American Singapore(s): Competent city governance hiding in plain sight | Hacker News Reader

American Singapore(s): Competent city governance hiding in plain sight

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85 pointsbaud147258177 comments

Carmel Indiana is an example of focusing on growth.

* They didn't do austerity. The whole low taxes run the place on a shoestring wasn't the game. Carmel did not do extravagant government buildings until they were affordable, and paid for by the development around them. For a long time city hall was almost a re-purposed dentist's office.

* Carmel did not invest in poverty. Carmel pushed it out of town. Now it is extremely wealthy per-capita.

* People laugh at the sheer number of roundabouts, but those have had a huge effect on public health by reducing both the frequency of accidents and more importantly, most accidents are now lower speed with less damage to life and property.

Yes, Carmel took on a lot of debt. Yes, they invested that debt heavily in making Carmel a nice place to live and work. jim Brainerd, the mayor, knew one thing the article missed: if you are growing, the tax base is always expanding. Carmel was also extremely long-game focused on development: as bonds mature, tax abatements and incentives expire in a way that will enable rapid retirement of the debt.

> Carmel did not invest in poverty. Carmel pushed it out of town. Now it is extremely wealthy per-capita.

What exactly does that mean, I'm reading it quite negatively, but the rest of this is positive, so I might be missing your true meaning.

I am assuming that means no drug shelters, free services for homeless etc.

Yeah. Me too. Does it mean, they just gentrified the entire town and only rich people live there? Or is it more like they created enough opportunities and incentives that poorly paid jobs became better paid jobs?

I can see how the latter is “not invest in poverty”. But I have doubts that the trickle down effect can be that effective. Maybe it works well in a small population?

I live near there. Carmel is now a very nice place to live, easily the nicest place to live in the State. It has very impressive walkable areas, tons of new restaurants and shops, the best schools in the state. It has become easily the most desirable place to live in the region, and good jobs have followed that.

Who does the bad jobs? How much do they get paid and where do they live?

There are a few lower cost apartment complexes, but for the most part they commute from adjacent communities because wages in low-income jobs are usually pay 15-25% better in Carmel.

Less/No attempts to get local/state/federal money for low-income housing developments.

> What exactly does that mean

Carmel did not invest in anything that anchors poverty into the community. They were very careful not to overbuild section 8 housing, they aggressively police blight (i.e. people not taking care of their property), and also required homes to be made with more expensive finishes (i.e. brick instead of plastic siding), so cheap housing was simply not possible to build.

The negative side: police tail old poorly maintained cars, are very quick to move homeless out, and generally make being poor in Carmel a bad experience. The local joke is "you got pulled over for being poor in Carmel".

I read that as “they made the tough problems somebody else’s problem to solve.”

What I’m really looking for is governance that helps solve these types of problems, not pushing them away with the engineering equivalent of redefining the system boundaries.

> they made the tough problems somebody else’s problem to solve

This is true. A lot of the problems that go with poverty simply moved somewhere else.

> engineering equivalent of redefining the system boundaries

I think Brainerd's we don't invest in poverty is an interesting stance because on the surface it seems to be just pushing the problem away... but if you look a little deeper, investments in large amounts of section 8 housing attract even more poverty, lower tax rates, thus creating blight, which lowers tax rates more, which requires more subsidized housing and so on. There is a death spiral for cities, and I suspect that over-investing in poverty is one of the forces that causes it.

Is it creating more poverty or “attracting” poverty from somewhere else? If it’s the latter, it’s not increasing the global level of poverty, just the local level.

I would expect a well governed municipality to have the ability to absorb, and ideally mitigate, an increase in low-income populace. To me, raising the lower-limit of quality of life is one of the measures of a good government. I’m just not sure artificially raising it by expelling poor people, or making their life miserable so they expel themselves, is actually doing that on a larger scale. Rather it’s a bit of poverty shell game. Granted, there is a tipping point by which any system will become unstable if it absorbs too much, but again, I think a measure of good governance is the height of that threshold. The discussion about Carmel seems to indicate their threshold is low.

I mostly agree with you, but there's something to be said for keeping the poverty away from city centres, which is some of the most economically productive land per unit area. American poverty seems to congregate in cities, presumably because the cities can afford it, but that seems precisely the wrong perspective.

My hunch is that poverty concentrates in urban areas for the same reasons economic activity does: there are certain economies of scale that are enabled by population density. If you push poor people to rural areas, you’re also pushing them away from the aspects that make their life easier, like access to public transportation, grocery stores, social services, jobs etc. So we’re at the same place where we make being poor harder for the aim of making being rich easier. I think if we assume the economy serves society rather than the other way around, we come to a different conclusion.

