My Americana. Game theory in the Bronx
I've been discussing healthcare reforms and remembered my favorite story of American-style government cretinism, with its usual ingredients: a liberal statesman with the bright idea how to make everyone's life better, public-minded technocrats eagerly delivering on this idea using state-of-the-art models and "scientific methods", the promise of gr-r-reat savings and speedy national revival, etc. The end result was the lunar landscape in the Bronx.
...In January 1970, as President's advisor on urban and social policy, [future NY-D Sen. Daniel Patrick] Moynihan sent the famous memo to the President which advised a stance of "benign neglect"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benign_neglect
and, key to this stance, used data on fire alarms and fires in NYC forwarded to him by the NYC/RAND Institute. Moynihan gave the impression that a huge proportion of the fire alarms were "arson." This led logically to his prescription for benign neglect and his broadcasting of the myth that large cities inherently cause social pathologies and should be made smaller. In line with this philosophy, in 1978, Moynihan, as U.S. Senator, opposed federal housing construction efforts in the South Bronx burned-out zone by concluding: "People in the South Bronx don't want housing or they wouldn't burn it down. It's fairly clear that housing is not the problem in the South Bronx." http://www.upfromflames.com/uff_resources/images_resources/Wallace-aPlagueOnOurHouses-Chapter2.pdf
excerpt from http://books.google.com/books/about/A_Plague_on_Your_Houses.html?id=WqxzT1nM12wC
...Planned shrinkage was a policy of withdrawing essential city services from neighborhoods suffering from urban decay, crime, and poverty so that neighborhoods may be claimed by outside interests for new development. By the mid-1970s, The Bronx had 120,000 fires per year (an average of about 3 fires every 2 hours); 40% of the housing in the area was destroyed. (The overall rate of fires in the city shows a dramatic rise from about 60,000 reported fires in 1960 to rates of over 120,000 per year throughout most of the 1970s, peaking in 1980.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_shrinkage
...In 1971, Mayor John Lindsay asked the FDNY’s chief of department, John O’Hagan, for a few million dollars in savings to help close a budget deficit. O’Hagan turned to RAND Institute famous for all but inventing the fields of game theory, systems analysis, and nuclear strategy. RAND built computer models that replicated when, where, and how often fires broke out in the city, and then predicted how quickly fire companies could respond to them. By showing which areas received faster and slower responses, RAND determined which companies could be closed with the least impact. In 1972, RAND recommended closing 13 companies, oddly including some of the busiest in the fire-prone South Bronx, and opening seven new ones, including units in suburban neighborhoods of Staten Island and the North Bronx.
RAND’s first mistake was assuming that response time - a mediocre measure of firefighting operations as a whole, but the only aspect that can be easily quantified - was the only factor necessary for determining where companies should be opened and closed. To calculate these theoretical response times, RAND needed to gather real ones. But their sample was small, unrepresentative and poorly compiled. The models themselves were also full of omissions. One assumed that fire companies were always available to respond to fires from their firehouse - true enough on Staten Island, but a rarity in places like the Bronx, where every company in a neighborhood, sometimes in the entire borough, could be out fighting fires at the same time. Numerous corners were cut, with RAND reports routinely dismissing crucial legwork as "too laborious," and analysts writing that data discrepancies could "be ignored for many planning purposes."
NYC/RAND provided what the politicians wanted. The models’ flaws all tended to make it appear that poor, fire-prone (and generally black and Puerto Rican) neighborhoods were actually over-served by the fire department, and recommended the cuts be focused in these politically weak areas. But as the cuts deepened, the models began recommending closings in wealthier, more politically active communities, an untenable development for the ambitious chief O’Hagan, who was well-connected in the Democratic clubs of Brooklyn and Queens and was later appointed fire commissioner." When the results still didn’t come back to his liking, O’Hagan’s men handled the problem. In all, 50 fire units were shuttered or moved.
Despite the models’ predictions of minimal impact, the number of fires that nearby companies fought as much as quadrupled. Citizens who lost their neighborhood firehouses protested. But by citing the supposed statistical infallibility of RAND and its computer models, City Hall was able to mollify the constituencies that really mattered. With fire rates already rising, the closings helped turn the fire problem into a scourge, consuming block after block of once densely populated, viable neighborhoods. Thanks in large part to technological innovations like smoke detectors and fire-retardant building materials the country at large experienced a 40% drop in fire fatalities from the mid 1960s to late 1970s. In the city O’Hagan was charged with protecting, though, fire fatality rates more than doubled.
http://www.thebravest.com/FDNYNewsArchive/10/05/16a.htm
http://www.booktv.org/Watch/11666/The+Fires+How+a+Computer+Formula+Big+Ideas+and+the+Best+Intentions+Burned+Down+New+York+City+and+Determined+the+Future+of+Cities.aspx
...In 1978, The Task Force called for immediate reopening of 45 ghetto fire companies. Only four have been re-established, in low fire incidence, politically active white areas, and other ghetto fire companies have since been closed or permanently relocated.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1809782/pdf/bullnyacadmed00016-0019.pdf
My impression is that the healthcare problems are being addressed in the same fashion the urban decay was addressed in the 1970s.
