I have lunch with my high school buddies about four times a year. A slightly different group of guys shows up each time and that influences the course of conversations.
The last time I went, one of the conversations turned to the City of Detroit. One of the guys used to work in the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit and this was his take.
"People almost always look at current conditions and trends and then extrapolate.
Detroit's financial problems exist because people in 1960 assumed that Detroit was going to have 10 million residents in the foreseeable future and built infrastructure to support that population."
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| Detroit population over the last 200 years. Extrapolating from 1930 data, Detroit was on-track to hit 10,000,000 in 1960 |
Cherished beliefs die slow, hard deaths.
Detroit didn't grow much during the Great Depression.
Population growth was relatively stagnant during the 1940s as the young men, the nucleus of family formation, were off fighting the war. Regardless, population peaked in 1950 at 1.8 million people.
Other neighborhoods were not so lucky.
Regardless, there is a tremendous amount of fixed-cost overhang and not a lot of of grassroots generated revenue to support it.
Some residents blame racist whites for fleeing, even though most blacks move out as soon as they can afford to.
Some blame corruption in Lansing (the state capital).
Some respond with anger and rage.
Some respond with hopelessness.
Some respond with resignation. All in alignment with the stages of grieving.
The Progressives are encountering some head-winds
I think many of those same things are happening to the Progressive movement.
They became accustomed to effortless, exponential growth and their paradigm assumed it would always continue. That effortless growth was one of their baseline assumptions like "gravity" and "the sun rising".
They are in the anger-and-rage stage of grieving. They are exactly like the two-year-old whose mom told him "No!" for the first time. Their universe just up-ended and they don't like it.
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| Detroit, August 1967 |
I think that the state of Progressive America is analogous to Detroit in the year 1955 or 1965.
An uncomfortable truth as shown by the lack of new employees feeding the ever growing social security system.
ReplyDeleteScandalous crime rates, impending bankruptcy, unbearable taxes, more citizens who vote for a living than those who work for a living, and elected officials hostile to business, what could possibly go wrong?
ReplyDeleteFrom a 10 million plan to a 0.6 million reality.
ReplyDeleteERJ - There is a lot here, and it seems like a fruitful real world example of much of modern thinking could be put here.
ReplyDeleteOne of the great (and mistaken) assumptions is that "progress" always means more and better and that it is in a linear line of growth.
I actually read an article a while back about a guy who was buying up derelict houses in Detroit. The city was selling them for $1.00 apiece. He bought up several blocks of them. The he had them torn down. Then he returned the land to agricultural use. Honestly; who wants to live in a place with cold-as-hell winters, no job market, high taxes, and high crime rates?
ReplyDeleteI always chuckle when someone blames ghettos on "white flight." A certain demographic moves in. Crime goes through the roof as they proclaim "We're taking over!" Anyone with the means, black, white, or otherwise, moves out. Then those who are left scream "RACISMMMMM!!!" It's this way EVERY... SINGLE... TIME...
It is a big roll of the dice but if he succeeds, he will look like a genius.
DeleteThere are a couple of efforts on the north side of Flint that are attempting to address the "food desert" issue.
There are some huge obstacles to getting urban agriculture to gel. It might be worth a blog-post even though I could only hope to scratch the surface.
ERJ, I remember reading about this as well. Potentially it is a great untapped resource - if, as you say, the dice roll correctly.
DeleteThe malfeasance and corruption in the Detroit school system is well documented. There are not that many opportunities for theft and graft in a school that has decent accounting procedures yet it goes on. Who believes any level of city or county government is honest and trustworthy?
ReplyDeleteAdd featherbed union contracts with platinum retirement plans for the government workers. Structural bankruptcy baked in if you don't have continuous growth.
ReplyDeleteAlso not that the last Republican mayor of Detroit was Louis Miriano who was replaced by demoncrats on 1-2-1962. That might indicate something. ---ken
ReplyDeleteOops.. The second word is note and not not --ken
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