FWIW, I don’t want this to come across as a dichotomy, but instead about where the appropriate balance point is.

I always thought this way until I listened to Mayor Brainerd talk about how cities invest in poverty which results in an expansion of poverty, which manifests as low tax income and increased expenses, which limits the city's ability to invest in growth.

I’m not saying that’s wrong, and that discussion happens elsewhere too. My main issue (also brought up by other commenters) is that this strategy can only work when there are relative disparities in wealth. When you say "expansion in poverty" I'm assuming you mean it attracts the poor to the city (ie moves them), and not that it actually creates more poor individuals. (If that's an incorrect interpretation, please correct me). If that's true, every city cannot “divest in poverty” because it’s just moving problem rather than fixing it. It’s a shortsighted, hyper-localized, and some would say selfish strategy because it pushes the problem somewhere else to be fixed.

We’ve all probably worked on teams where a member wasn’t pulling their weight to solve problems. At the myopic individual level, that’s a great strategy because it maximizes their rewards while minimizing their cost. But that can’t be applied globally because at some point someone in the team has to actually start solving problems. We can’t all be the team free loader and a lot of social structures and game theory is about avoiding the tipping point where there are too many free loaders and not enough people solving problems.

It would be like a city having a lot of veterans returning from war and struggling to transition to civilian life. IMO, the solution shouldn't be "remove all veterans services and make it harder for veterans to live here so they take their problems elsewhere." Superficially, and locally, that "solves" the veteran problem, but globally it probably makes things worse. That's not really the type of society I would advocate for.

All I’m saying is I prefer politicians and policies that focus on actually solving root problems. There are many people who are quite fine ignoring those problems as long as it doesn’t affect them, and their policies reflect that. They’re just not the horse that I want to back with my vote, even if it would be materially better for me.

> when you say "expansion in poverty" I'm assuming you mean it attracts the poor to the city (ie moves them), and not that it actually creates more poor individuals

Both of these can be true. A larger available labor market of less skilled workers lowers wages.

Low wages lead to more poverty created.

Bit like how private schools out compete public schools academically. Neglecting to mention how private schools can kick out anyone who would bring down their KPIs.

Private schools don’t really “out compete”public schools at the same price points and relative home “stability”/income bracket. There are plenty of nice public schools in middle class to rich neighborhoods that easily hold their own to private schools. If you want to compare apples to apples. Most of the kids in those neighborhoods do as well as the kids going to private school.

The real problem is the pyramid of needs. In lots of blighted neighborhoods people struggle just to get by, hope they don’t get shot or mugged and can pay next month’s rent. You can shove as much money as you want into a school in that neighborhood and it’s going to underperform because the kids are worried about their next meal, parents getting high, cops harassing them, being downtrodden because they’re “poor”. How do I know? I lived it. Lost friends to it. I got out because I was the kid who aced everything that came him in math and science and honestly didn’t have to try very hard until I hit college, so I got up to a lot of the same BS other kids did.

I also had stable home life, unlike many peers, at least until 16 or so. I’m pretty sure the state still spends almost as much in $$ on the students in that district to this day as some of the richer communities, but the community has changed and I don’t think the graduation rate has changed much either, getting out of there is pretty much luck of the genetic and family draw and environment matters more than money.

Maybe I still don't understand something, but all this sounds pretty dystopian and dehumanizing to poorer people. Lack of any safety net can't be good for society, and this makes it harder for less privileged people to ascend the social ladder. But well I guess it's good for finances of this particular city.

> Lack of any safety net can't be good for society, and this makes it harder for less privileged people to ascend the social ladder

I'm not sure about that. They were paying people $18/hr to make submarine sandwiches in Carmel in 2018. Just a 1/3 of a mile south, in North Indianapolis, the same chain was paying $12.50/hr. There is an entire world of businesses that exploit government poverty supports to get cheap labor.

>Carmel did not invest in anything that anchors poverty into the community.

Alternately: Carmel invested in making life easier for wealthy people to live here and harder for the poor.

This doesn't seem like an innovation much as it does run-of-the-mill gentrification. Not taking a side here, but that's clearly how this worked

> run-of-the-mill gentrification

Carmel is an example of investing heavily into gentrification.

I'm taking a side here this is vile.

Regardless of whether or not it is vile, it is basic game theory. You have to play the game with the rules that exist, not the ones you wish existed.

The rule is freedom of movement across the USA, so it is obviously a losing policy for any government other than the federal government to tackle national problems and implement wealth redistribution.

This assumes people don’t care about the larger scale of poverty or that those regional/national poverty rates won’t have second order effects that will later impact these well-off communities.