PS: of course, burning the Bronx was complemented with the strictest rent controls, redlining, high-rise housing project construction, etc. No stone was left unturned. It took 30 years to recover from these best intentions at their damned best.
...In January 1970, as President's advisor on urban and social policy, [future NY-D Sen. Daniel Patrick] Moynihan sent the famous memo to the President which advised a stance of "benign neglect"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benign_neglect
and, key to this stance, used data on fire alarms and fires in NYC forwarded to him by the NYC/RAND Institute. Moynihan gave the impression that a huge proportion of the fire alarms were "arson." This led logically to his prescription for benign neglect and his broadcasting of the myth that large cities inherently cause social pathologies and should be made smaller. In line with this philosophy, in 1978, Moynihan, as U.S. Senator, opposed federal housing construction efforts in the South Bronx burned-out zone by concluding: "People in the South Bronx don't want housing or they wouldn't burn it down. It's fairly clear that housing is not the problem in the South Bronx." http://www.upfromflames.com/uff_resources/images_resources/Wallace-aPlagueOnOurHouses-Chapter2.pdf
excerpt from http://books.google.com/books/about/A_Plague_on_Your_Houses.html?id=WqxzT1nM12wC
...Planned shrinkage was a policy of withdrawing essential city services from neighborhoods suffering from urban decay, crime, and poverty so that neighborhoods may be claimed by outside interests for new development. By the mid-1970s, The Bronx had 120,000 fires per year (an average of about 3 fires every 2 hours); 40% of the housing in the area was destroyed. (The overall rate of fires in the city shows a dramatic rise from about 60,000 reported fires in 1960 to rates of over 120,000 per year throughout most of the 1970s, peaking in 1980.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_shrinkage
...In 1971, Mayor John Lindsay asked the FDNY’s chief of department, John O’Hagan, for a few million dollars in savings to help close a budget deficit. O’Hagan turned to RAND Institute famous for all but inventing the fields of game theory, systems analysis, and nuclear strategy. RAND built computer models that replicated when, where, and how often fires broke out in the city, and then predicted how quickly fire companies could respond to them. By showing which areas received faster and slower responses, RAND determined which companies could be closed with the least impact. In 1972, RAND recommended closing 13 companies, oddly including some of the busiest in the fire-prone South Bronx, and opening seven new ones, including units in suburban neighborhoods of Staten Island and the North Bronx.
RAND’s first mistake was assuming that response time - a mediocre measure of firefighting operations as a whole, but the only aspect that can be easily quantified - was the only factor necessary for determining where companies should be opened and closed. To calculate these theoretical response times, RAND needed to gather real ones. But their sample was small, unrepresentative and poorly compiled. The models themselves were also full of omissions. One assumed that fire companies were always available to respond to fires from their firehouse - true enough on Staten Island, but a rarity in places like the Bronx, where every company in a neighborhood, sometimes in the entire borough, could be out fighting fires at the same time. Numerous corners were cut, with RAND reports routinely dismissing crucial legwork as "too laborious," and analysts writing that data discrepancies could "be ignored for many planning purposes."
NYC/RAND provided what the politicians wanted. The models’ flaws all tended to make it appear that poor, fire-prone (and generally black and Puerto Rican) neighborhoods were actually over-served by the fire department, and recommended the cuts be focused in these politically weak areas. But as the cuts deepened, the models began recommending closings in wealthier, more politically active communities, an untenable development for the ambitious chief O’Hagan, who was well-connected in the Democratic clubs of Brooklyn and Queens and was later appointed fire commissioner." When the results still didn’t come back to his liking, O’Hagan’s men handled the problem. In all, 50 fire units were shuttered or moved.
Despite the models’ predictions of minimal impact, the number of fires that nearby companies fought as much as quadrupled. Citizens who lost their neighborhood firehouses protested. But by citing the supposed statistical infallibility of RAND and its computer models, City Hall was able to mollify the constituencies that really mattered. With fire rates already rising, the closings helped turn the fire problem into a scourge, consuming block after block of once densely populated, viable neighborhoods. Thanks in large part to technological innovations like smoke detectors and fire-retardant building materials the country at large experienced a 40% drop in fire fatalities from the mid 1960s to late 1970s. In the city O’Hagan was charged with protecting, though, fire fatality rates more than doubled.
http://www.thebravest.com/FDNYNewsArchive/10/05/16a.htm
http://www.booktv.org/Watch/11666/The+Fires+How+a+Computer+Formula+Big+Ideas+and+the+Best+Intentions+Burned+Down+New+York+City+and+Determined+the+Future+of+Cities.aspx
...In 1978, The Task Force called for immediate reopening of 45 ghetto fire companies. Only four have been re-established, in low fire incidence, politically active white areas, and other ghetto fire companies have since been closed or permanently relocated.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1809782/pdf/bullnyacadmed00016-0019.pdf
My impression is that the healthcare problems are being addressed in the same fashion the urban decay was addressed in the 1970s.
PS: of course, burning the Bronx was complemented with the strictest rent controls, redlining, high-rise housing project construction, etc. No stone was left unturned. It took 30 years to recover from these best intentions at their damned best.