all roads lead to home

when i delve into the forgotten depths of my memory and recall my grade school days, i'm assaulted by waves of youthful elation and bitter disappointment. and every so often i stumble across a golden nugget of wisdom gained in my youth.

i can still recall the first time that i learned something in class and had a "eureka" moment. i believe it was in third grade, when we were learning our first lessons in roman history. i remember struggling a bit as i read stories of epic battles and bloodsport, the great circuses and deadly chariot races.

we would later come to learn that while these distractions occupied the masses, the rich pursued an orgiastic existence of opulence and excess. and i can remember thinking, "hm. that sounds familiar."

those stories stuck with me throughout my youth, alongside that uncanny feeling.

i was brought immediately to that place in my mind when i read a commentary piece written by john tierney and featured in the june 11th ny times, entitled "the circus maximus syndrome." he described its pathology as follows:

"The victims of this urban-planning syndrome believe, like some Roman emperors, that a leader's prime civic responsibility is to build entertainment palaces for the masses....

They imagine drawing hordes of out-of-towners to the new convention center, and when the visitors don't materialize, the mayors' solution is to build an even bigger convention center with a subsidized hotel next door."

witness, oriole park at camden yards, the m&t bank stadium, and the baltimore convention center. we'll see how our neighbors in washington do with their $400mil home for the washington nationals.

mayors promise billions upon billions of dollars in revenue, based on feats of accounting that would earn a seat on the board at enron. a classic economic example highlights their fallacious thinking. a vandal smashes a shop window; the shop gets insurance money; the insurance money pays a contractor to fix the window. thus, his employment adds to productivity. but this reasoning ignores the opportunity cost of the labor. the contractor could have been fixing something else, or learning, or teaching -- anything more productive than needlessly fixing a broken window.

the government doesn't answer any questions by adding up how much money will be spent on a project. what truly counts is what could have been done with all those resources.

also, it might help your political comprehension if you conceptualize the relationship between politicians and consultants: picture marlon brando hiring michael moore as his fitness consultant. see, if the consultant doesn't write a jackpot report, the project stalls. if the project stalls, the mayor doesn't get cash from the usual suspects --"real estate developers, construction workers, bond traders, [and] owners of hotels and sports teams." and if the mayor doesn't get the campaign contributions, the consultant doesn't get paid.

what's more,

"aside from the thanks of these groups, politicians also get a pleasant distraction from their mundane duties. It's more fun to pose next to a model of a model of a new stadium than a new water main."

again, we can take baltimore as an example. i have a lot of time to think as i'm trotting along in my car over the undulating asphalt and endless minefields of potholes. these "roads" take me through what i'm told was once a vibrant city, before the new-new-deal of the 1960's.

now, i'm surrounded by heroin addicts and new, low-rise public housing just waiting to be abused and abandoned. these faux-suburban townhomes stand in stark contrast to their high-rise surroundings, but their design should come as no surprise. d.c.-metro area "planners" and developers funded and staffed the previous state administration.

and they had the nerve to complain about urban sprawl. amazing.*

having momentarily swept things under the a rug of new, aluminum siding, baltimore has been able to capitalize by handing out special-interest tax-breaks and condemning properties for transfer to the baltimore development corporation.**

it's sad to think that perhaps the only upshot of all this is our abundant supply of failed athletes and racecar drivers, who make great soldiers and mechanics.

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*if you're wondering what members of the former administration are doing now, they're helping developers get the zoning they want by making the right donations and "consulting," i.e. telling them how to navigate the "smart growth" laws they pushed through the legislature.

** the b.d.c. is itself an interesting case, and it may have backed itself into a corner recently. it loves its status as a private corporation because it's sheltered from the public information act. but its status may raise some interesting complications if the supreme court disallows eminent domain transfers to private corporations.