One of the difficulties in game theory is mitigating all kinds of human biases that lead to suboptimal solutions. In this case, governments can be myopic in both time and space. There are examples in game theory where the rational choice in one context leads to worst conditions for everyone, overall.

Neighborhoods being separated by socioeconomic status is a phenomenon seen all over the world, probably for much of human history, so it seems like this is the most likely solution, absent a national wealth redistribution program (which would theoretically work due to immigration controls).

I think we can agree that separation of socioeconomic status is prevalent (and maybe useful) while still disagreeing on what degree of that produces a vibrant and stable society. So the question is what degree do we find acceptable? I personally don't want beautiful gated communities contrasted with slums to be the norm, for a variety of reasons.

As to the "rules" of game theory in this context, they are arbitrarily set by society. They are not natural laws, so we probably shouldn’t treat them as immutable.

(As an aside, I don't think that "most likely" should be conflated with "optimal". There's lots of analogies that come to mind to describe that point, but I'd rather hold off so as not to come across as debating in bad faith)

> They are not natural laws, so we probably shouldn’t treat them as immutable.

Which is why I wrote that the federal government needs to take action. Expecting a city or state to go bankrupt trying to solve a national problem is not helpful.

Except I don't think we can consider the city's debt load to be related to trying to solve the poverty problem at all. It seems quite the opposite based on the discussion in this thread. I haven't read anything about any of that money going to any poverty-related social programs other than making poor people's lives harder.

I'm more inclined to think poverty, like most complex problems, requires actions at practically all levels, ranging from familial, local, state, and national actions. One of the downsides to federalism is it creates a way for people to absolve themselves of any responsibility. As long as I pay my taxes, it's "not my problem" to solve. Ironically, most people acknowledge it's the people closest to the problem who are in the best position to solve it. It's also hard to expect these problems to be solved nationally when roughly half the population wants to see the federal government reduced.

> Except I don't think we can consider the city's debt load to be related to trying to solve the poverty problem at all. It seems quite the opposite based on the discussion in this thread. I haven't read anything about any of that money going to any poverty-related social programs other than making poor people's lives harder.

I don’t understand the relevance or logic of this paragraph. Carmel borrowed money to buy amenities that attract a higher socioeconomic class of people. That they did not spend it on courting lower socioeconomic classes is the claim that indymike made for why Carmel is the way it is.

> One of the downsides to federalism is it creates a way for people to absolve themselves of any responsibility.

I vote for the leaders I think will help raise the floor of quality of life, but I do not think I should sacrifice and possibly sink my community because other parts of the federation are not ready to play ball. At some point, I have to prioritize me and mine.

>Carmel borrowed money to buy amenities that attract a higher socioeconomic class of people.

Yes, that's what I was saying. I took your previous statement "Expecting a city or state to go bankrupt trying to solve a national problem" as an implication that Carmel's debt was somehow trying to solve a poverty problem. It isn't. As you say, it's about attracting wealthy people (and to a certain extent, expelling poor people).

>I do not think I should sacrifice and possibly sink my community

Utilitarian thinkers may disagree on this.

>At some point, I have to prioritize me and mine.

Kantian thinkers may disagree on this. If you logically extend this, it becomes a prisoner's dilemma and results in worse results for everybody. (which brings us back to the issues I have with applying game theory as your original post stated.)

The real argument is defining that "point" where sacrificing for the group devolves into worse outcomes. If you have succinct ideas on that, I'd be curious to hear them. But too often it becomes a fuzzy, abstract concept that just rationalizes otherwise selfish behavior.

The first thing that needs to happen is ranked choice or approval voting. This first past the post nonsense means I’m always voting against someone, not for someone.

The second thing is making the presidential election a popular vote election. This is almost done if a few Republican led states switch to Democrat led states.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...

And the third is reducing the power of the Senate.

Then we can finally get some movement towards what we want, rather than just try to avoid going backwards.

Some local municipalities are moving to ranked choice (I live in one, and I think it's a better system, too).

Despite what many people intuitively think, there is no right to vote for the president guaranteed by the Constituion. There's been something like 1k proposed amendments to change the electoral college and, given that they haven't been adopted, I'm not holding my breath. I'm curious why more individual states don't adopt a different way other than "winner takes all" to their electoral votes. I believe it's in their power to do so, and that seems like a much more likely route to having electoral votes reflect popular voting.

It's interesting that you would want to reduce the power of the Senate because there seems to be a lot of people who think the House is the more dysfunctional arm of Congress. Given the nature of terms and demographics, the House feels like has more members taking more polarizing stances.

Whenever there is an abhorrent state of affairs people try to justify it as natural or inevitable. They've been wrong enough times that I simply don't accept it as an excuse.

