red state update

Dave got me into this last week, truly the height of modern satire. This one is my favorite so far…

two conversations

On the train to San Francisco last week, on the way to my internship, I happened to sit next to a fellow planning student on his way downtown to his job at the EPA. He enjoyed his job but found it frustrating in many ways. The day before, he had toured a former navy base in Southeast San Francisco that is now being redeveloped into a new master planned community by a national corporate homebuilder. In the process, massive amounts of asbestos were being stirred up and it was affecting the local population that was downwind from the toxic dust. He was also working on a project involving infrastructure-deficient indian tribal lands, while volunteering to save a local flea market from being torn down and redeveloped, etc…you get the picture.

The guy has a great heart and is working to do much good in the world. Yet he is overwhelmed by scale of the problems that he is seeking to improve, and I could tell that although his idealism hadn’t diminished, from when I met him three years ago, he had begun to question more and more whether he could actually make a difference or whether the cards were systematically stacked against the types of causes that he championed. In addition, very little money is allocated in our society towards people like him seeking to mitigate for environmental catastrophes.

My second conversation, that day, took place at lunch with a young man in his early 30’s who has been quite successful in real estate finance. Our conversation was animated and he was full of enthusiasm for his job and for future business opportunities that lied in store for him and for his clients. Although he expressed some idealism for the fact that the projects he financed provided for a basic human need (housing), he expressed no remorse for working in the private sector and for being well-compensated for his efforts.

Growing up, I bought into the stereotype that people in the private sector chasing the evil almighty dollar are miserable and unfulfilled as people and that their work was somehow less noble than those saints who worked in non-profits, or were artists, or public servants.

That is a myth. In many ways, business is much easier (albeit less stable) and more fulfilling than government or non-profit work. Easier not in the sense that you work less, but in the sense that the rules of the game are already defined and that customers appreciate the goods and services that you provide them with. In business there is one goal which is to maximize profits. In public interest and in government there are many goals operating simultaneously. The priority of those goals often conflict, in addition to the fact that much of the time what the goals even are is up for debate. Business is a closed system that operates within a particular legal and financial structure. Politics (in any sense of civic engagement) is always up for debate and someone is always left unhappy. By contrast, in business a willing buyer meets a willing seller, they haggle over the terms, they complete the deal, and both walk away happy that they completed the transaction.

We live in a system in which public servants, artists, and those seeking out the public good are in general not rewarded as well as those in the private sector. I don’t know whether this is right or wrong, I just know that it is. People act according to incentives and disencentives. Elementary school teachers and EPA administrators are not going to start being paid tomorrow what they are truly worth, but we should at least come to a realization about what we encourage and discourage in our society. As one of my professors – who had left public sector planning to work for a developer – once wisely said, “Money doesn’t talk, it screams”. I didn’t see the truth in that at the time, but now I do.

david smith in showbiz?

http://www.realmovienews.com/posters/6874/0
Not unless you count the local barroom brawl circuit – often imitated, never replicated. (Good movie also, Annie Hall-ish).

filler-up

Clean renewable technologies, and especially renewable energy sources, are a popular topic these days. The promises of “ecological sustainability” flow out of the mouths of the well-meaning (but often misinformed) like a liberal mantra with growing persistency.  It’s a comforting idea to be able to live however we want to, and to not have to face any ecological consequences for it, but it remains to be seen whether or not the necessary innovations will find us in time.  Meanwhile, subsidizing American ethanol to assuage our guilt at the price of unnafordable corn in Mexico, is in my view, no solution at all.

The industrial revolution enabled us to create great effeciencies in our uses of energy to power our transportation, manufacturing, construction, and electricity needs. Now we realize that burning deisel, coal, and gasoline all have some very serious negative side effects which we all know about - like the possibility of lounging poolside after a game of golf in the middle of January in Moscow in 100 years. (An embellishment but you get the picture).

So now we have lots of ideas about how to wean ourselves off of this resource. Leaving behind a way of life which has made our lives oh so much easier than they were a short 200 years ago. A time when your primary energy source for transporting things usually consisted of an ox or a slave.  Some of these ideas include ‘bio-fuels’ like corn and switchgrasses. Great idea, but now the price of corn – a staple food in many developing countries – is increasing for those who need it the most. (But that of course is a small price to pay for easing the guilt pangs of the liberal conscience in the developed world). But wait you say, we can use water, and wind, and solar power. We’ve been trying that for some time now also. California has led the nation in the use of all of these clean alternatives but has failed to gain even 10% of its total energy portfolio from renewables. Wind and solar have a lot of potential in the future, if they come to be used in mass on commercial and residentail structures. However, with water you run into the problem of constructing dams and destroying habitat for birds, fish, insects, etc.. But wait there’s nuclear power… the dangers of nuclear power are well known (Chernobyl?). The list goes on to include fuel cells and other assorted wonder gadgets that are, of yet, no more than a gleam in the scientist’s eye. Sure, someday cold-fusion may be discovered, and/or oil may climb to $300/barrel, but until then we are going to have more of the same, because it’s just so freaking cheap to ship me my shiny new Chinese sneakers on that short cruise - sweatshop to shelf - Shanghai to Oakland. 

Meanwhile, a lot of people believe that there is some serious money to be made from all of this. Maybe so, maybe not. The wonder of our system is that financial risk does operate in fairly close relationship with level of financial reward. So when you hear that a venture capitalist just put $50 million into a ‘clean-tech’ venture it should be celebrated. If some sort of solution is discovered, that will enable us to continue our high-energy consuming lifestyles, they might very well make out. However, for now it’s all a big gamble.

From an economic development standpoint its quite wise to invest in these ventures -no matter how risky they might be. Funding for research enables innovations that we might never have enjoyed had the money not been set aside (velcro!)

San Francisco, like Boston, and New York, and Seattle, and Austin…blah, blah, blah (everyone wants to be an inovator) has taken a proactive stance to attract this sort of business.  It may or may not pay off, but it enables the possibility of maybe,  just maybe, forgoing a January summer day in the Moscow of 2100.

http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/moed/news/SFCleanTech2005.pdf