If you want anywhere near my apartment in the Vucciria district of Palermo, you’d better watch your step. I’d share a pic, but it’s just too gross to share. When I open the front door of my building, I immediately see wall of graffiti, including a hammer-and-sickle. There’s trash all around. Food waste, paper, plastic, and glass. Not just discarded beer bottles; the narrow street features multiple
"If you can’t trust government with the basics, you are foolish indeed to trust them with anything more."
This is true. But I think that you miss another point: which is once you ask a government to do vastly more than the basics, then it pretty much guarantees that not even the basics will be done well. Long ago, we realized that companies should "stick to their knitting" and not become "jack of all trades, master of none" conglomerates. These rules don't just apply to governments, they apply to all organizations.
I made this point (and one other equally important one) in this article.
I've lived in many different countries and have concluded. definitely that government is downstream from culture. I live in Thailand right now an there is virtually no problem with trash or poop on the streets. Homeowners would not allow it. If the street cleaners (humans without machines) decided to pull an Italiano and just hit the coffee shops in midday, homeowners would make sure the area was picked up. I had an Italian roommate in an apt at grad school and he cleaned cooking pans by scraping them out the window. One day when he thought I wasn't looking, I kid you not, he just threw the entire pan out the window.
The USA has both clean suburbs and gross areas with public trash. Italy also has very clean suburbs and gross poverty stricken areas. I did not visit the Palermo region. I did visit several other suburbs and it was clean.
I never observed or heard of Italians throwing garbage out the window? Why would you do that when you have working garbage service?
Eternal question. And NOT answered by reference to income level. I was living in New Haven at the time and the kitchen window overlooked an alley, which seemed to say to my Italian friend, "throw trash here". Connected more to a willingness to engage in bribery and not pay bills if you can work around it. His father btw, was very, very high up in the Italian government. (No not the mafia, the government.)
The government of Fairfax, Virginia seems to reliably keep the streets clean. I am less inclined to call this a failure of governments in general than describe more specific pathologies. I think we agree that the Italian government is broadly less competent than the American one. It seems in America, and possibly internationally, that suburbs have less corruption than cities, though I'm not acquainted with good data on the subject.
Japan is notorious for having incredibly clean streets - something I saw borne out during my visit to Japan just before COVID.
This isn't because Japan's government is especially small - though I don't think it's because Japan's government is especially big either. The actual reason is that Japanese people have a very strong cultural aversion to littering and therefore act in a way that ensure there is virtually no street garbage (both not leaving it out in the first place and cleaning it up when they find it).
Sicilians are not ever known for their high trust pro social societies.
Latin America is so tiring. They try some socialism. It's a disaster. Everyone hates it for a generation. They forget. They try it again. It's a disaster. Repeat loop. It's Latin American politics in a nutshell.
I still remember in The Bell Curve pointed out that in Latin America there are two parties. The tiny cognitive elite on the hills trying to keep the underclass masses from tearing it all down at any cost and through any means necessary. And the underclass masses ready to tear it all down. The demographics of those societies unable to produce any better options than those two.
Interestingly, many ex-Soviet countries are excellent at keeping things clean.
Poland, for example, but authoritarian socialist Belarus is even more extremely clean -- keeping away not just all trash, but also graffiti.
I don't have any broader point here, but it seems it is *possible* for big government to keep things clean, at least when combined with pro-order cultural values. (And while also keeping people poor.)
1. Take the time to go to Trento, say, and check first hand how trash collection works there. You will be surprised. Check every other public service, and the isolated observation on trash collection will be confirmed. Same country, same constitution, same local regulations and level of taxation. Something else must be going on.
2. Actually, take your time and slowly make your way from Palermo to Trento, and you will see a regular progression, with a constant improvement all the way. If you move from the Wallonie to the Flemish region you will see something similar.
3. You can augment this observation with that of the same variables of interest (trash collection and health services) in cities with large Italian immigration in the USA and in Argentina. Same country of immigration, but from different regions in the two cases. Very different outcomes.
4. Once you learn the lesson from these observations you will have to reach a conclusion, that you will not want to accept, because then all your calculations on the universal benefits from immigration would fall apart. And you will not learn anything from your Italian trip.
I am not sure about your implications, since there has a been a very large immigration of southern italian to northern cities over the last century.
So what happened? Did the people change when moving in a new city?
I think Italy is a very good example about how open borders can be beneficial to both parties involved (immigrants and native citizens) and strongly confirms Bryan thesis.
Reminds of what David Friedman says. If we can't trust trust government to produce cars or food successfully why are we letting them do more complicated things like creating laws
Not that I want to support socialism, but this sounds like a management and corruption problem.
Here in New Hampshire, public spaces are mostly spotless. It's small Yankee towns, many with open town meetings. Taxes are low. But those taxes are used reasonably efficiently - if they're not, the funding gets cut immediately. And the politicians in charge (many of them part-timers) know it.