In this case what we're seeing is simply setting inequality as a goal its own right rather than as a tool to accomplish another purpose. There's nothing to admire or emulate here. Reading through the comments it's clear that this aligns with the values of a lot of the community, and they are being honest about that. If this is the case for you too then take responsibility for your vision here.

> Whenever there is an abhorrent state of affairs people try to justify it as natural or inevitable.

Cheems Mindset is strong on HN. I don't know any other community who are so sure about "What's Impossible To Change."

Please show how you would stop net benefit recipients from moving in and net taxpayers in from moving out.

This is a very practical concern of implementing broad population wide benefits.

City / state A says they will subsidize people who need help, and politician in city / state B says they will keep taxes low by sending people who need help to city / state A.

But that's exactly what is happening here. Talking about carmel, it is a suburb of indianapolis. It depends on indy for its residents' income that fuels its taxes. It depends on the relative poverty of the surrounding metro area for low wage workers where it wants them, and it saves money by not spending on services they need, forcing them into the nearby communities instead.

This is the extractive relationship you're worried about. It's the same deal with singapore! It is critically dependent on the labor of impoverished disenfranchised malaysians it keeps as close as possible but avoids spending any of its resources on. As always it is simply the poor subsidizing the rich.

I know, and if the choice is to extract or be extracted from (which the evidence indicates it is), then I am going to opt for “to extract”. Indianapolis should do the same as Carmel. That is the problem with the way governments and taxation, coupled with freedom of movement, work in the US.

If you asked me to vote for a federal marginal land value tax on ALL land, I would be down. I would be down to help provide a floor for quality of life for everyone.

If you asked me if I want to make only myself poorer relative to my peers across city/county/state lines, I am going to say no.

> Whenever there is an abhorrent state of affairs people try to justify it as natural or inevitable. They've been wrong enough times that I simply don't accept it as an excuse.

Just curious: who gave you the right to decide how other people's resources should be allocated?

I mean, that's what's really going on here, right? If we discard all of the melodramatic bs, it's just you trying to tell other people how to allocate their resources?

What's going to happen if they ignore you? Are they going to get passed over in the rapture or something? Is the psychological weight of their own guilt going to make them snap and go psychotic? I'm genuinely curious what the consequences are and when they'll deliver

At some point I romanticized poor people, but the older I get, the more I realize that "keep the poor people out" is a sound governmental policy, and gentrification is a good thing. Sure, people should have chances to improve their social status, but if you create an environment where being poor is a valid survival strategy, you will have poor people and all the problems that come with them. There's no way around this fact.

What you seem to be advocating is treating the symptom rather than the root problem. It can feel myopically effective, but it isn't great governance. I think there is also a case that segregating populations on socio-economic lines creates a host of additional problems.

> The negative side: police tail old poorly maintained cars, are very quick to move homeless out, and generally make being poor in Carmel a bad experience.

This is extremely Singapore.

A general problem for all metric-based social improvement is people gaming the metric by moving problems somewhere else.

Can you give some specific examples of how the Singapore gov't does this?

Yes, Carmel took on a lot of debt

And

as bonds mature, tax abatements and incentives expire in a way that will enable rapid retirement of the debt.

Oh boy.

I’m going to go ahead and wish Carmel the best of luck with all that. At the same time, I can’t in good conscience, advise other municipalities to follow this example. Prove it out first, then we can declare it a success.

> Prove it out first

Carmel has proven it.

Now neighboring cities are following suit with same results see Zionsville, Westfield, Noblesville and Fishers for other examples with results that are tracking right along with Carmel (although 10-15 years behind).

So, where do poor people live in that area?

Usually the response is 'not our problem'

They stand out pretty well in the census map.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmel,_Indiana#/media/File:Ra...

Have they paid off their debt? Or how have they proven it?

If they don’t get the surplus to payback bonds at maturity, are they just going to issue more bonds and keep this going perpetually? I am really curious about the bonds/debt driven development

It's a small rich city. If they get into trouble, they can do one time tax levies. Usually how they do things in the midwest.

Only they aren't rich. Places that are rich don't need the debt. Look up the average household income in Carmel, IN. Then compare it to, say, Darien, CT.

Now consider, Darien's per capita debt load works out to about 2% of the average annual per capita income. Carmel's per capita debt load works out to roughly 25-30% of its average annual per capita income.

Look, I have nothing against small places in the midwest. I'm from small town Wisconsin. So I have just as big an affinity for flyover country as anyone else. But few of the fiscal indicators are pointing in the right direction here, and there's nothing wrong with pointing that out.

It's not proven until the debt is paid. Or at least brought down to levels similar to long term averages.

Any semi-competent government should be able to improve short term results with a debt binge.

