Getting Political - The State's Role
your Saturday roundup
Professionally, I focus on creating social benefit startups. In my Saturday morning emails I share what I’m learning and thinking. Topics range from better living and parenting to business and philosophy. And this time politics.
Effective Government. We’re talking a lot about effective and efficient government recently. Instead of breaking rules to cut through government red tape, I’d rather change the rules to have less red tape in the future. We put in place checks on power to prevent excesses and corruption. We’ve gone too far. And we’ve allowed narrow interests to control too many regulatory processes. With too many veto points, we are often left without someone who can decide who bears the cost of even net positive public policy. I’ve learned about the specifics from Palka’s book and substack, Dunkelman’s recent book and Chellam’s Modern Power.
Reform the National Environmental Policy Act, the Administrative Procedures Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act. They are well past what was originally intended.
Fix procurement so we can buy better things and cheaper better digital products.
Improve the ability to hire better (first tip: self-assessment should not be given as much weight) and improve accountability for true job performance issues.
I’m less certain we should give US Presidents reorg authority or line item veto on spending.
Why do we need to do something? Because we don’t want to go broke, we don’t want to hoard wealth and opportunity, and we want to be able to build things like housing and energy. Another attractive solution is to share the upside of change with more people.
Parking Mandates. As an amusing(?) hobby I’ve been reading the local zoning regulations. I resorted to having my computer read it to me. As you’d expect, there are a lot of rules about where buildings can go, their shape and size and what can happen inside them. You wouldn’t be surprised how much the regulations speak about “vice” (sex, alcohol or cannabis) or “dirty” (waste or recycling) industries. I was surprised to find the number of pages devoted to the design and upkeep of public plazas. I guess it is because one is allowed to build a taller building if you have a public plaza next to it. There are also a lot of pages devoted to parking mandates. Did you know that we use nearly a quarter of New Haven’s downtown land for storing cars off the street? There are many reasons to rethink parking mandates. Another one is that when autonomous cars are rolled out, parking demand will change. We’ll want the flexibility to have fewer parking spots and put them in different places. Do you agree it’s time to let owners decide how much parking to build?
Who is it For? I heard on a podcast recently: “We have socialized the benefits of having kids and privatized the costs.” Is that true? With the rise of high-investment high-involvement parenting, are we expecting parents to do too much? Perhaps the change started a few generations back. I’m reading Anna Karenina (never read it before!) from 1878 and there is mention of parents that have “no life” and that “everything is done for the children.” You could expect the state to do more like Plato and Hilger. Or you can free yourself from social expectations and rediscover the selfish reasons to have more children.
Until next time,
Miles
The western world makes it challenging to balance family with self fulfillment because it is obsessed with youth. To this day, the attitude is that if you are 50, you are over-the-hill and your life opportunities are gone. A lot of people are discovering life and all its opportunities are the sweetest at 50 with still an abundance of energy and finally a shred of life wisdom! But when someone is having children in their 20s, 30s or even 40s, they are not getting that message. Rather, the measure of someone's worth is in achieving six figure incomes and stock options (and similarly relative measures at all income levels).
Women are not revered for all they go through to have children, but rather the underlying message is pity because they have to either juggle so much in a two decade period to raise children and have a career, or they will be permanently derailed if they focus just on children. [See sidebar below.] Men are superficially celebrated if they take on a strong household role, but underneath there is still a stigma about it. Capitalism is an outstanding construct that I hardheartedly support, but we lost our way when we made our participation in it the definition of life success. The lucky ones figure out children are the longest lasting joy in life, no matter how much of a pain they are along the way, or whether there is a used car in the driveway instead of a new one.
Sidebar: I happened to take time off from work to raise a family at the height of my corporate career having had my children later in life. Once back in the business world, it took a short time to regain my former position and rise above it. All-in-all it meant I was about 12 years financially behind the people in my field who had no career disruption. At 70, still full of energy, I envisioned working at least to 75 and beyond, especially to better secure my retirement funds after putting children through college, and to compensate for the non-work years of child rearing. Lo-and-behold, SSA does not count earnings after age 70 toward highest earning years. What an unexpected and unsettling discovery, especially for women who are the most likely to be impacted by family care-giving demands.