Building a bunch of new cities
Well! Nobody liked the last TED video I embedded, the one about re-thinking what constitutes success. Here’s another approach to the problem from another angle, and I like it. If nothing else, anything that increases economic cooperation between nations has the promise of making war too expensive to pursue.
A couple things impressed me here. First, kids studying by streetlight, because they didn’t have electricity in their homes? That picture should be on the wall of every classroom in America. Second, the speaker Paul Romer has a good point when he looks at rules as a supporting fabric for prosperity, and he’s right that cities are a better environmental bargain than villages. Even to the extent that new cities being built, would be a step in the right direction. And I like his idea for revitalizing Cuba.
Of course in his model, Africa will need a string of nuclear reactors or a hell of a lot of windmills along the coast. It’s difficult to imagine how that will come about, and how they’ll be kept safe.
NOTES:
Hmmm. “Rules.” Well, let’s ignore reality, and talk about things as though intelligent people, whose primary goal is the common good, ran the benighted countries in the world (or,for that matter, the United States). Now, let’s have some fancy thinking about “rules.”
It seems to me that the same sort of desire/virtue we associate with “capitalism” motivates those who seek and obtain power in societies. That desire/virtue is to want more, get more, and the devil take the hindmost.
The downtrodden and poor would like to be doing better. The power elite, in truth, don’t want them to do better. The power elite have the means at hand to win that tug-of-war. There isn’t much more to be said, is there.
The Golden Rule: Whoever has the gold gets to make the rules.
Very right; the elite have no interest in better for those below them. But there is something worth talking about; how to make it in the elite’s interest to have a better society, and how to do it without a bloody revolution. Of course the steps from “here” to “there” make the interesting part.
Ditto George. The whole point of this Ted video is the idea of changing the rule that makes it so the rich can keep the poor, poor.
I like his idea of starting the change with cities. That’s a model that actually has a chance because you could new cities that have the rules in place that people would want. And then as it grows and prospers, others would see it and ask why their current city they live is not like that one. Allowing the good rules to grow.