tyranny of the quantitative

[sophiaserpentia]

Boston's Big Dig. The NYC steam pipes. And now a freaking highway bridge in Minneapolis.

Forget terrorists. I'm afraid of our crumbling infrastructure. Each of us is far more likely to be killed by collapsing bridges, falling ceiling panels, or exploding steam pipes than any terrorist.

Let's go further back and include the Katrina response in this, because it, too, reflects a similar lack of focus.

And, let's expand outwards and include ethylene glycol in toothpaste and melamine in pet food. Because all of these things are connected by a central theme... which is, ironically, the lack of anything resembling a common focus or vision.

We don't have any kind of meaningful common focus in our decision-making as a society. So many of the quandaries we're in -- from global warming to the oceans dying to resource depletion -- happen because millions of developers, politicians, investors, and laborers are each doing our own thing, with little or no regard to anything resembling a big picture.

We're winging it, and we can't do that anymore. Luck runs out.

Part of this problem has been described in economic discourse as the Tragedy of the Commons. But beyond the obvious difficulties of overuse and depletion, these problems are a tangible result of the dearth of meaningful discourse regarding economic problems and solutions.

Politics has become an advertising-driven enterprise. Campaign consultants talk about their candidate's image as a "branding" concern, and they judge the success of their efforts by what kind of emotions people have when they think of their client. They focus-group test sound-bites and slogans and key phrases which are designed to worm their way into your brain and install an emotional pushbutton so you respond the proper way when they press it. Meaning is driven from the process because meaning is unpredictable. If any candidate comes along who says something really meaningful, it could throw the whole scheme off, and everyone's jobs in the campaign-industrial complex would be threatened. The consultants, whose job it is to win elections, not solve society's problems, distrust meaning. And the media, of course, plays right along, encouraging this trend and helpfully marginalizing any candidate who threatens to bring in too much meaningful discussion. Because for them, too, meaning is dangerous.

This sounds like an abstract problem, but it isn't because people are dying as a result of this, and those of us who haven't been killed by it are seeing our quality of life be affected.

"Boring" things like routine maintenance and food inspections and disaster preparation -- you know, the stuff that should be a no-brainer -- gets de-funded and de-prioritized because it's easier to get a photo op standing in front of something new, bigger, shinier. The result is mile after mile after mile of empty shopping centers, brownfields, urban blight, crappy schools, decaying neighborhoods.

This isn't a call for a political solution, BTW. This problem can develop in a Communist nation (cf. Chernobyl) just as easily as it can happen in a capitalist nation. The real issue is lack of involvement. Lack of discourse. Lack of contemplation and consideration.

Comments

[argentla.livejournal.com]

I just said something in somebody else's journal about how, as a society, we don't reward people who contribute to that infrastructure. Teachers are the most egregious example, but I was talking about my dad, who's been in health care for more than 30 years, primarily focused on low-income and nonwhite populations. He's currently the director of a network of low-income health clinics in Marin County, serving largely the Latino and/or migrant population, a job that's perpetually underfunded and underpaid, as well as murderously stressful. If he were mercenary enough to just go to Kaiser or Blue Cross or some private hospital, he could double or triple his salary, but he's motivated by a genuine sense of conscience and social responsibility, and it's killing him.

There's no percentage in public service.