But if Carmel can get long term results that are financially sustainable - because their investments justify debt cost - they've really demonstrated their model works.

Sigh.

I’m a fiscal conservative.

My bar for ‘prove it out’ is a lot higher than the liberal or Jesus conservative bar for ‘prove it out’. My bar includes retiring the debt. Which has not happened. And if history is any indication, it’s not likely to happen either.

But again, I’ll go ahead and wish them luck on paying that back. If they can do that, good on them. Pretty sure it won’t happen though.

When you say "fiscal conservative", what would you say that you favour more: (a) balanced budgets or (b) budget surplus? My point: When you look across the Pond (the Atlantic) to continental Europe, "fiscal centrists" (not really a term), they are mostly aiming for balanced budgets or a very small budget surplus (that can be spent in bad years). And, fiscal conservatives are regularly aiming for large (2-3% per year) budget surpluses to pay down any and all debt. (Their dream is "schwarze Null" -- zero debt.)

Carmel can only exist as an exception within a wider metro area. Once too many communities try to follow it's model, the model no longer works since there aren't enough rich folks to segregate from the poor folks.

It's really not that interesting of a development model to me. These places exist in nearly every midtier NFL city I've been to - one suburb/exurb that is exceedingly exclusive and everyone knows as the "fancy area" of town. One existed where I grew up, and they were ruthless in their "not investing in poverty" stances. What I remember them most for is blocking many public transit projects from moving forward since it would bring the wrong type of folks through their part of town. That single community caused more hardship and pain than any other for the entire metro area, and that will be their legacy to me.

Basically these communities can only exist as minority communities as the model of "only cater to rich people" is simply not sustainable at a wider scale.

Yes, fixing only the easy problems seems like a practical way to go if I were a mayor of a random midwest exurb. It certainly isn't doing a good job or doing anything interesting for humanity though - it's simply doing the obvious most directly actionable thing you could do: make the undesirables someone else's problem.

> only cater to rich people" is simply not sustainable at a wider scale.

People have been saying this about Carmel since the mid 1990s.

What is going on is sustainable as long as long-term economic growth is positive. Growth is the key... along with making sure that incentives and bond maturity are managed correctly.

edit: To be fair, Carmel is mostly middle class.

I Google for: carmel indiana median income

And found:

   > Median household income in Carmel, IN is $132,859.

Is 132K USD middle class? I would say that is upper middle class.

Another search shows:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/205609/median-household-...

San Francisco and San Jose have roughly the same household median income. Those cities are definitely upper middle class by US standards as a whole.

All said, I still greatly value your posts on this topic. It seems like you are someone with first hand knowledge of this transformation. Thanks for taking the time to post about it. HN is better for it!

>Is 132K USD middle class?

From what I could find online, it's at about the 77th percentile for the U.S., so bordering on upper class (usually defined as the top quintile). Since the median household income for Indiana is slightly lower than the national median, it's probably safe to say it's upper class for Indiana.

@IndyMike: Sorry for the quick second post, but I have specific question. I hope you can shed some light with a local view.

The blog post says:

    > A city-run water utility with lower rates and no drought restrictions.

Can you provide any details on this? Usually setting up a city-run utility is political hell because the incumbent utilities do not want to let go of good business! There are so many stories on HN of cities trying to setup their own electrical utilities and tele-comm utils, but fail due to lobby and political B/S (not economics).

We have too much water here, and many incorporated areas run their own water companies here… so nothing too remarkable. Just don’t try to do cable or internet locally.

I live in the region. It is very wet and rains quite a lot. So water scarcity just isn't much of a concern. More effort is spent draining the stuff away than collecting it.

They mean not sustainable for every town to replicate. It works by pushing out the undesirables and taking in the wealthy. There is only so many wealthy to take in and places for undirables to go, which decreases more and more for each town that replicates.

>long-term economic growth is positive

Searching "infinite growth model" can help understand some of the problems with that assumption.

What's the alternative of long-term bond investments? Republican-style tax cuts? If I understand the article correctly, Carmel's Republican mayor Jim Brainard broke off from his party's motto.

> The prevailing model of austerity, low taxes, and limited government in many Republican-led states and cities has often failed to improve the quality of life. Meanwhile, Democratic-led cities struggle to effectively address issues like homelessness, housing affordability, and public safety despite greater willingness to invest, just not in actual services and infrastructure.

No, there's nothing wrong with bonds, if the thing they get invested into has good positive ROI.

The elephant hiding in the rural balance sheets is boring economics, meaning that there's usually no such high-ROI thing within city limits, because to get good and affordable services the city needs economies of scale, and that requires both sizes and density.

