Robert B. Reich urges "People's Republic of Haven" Plan to Save Detroit
From "Just Spread Detroit's Failure, Why Don't Ya" by J. Robert Smith in American Thinker:
Robert B. Reich, the little man with big liberal ideas, has a big idea for bailing out Detroit. It's a simple big idea, which just goes to show Reich's genius. Great thinkers get to the nub of things.
In a nutshell, Reich wants to make things right in Detroit by expanding its boundaries. Or does he want to expand the burbs' boundaries to encompass Detroit? Doesn't matter, really. The key to Reich's ingenious plan is for miserably failed Detroit to glom onto the burbs for resources -- that would be money, in plain English.
The instant that I read this, I knew where I'd read this before. It's the essence of the expansionist strategy of the People's Republic of Haven from David Weber's Honor Harrington space opera series. The planet Haven, once a wealthy democracy, adopts the Dole -- an all-embracing welfare system which seduces an increasing percentage of the population into lifelong dependence and creates multi-generational incompetence. The Dole bankrupts Haven, but because Haven started with a powerful interstellar fleet, Haven begins successfully warring on and conquering weaker worlds. Haven loots each one of them in turn for their wealth and uses it to maintain the Dole, but she then finds herself trapped in a never-ending spiral of warfare -- until she runs into the Kingdom of Manticore, which has a smaller but much more competent fleet, including Honor Harrington.
This is basically the same idea but with Federal influence substituting for bigger spacefleets. There are two obvious practical flaws in Reich's plan, which would have been obvious to him if he were not such an Economic Soopergenius.™
(1) - Since this would involve no change in the self-destructive policies of Detroit, but merely put them on a bigger stage, Detroit would still go under when they used up the resources of the suburbs they had conqu ... excuse me, incorporated. All that would happen is that the crisis would be staved-off, at the cost of being bigger when everything finally collapsed again. The only difference -- which Reich doesn't reference in his original editorial -- is that we might not be in the middle of a Depression by then. This might make it worthwhile, from the point of view of saving Detroit (but see the moral objection below). Of course, if Detroit does not change its self-destructive policies, even the enlarged Detroit would go down come the next Depression. (Or sooner, if Detroit's policies become even worse).
(2) - Since this would not be accompanied by building a huge wall, complete with barbed-wire, minefields and machine-gun guard towers, around the new enlarged city of Detroit, the suburbanites with money would simply sell their houses and flee the absurdly-high taxes and inept law enforcement of Detroit. This time, they might flee even farther, to avoid being caught by the same trap again. Because intelligent, skilled and productive human beings, rather than land per se, are the essence of "resources" capable of generating tax revenues, the result is that Detroit would simply loot the monies of the suburbanites unable to leave (who would of course be the less wealthy ones), and once again be bankrupt -- and in far less than the eighty-something years of a full Strauss-Howe generational cycle.
Finally, there is an obvious moral flaw in Reich's plan. The people who fled to the suburbs did so in the assumption that they would thus be free of Coleman Young style racist, socialist government. Using the authority of the State or Federal Government to forcibly annex the suburbs (because the suburbanites would certainly not voluntarily sign on to a dying city) would constitute a gigantic betrayal of the rights of those individuals to not be taxed without representation, and to be secure in the enjoyment of their property.
But then, moral issues have never stopped the Left before.
Robert B. Reich, the little man with big liberal ideas, has a big idea for bailing out Detroit. It's a simple big idea, which just goes to show Reich's genius. Great thinkers get to the nub of things.
In a nutshell, Reich wants to make things right in Detroit by expanding its boundaries. Or does he want to expand the burbs' boundaries to encompass Detroit? Doesn't matter, really. The key to Reich's ingenious plan is for miserably failed Detroit to glom onto the burbs for resources -- that would be money, in plain English.
The instant that I read this, I knew where I'd read this before. It's the essence of the expansionist strategy of the People's Republic of Haven from David Weber's Honor Harrington space opera series. The planet Haven, once a wealthy democracy, adopts the Dole -- an all-embracing welfare system which seduces an increasing percentage of the population into lifelong dependence and creates multi-generational incompetence. The Dole bankrupts Haven, but because Haven started with a powerful interstellar fleet, Haven begins successfully warring on and conquering weaker worlds. Haven loots each one of them in turn for their wealth and uses it to maintain the Dole, but she then finds herself trapped in a never-ending spiral of warfare -- until she runs into the Kingdom of Manticore, which has a smaller but much more competent fleet, including Honor Harrington.
This is basically the same idea but with Federal influence substituting for bigger spacefleets. There are two obvious practical flaws in Reich's plan, which would have been obvious to him if he were not such an Economic Soopergenius.™
(1) - Since this would involve no change in the self-destructive policies of Detroit, but merely put them on a bigger stage, Detroit would still go under when they used up the resources of the suburbs they had conqu ... excuse me, incorporated. All that would happen is that the crisis would be staved-off, at the cost of being bigger when everything finally collapsed again. The only difference -- which Reich doesn't reference in his original editorial -- is that we might not be in the middle of a Depression by then. This might make it worthwhile, from the point of view of saving Detroit (but see the moral objection below). Of course, if Detroit does not change its self-destructive policies, even the enlarged Detroit would go down come the next Depression. (Or sooner, if Detroit's policies become even worse).
(2) - Since this would not be accompanied by building a huge wall, complete with barbed-wire, minefields and machine-gun guard towers, around the new enlarged city of Detroit, the suburbanites with money would simply sell their houses and flee the absurdly-high taxes and inept law enforcement of Detroit. This time, they might flee even farther, to avoid being caught by the same trap again. Because intelligent, skilled and productive human beings, rather than land per se, are the essence of "resources" capable of generating tax revenues, the result is that Detroit would simply loot the monies of the suburbanites unable to leave (who would of course be the less wealthy ones), and once again be bankrupt -- and in far less than the eighty-something years of a full Strauss-Howe generational cycle.
Finally, there is an obvious moral flaw in Reich's plan. The people who fled to the suburbs did so in the assumption that they would thus be free of Coleman Young style racist, socialist government. Using the authority of the State or Federal Government to forcibly annex the suburbs (because the suburbanites would certainly not voluntarily sign on to a dying city) would constitute a gigantic betrayal of the rights of those individuals to not be taxed without representation, and to be secure in the enjoyment of their property.
But then, moral issues have never stopped the Left before.