What is your analysis of the cause of this system breakdown?
Could it be that the level of government at which this is done is too far up? Could the problem be solved if it were at a much lower level of government, such that the government workers tasked with cleaning up lived there themselves and were known personally by a sizable fraction of the voters in that government district?
Don’t need to go to Palermo to see inefficient government in action. Just look at New York. Garbage everywhere. The only thing growing faster than the tax burden is the rat population.
I think the same thing about eliminating poverty. We pay a huge amount of taxes to the Fed government, about half of it is spent one charity programs (medicare, medicaid, Social Security etc), and yet there is homelessness.
You could get rid of TANF, SNAP, SS and stop spending medicare money on things that do not have a reasonable payback and you could do a UBI, but Government prefers to buy the votes of old people.
Why do people dump their garbage on the street or in the woods? Does government construct where people can get rid of their garbage or are people slobs who can’t practice cleanliness?
"The problem is just that the government lacks follow-through. After taking people’s tax money, they hire government employees, make a token clean-up effort (at best), and call it a day."
Is that really the problem though? Isn't the true objective to provide employment...i.e., redistribution of the tax money...and the problem is that the government is an incompetent employer?
" If you can’t trust government with the basics, you are foolish indeed to trust them with anything more. “
This sounds like Luke 16 10-14;
"He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.”
Probably interesting to consider exactly how dirty and dangerous the streets of Beijing and Shanghai are, or is that an unfair comparison ? China keeps it's streets clean and safe with Oppression in the service of Tyranny whilst America keeps it's streets filthy and dangerous with Liberty in the service of Democracy.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of sanitation and public lavatories ? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty that I might poop in the streets !"
"Libertarian" with an initial capital letter is appropriate for the name of a political party, but the name of a political belief system would be "libertarian" -- just like "capitalist" and "socialist" and "liberal."
Thank you. We now return you to your regular substantive discussion.
Private ownership of streets (probably via an owners's association) and then each would spend their money as they see fit to clean and maintain the street to the level they so choose.
"Before you advocate a government “solution” to anything, see how well past “solutions” have actually panned out. Use past government behavior - not wishful thinking - to predict future government behavior."
But, is the Libertarian solution wishful thinking? Where has it "actually panned out?" And on a city-size scale, not just HOAs.
"If you can’t trust government with the basics, you are foolish indeed to trust them with anything more."
This is true. But I think that you miss another point: which is once you ask a government to do vastly more than the basics, then it pretty much guarantees that not even the basics will be done well. Long ago, we realized that companies should "stick to their knitting" and not become "jack of all trades, master of none" conglomerates. These rules don't just apply to governments, they apply to all organizations.
I made this point (and one other equally important one) in this article.
https://fee.org/articles/a-root-cause-of-covid-failure-big-government-is-both-a-monopoly-and-a-conglomerate/
I've lived in many different countries and have concluded. definitely that government is downstream from culture. I live in Thailand right now an there is virtually no problem with trash or poop on the streets. Homeowners would not allow it. If the street cleaners (humans without machines) decided to pull an Italiano and just hit the coffee shops in midday, homeowners would make sure the area was picked up. I had an Italian roommate in an apt at grad school and he cleaned cooking pans by scraping them out the window. One day when he thought I wasn't looking, I kid you not, he just threw the entire pan out the window.
The USA has both clean suburbs and gross areas with public trash. Italy also has very clean suburbs and gross poverty stricken areas. I did not visit the Palermo region. I did visit several other suburbs and it was clean.
I never observed or heard of Italians throwing garbage out the window? Why would you do that when you have working garbage service?
Eternal question. And NOT answered by reference to income level. I was living in New Haven at the time and the kitchen window overlooked an alley, which seemed to say to my Italian friend, "throw trash here". Connected more to a willingness to engage in bribery and not pay bills if you can work around it. His father btw, was very, very high up in the Italian government. (No not the mafia, the government.)
The government of Fairfax, Virginia seems to reliably keep the streets clean. I am less inclined to call this a failure of governments in general than describe more specific pathologies. I think we agree that the Italian government is broadly less competent than the American one. It seems in America, and possibly internationally, that suburbs have less corruption than cities, though I'm not acquainted with good data on the subject.
Japan is notorious for having incredibly clean streets - something I saw borne out during my visit to Japan just before COVID.
This isn't because Japan's government is especially small - though I don't think it's because Japan's government is especially big either. The actual reason is that Japanese people have a very strong cultural aversion to littering and therefore act in a way that ensure there is virtually no street garbage (both not leaving it out in the first place and cleaning it up when they find it).
Sicilians are not ever known for their high trust pro social societies.
Latin America is so tiring. They try some socialism. It's a disaster. Everyone hates it for a generation. They forget. They try it again. It's a disaster. Repeat loop. It's Latin American politics in a nutshell.