This basically translates to things that these cities could do: rezoning and waiting, joining up with neighboring cities for deals (but this is usually already the case, school districts and water districts).

Homelessness and public safety is worse in urban cores, and this would require a lot more spending to fix. [0]

(These cores are usually poorer, have funding issues, crowding out effect of rich suburbs means that the police force of the urban core needs to sort of match the salaries, etc. [1])

Also ideological differences lead to worse outcomes in public safety definitely. (Again, especially in these metro areas where - as other comments have mentioned - it's relatively easy to push poverty and crime around.)

It's not a uniquely American problem, but the combination of wealth and income inequality, extremely fragmented hyperlocal institutions, gang and gun violence, plus senate veto make progress extremely hard. And in practice it serves as the perfect fuel for political radicalization.

[0] https://www.slowboring.com/p/fixing-the-police-will-take-mor...

[1] https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-police-are-in-the-wrong-pla... - https://pastebin.com/PHzjrCU6

The article: "Took on $1.4B in debt ($14k per capita)"

The reality: 100,000 citizens, 1.4B: $140K per capita.

It did not pass the smell test that there was a city of 1 million people in the US that I had never heard of.

The article's math is right. Yours is wrong. 100,000 * 140,000 is 14,000,000,000. 100,000 * 14,000 is 1,400,000,000.

$14k is $1.4e4, times 1e5 people, equals $1.4e9 in debt, or $1.4 billion. The article is correct, it's $14k per capita

> Carmel did not invest in poverty. Carmel pushed it out of town. Now it is extremely wealthy per-capita.

I suspect this doesn't mean that everyone working there is paid handsomely. The city instead focused on being the rich neighbourhood of a larger urban area. So, basically, it's easier to be competent when money is not an issue.

> creating being the rich neighbourhood of a larger urban area

When I was five, Carmel was a nothingville with two stop lights we lived in a house my dad could afford buying as a college student. It had all the growth problem of a small Indiana town during the industrial decline of the 70s and 80s. That it got escape velocity from being another broke Indiana town is pretty remarkable.

> easier to be competent when money is not an issue

If it was easy, then everywhere could do it - and the Carmel miracle was getting the money needed to fuel it's growth.

There was a strategy, and a very long-term focus on building a nexus of business and attracting the right support people (i.e. investors, healthcare, education, lawyers...) to attract the kind of people that those businesses needed. The mayor used a book "The Geography of Jobs" as one of his guiding strategies.

I think the point is did the city simply evict the poor people and build nice things to attract rich people? Forget all the escape velocity stuff, I assume they’re talking about gentrification. So what is the diversity of Carmel? Were some of the poor people elevated because they lived in a growing city, or they were they simply pushed out because doctors, lawyers, execs, and engineers moved there because they set up pretty parks and good schools for kids?

I don't think gentrification really makes sense as a mental model for a rapidly growing suburb/exurb. Carmel's population has gone up 4x in the last 30 years. What has been 'evicted' is mostly farms. Almost the entire population is 'new arrivals' relatively speaking. There was no pre-existing working-class population to displace.

Revenue makes up for many sins. And increasing revenue means you don’t need to be as paranoid to never make any mistakes.

Everyone knows this, which is why it’s actually really hard to always have increasing revenue, especially increasing faster than costs.

Poverty and crime are like a balloon or heat. It's relatively easy to squeeze it somewhere else and very hard to actually eliminate it in place.

> People laugh at the sheer number of roundabouts […]

Road Guy Rob has recently done two videos on this:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZUZA76L09M

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV0x2hNRYnU

Focusing on development is not a panacea--I see plenty of places that are trying to 'develop' but it is just sprawl. Plenty of places give huge incentives and pays for road upgrades for things like corporate parks that never fill up or pay for the investment. Roundabout also have the effect of not needing expensive traffic lights and not needing as wide of roads. They increase throughput and thus can decrease backups. If you only have 2 lanes instead of 4 it is much less expensive to maintain.

> Brainard and Carmel aren't the only ones: Despite post-bankruptcy fiscal constraints and a hostile state government (at least until Governor Whitmier), Detriot has seen infrastructure and amenity improvements under Mayor Mike Duggan, but it still has a long way to go.

They also referred to Detriot's own investments during a tight time

The leading example in the article is Carmel, Indiana. I am not sure what has been done there should be described as a model of competent governance. This is a small city (100k people/50k workers/37k households [1]) where the city has taken on major amounts of debt (1.4$billion/14k per person/28k per worker/38k per household) to create public amenities.

The financial logic of what Carmel is doing centers around zero-sum competition with neighboring communities. Carmel is betting that by being the nicest place with the fanciest amenities, they will attract the richest families and be able to support that heavy debt burden in the coming decades.

