments and markets are like soylent green: They're made of people! Good people and bad people; intelligent, reasonable pragmatists and dogmatic demagogues; selfless servants and self-serving sycophants ... and I should note that you can mix those descriptors in every combination.

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