I still remember in The Bell Curve pointed out that in Latin America there are two parties. The tiny cognitive elite on the hills trying to keep the underclass masses from tearing it all down at any cost and through any means necessary. And the underclass masses ready to tear it all down. The demographics of those societies unable to produce any better options than those two.
Interestingly, many ex-Soviet countries are excellent at keeping things clean.
Poland, for example, but authoritarian socialist Belarus is even more extremely clean -- keeping away not just all trash, but also graffiti.
I don't have any broader point here, but it seems it is *possible* for big government to keep things clean, at least when combined with pro-order cultural values. (And while also keeping people poor.)
Well, Bryan:
1. Take the time to go to Trento, say, and check first hand how trash collection works there. You will be surprised. Check every other public service, and the isolated observation on trash collection will be confirmed. Same country, same constitution, same local regulations and level of taxation. Something else must be going on.
2. Actually, take your time and slowly make your way from Palermo to Trento, and you will see a regular progression, with a constant improvement all the way. If you move from the Wallonie to the Flemish region you will see something similar.
3. You can augment this observation with that of the same variables of interest (trash collection and health services) in cities with large Italian immigration in the USA and in Argentina. Same country of immigration, but from different regions in the two cases. Very different outcomes.
4. Once you learn the lesson from these observations you will have to reach a conclusion, that you will not want to accept, because then all your calculations on the universal benefits from immigration would fall apart. And you will not learn anything from your Italian trip.
I am not sure about your implications, since there has a been a very large immigration of southern italian to northern cities over the last century.
So what happened? Did the people change when moving in a new city?
I think Italy is a very good example about how open borders can be beneficial to both parties involved (immigrants and native citizens) and strongly confirms Bryan thesis.
Reminds of what David Friedman says. If we can't trust trust government to produce cars or food successfully why are we letting them do more complicated things like creating laws
Not that I want to support socialism, but this sounds like a management and corruption problem.
Here in New Hampshire, public spaces are mostly spotless. It's small Yankee towns, many with open town meetings. Taxes are low. But those taxes are used reasonably efficiently - if they're not, the funding gets cut immediately. And the politicians in charge (many of them part-timers) know it.
What is your analysis of the cause of this system breakdown?
Could it be that the level of government at which this is done is too far up? Could the problem be solved if it were at a much lower level of government, such that the government workers tasked with cleaning up lived there themselves and were known personally by a sizable fraction of the voters in that government district?
Don’t need to go to Palermo to see inefficient government in action. Just look at New York. Garbage everywhere. The only thing growing faster than the tax burden is the rat population.
I think the same thing about eliminating poverty. We pay a huge amount of taxes to the Fed government, about half of it is spent one charity programs (medicare, medicaid, Social Security etc), and yet there is homelessness.
You could get rid of TANF, SNAP, SS and stop spending medicare money on things that do not have a reasonable payback and you could do a UBI, but Government prefers to buy the votes of old people.
Why do people dump their garbage on the street or in the woods? Does government construct where people can get rid of their garbage or are people slobs who can’t practice cleanliness?
"The problem is just that the government lacks follow-through. After taking people’s tax money, they hire government employees, make a token clean-up effort (at best), and call it a day."
Is that really the problem though? Isn't the true objective to provide employment...i.e., redistribution of the tax money...and the problem is that the government is an incompetent employer?
" If you can’t trust government with the basics, you are foolish indeed to trust them with anything more. “
This sounds like Luke 16 10-14;
"He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.”
Probably interesting to consider exactly how dirty and dangerous the streets of Beijing and Shanghai are, or is that an unfair comparison ? China keeps it's streets clean and safe with Oppression in the service of Tyranny whilst America keeps it's streets filthy and dangerous with Liberty in the service of Democracy.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of sanitation and public lavatories ? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty that I might poop in the streets !"
Patrick Henry
March 23rd 1775 Richmond Virginia
What would be the Libertarian solution?
"Libertarian" with an initial capital letter is appropriate for the name of a political party, but the name of a political belief system would be "libertarian" -- just like "capitalist" and "socialist" and "liberal."
Thank you. We now return you to your regular substantive discussion.
Private ownership of streets (probably via an owners's association) and then each would spend their money as they see fit to clean and maintain the street to the level they so choose.
"Before you advocate a government “solution” to anything, see how well past “solutions” have actually panned out. Use past government behavior - not wishful thinking - to predict future government behavior."
But, is the Libertarian solution wishful thinking? Where has it "actually panned out?" And on a city-size scale, not just HOAs.
I am really interested in the “sewer socialists” of early 20th century Milwaukee for this reason:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewer_socialism
Though Alon Levy refers to them as “sewer neo-liberals”, with good reason:
https://pedestrianobservations.com/2016/10/26/sewer-socialism-or-sewer-neo-liberalism/amp/