This is explicitly not a model that every community could follow! It relies on spending more than would be prudent for the current tax base, in the hopes of standing out in comparison to other communities. And for sure its a bet that could fail badly, depending on general economic conditions. Its too soon to tell if the gamble will work out successfully, and very hard to tell even in hindsight how risky it was, succeed or fail.

[1] https://www.point2homes.com/US/Neighborhood/IN/Carmel-Demogr...

Didn't the guy also refers to Mike Dugger's work in Detroit

Comparing Detroit to Singapore is pretty silly in my eyes. The second derivative for Detroit has been good for about twenty years, but the city has been decaying around economic events and poor business diversification.

Connect the Q-Line out towards Oakland County and to the People Mover. Get that train going to the airport. There are real infrastructure needs here and it doesn't take a lot to imagine them.

If you look at the average household income in Carmel, IN. Then compare it to, say, Darien, CT.

Then consider, Darien's per capita debt load works out to about 2% of the average annual per capita income. Carmel's per capita debt load works out to roughly 25-30% of its average annual per capita income. (And that's being kind and using the average per capita income. It gets even uglier for Carmel if we do these comparisons at the median.)

Given all that, it's not hard at all to bet on failure.

You can play at being Darien if you have Darien money. If you don't, you're just being fiscally irresponsible. There's nothing about the Carmel story that says 'competence'.

You have to incorporate county and state debt per taxpayer if you are comparing a locale in different governments.

Connecticut has a very high (multiple standard deviation above the norm) retiree benefit debt, due to decades of underfunding. But these numbers are not easily comparable because there are no strict rules around how taxpayer funded DB and retiree healthcare debt is calculated.

It just shows up as a bigger and bigger proportion of government expenses.

> Las Vegas, Nevada, has tackled a historic drought by pioneering water conservation strategies, cutting per capita usage by nearly half despite rapid population growth

Emphasis mine. Per capita does not necessarily increase when population does, and definitely shouldn’t increase at a similar rate

Agreed. The word "despite" in that sentence makes no sense in that context. The author either doesn't understand the meaning behind the statistics, or they're deliberately misleading.

I would say that it's thanks to rapid population growth that water usage per capita got lower.

They kept the same number of golf courts and enormous swimming pool, but increased their population.

Vegas is very water efficient. Those fountains and golf courses use reclaimed water. The problem is the absolute amount of water demand is still going up. In a desert. Vegas' water utility has an intake pipe at the very bottom of Lake Mead so they will go dry last. They dump their treated wastewater into the Las Vegas Wash so that they can get credit to draw more water. They bought up nearby land to get the water rights. But actually capping system wide water usage directly or by limiting urban growth is economic and political suicide.

This isn't Singapore anything, it's just competent local government.

That's kind of like saying, "This isn't Space-X anything, it's just private space travel." Singapore is the canonical example of competent local government. That is the whole point.

The listed examples are very mediocre compared to Singapore though. Truthfully the US has no square mile of land that is comparable to the demographics and infrastructure of Singapore.

On the other hand, Singapore has some significant civil liberties issues. I think it's plausible that it may be better to accept somewhat less efficiency than Singapore in exchange for greater civil liberties.

Singapore as the benchmark for "competent local government" seems flawed. Ignoring decades of corruption incidents[1], it's also plagued with human rights abuses, including significant volumes of human trafficking[2]. As a nation-state, it's still extremely enthusiastic about draconian punishments and the death penalty. The state is full of moral decay; worst of all, its former prime minister is reading about Haskell in his semi-retirement[3]. The latter example of moral decay is not unique to Singapore (he is not the only senior national government official to decline into Haskell usage in Southeast Asia), but it is not a good sign of national health.

There are better "canonical examples" of competent local government, like Zurich, Geneva, or Vienna. All of which are generally rated higher in HDI than Singapore, none of which have the death penalty, and none of which have government officials who are Haskell programmers.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Singapore#Notabl...

2: https://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/singapore/

3: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/05/prime...

Functional programmers ruining cities as well as codebases.

I had the same questioning reading about haskell in this thread.

And my search tool is so biased by past searchs that it won't tell me what else haskell means.

You got me. Normally, I downvote these Reddit-type of comments, but this comment just has too much bloody wit. And, I say that with no hate for functional programming concepts.

>“Functional programmers ruining cities as well as codebases.”

The information [and communication] technology {I.[C.]T.} boom at the beginning of the millenium & especially at the beginning of the 2010s – where you've had banks, investment firms, and angel investors just throwing away their money to anything relating to computing, communications, hardware, and software – had two aims that are publicly known: quantum computing and machine-learning technology (later known as artificial intelligence).

