My Americana. Game theory in the Bronx

[shkrobius]

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-

Comments

[poltorazhyda]

Weren't you supposed to be a socialist?

[shkrobius]

Maybe you should visit the South Bronx and take a look at the brighter tomorrow.

[gxk10]

".. usual ingredients: a liberal statesman with the bright idea..."
Since when closing government services in order to cut cost has become a usual act of the liberal?

[shkrobius]

Since time immemorial. The government seldom succeeds in cutting costs, but when it does, it is always in a destructive fashion. Luckily, it almost never happens.

[writerspleasure]

horror. thank you.

[shkrobius]

It was not just the Bronx. It also happened in Denver, Harford, Yonkers, St Louis, Washington, Tacoma, Jersey City. In JC they they managed to burn down their own City Hall ! It was the official policy promoted by the US Sept. of Housing and Urban Development. As a policy it was the usual well-meaning idiocy, what makes it interesting is how heavily the sales pitch relied on this RAND-HUD Fire Project; for 20 years it "proved" to the municipalities that the approach has "scientific" basis. If they refused to burn their cities down, antipoverty funding was withdrawn from them by the HUD. The surprising thing is that the vast majority of the cities refused despite the arm twisting. I know exactly where Moynihan went after he died.

[writerspleasure]

the compassionate State.