They figured out quantum computing sometime in the ±2015. Machine-learning, A.I., took a bit longer but it's here – confirmed at the beginning of the 2020s.

Now, I.T. has served its original mission and it's relegated to maintenance & routine work for the [already] existing infrastructure.

Self-serving, self-important, self-fulfilling prophecy; who knew!?

Hong Kong used to be pretty good. Government services were quite efficient. Business friendly. Excellent healthcare. Low taxes. Low crime rate. All of Singapore's positives minus the negatives. Not sure how it is these days.

I would say from personal experience in Hongkong, that during the transition from a multi-party democracy to a single party state, the gov't services (minus the police and protest-related judges/courts) still remains excellent. The day to day workings are still extremely functional and efficient.

That said, the excitment about "low taxes" in Hongkong is mostly misguided. Yes, the max is 15% of your total income, but you basically get nothing except an (admittedly world-class) international airport and metro system. Public health care? You will never use it. You wrote: "Excellent healthcare". Sure, the private hospitals where your private health care insurance pays for services are excellent. Public schools? You will never use them. Public pension (retirement)? What a laugh -- you will be poor. Even the police are very lazy unless they are already present when the crime occurs. One weird bright spot: Public housing is very decent, but again, you will never use it. So really, what are you getting for 15% tax rate? Not much. If you are upper middle class and above, and are comfortable to watch elderly people in your neighborhood collect aluminium cans or cardboard for recycle-for-cash, then you will be fine paying for these essential life services from your handsome earnings. However, you will be surrounded by many very low income people. It is not a low tax paradise. My motto: "Hongkong isn't rich, but rich people do live there."

An anecdote about gov't staff efficiency: I will never forget the day that I applied for an international driver's license. I handed over my regular, local (HK) driver's license to the staff. He said nothing, but began to frantically fill forms at his desk. After about a minute, I was confused and asked, "Is there an issue?" "Oh nothing too big. Your [Chinese] name was changed, but you never applied for an updated driver's license. I have filled all the forms for you. You only need to sign here." The craziest part: On paper (if I recall correctly), there are relatively draconian rules about updating your driver's license in X days if your name or address changes.

EDIT

You wrote:

    > Low crime rate.

To be clear, all of northeast Asia has very low crime rates: Mainland China, China, Macau, Hongkong, Taiwan, South & North Korea, and Japan. This is a complex issue that could be the subject of multiple PhDs. I doubt it has anything to do with a high quality police force.

> Zurich, Geneva

It's easy to govern a town in a competent-looking fashion when you have plenty of money to spend, and it's easy to have plenty of money to spend when you decide to close your eyes to the source of the cash flowing into your vaults.

Singapore is more guilty of that than Switzerland. Singaporean banks are the post-FATCA Swiss banks.

>“Singaporean banks are the post-FATCA Swiss banks.”

What does that even mean?

Swiss banks largely don't exist in the way they did in the 1990s and prior because of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (an American regulation almost universally agreed to be overreaching and violating the sovereignty of other countries); privacy is only guaranteed to Swiss nationals, and they automatically share information with external governments. These days, if you want to be secretive about your banking but park assets in a stable country, you go to Singapore.

>There are better "canonical examples" of competent local government, like Zurich, Geneva

When was the last time you were in Geneva? It deteriorates with each passing year. Homeless druggies on Rue du Rhone were not possible even 5 years ago, now they are there every 50 metres. The worst part is that now, during the summer, the ambient weed smell mixes with the evaporation from the lake to produce a truly obnoxious atmosphere.

> Singapore as the benchmark for "competent local government" seems flawed.

That may well be, but taking issue with the headline's factuality is different than declaring it to be nonsensical, which is what the GP was essentially saying.

> none of which have government officials who are Haskell programmers

Haskell is just an aspiration. The language he is known to command is C++, or rather C, because from a cursory look I'm not seeing any C++ features being used here :)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2G2LjIu7WbdUzY4UWw3MWp6UXc...

If you read the article, he notes that after he retires, he's got a book on Haskell he's going to read. He retired from the Prime Minister position earlier this year. His aspiration is becoming his reality as we speak.

Not in Wikipedia: how the Singapore ruling party also appoints their most loyal members to high-paying political positions ($660k/year), where nobody really knows what the role is about [1].

Many loyal members also get cushy directorship and leadership appointments to state-controlled companies [2], labour associations [3], and non-profits [4].

Some of these are up-and-coming MPs in need of resume padding, others are election losers that still need to maintain their million-dollar lifestyles.

Cronyism at its finest.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/askSingapore/comments/zt9arh/genuin...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/i2bnzz/how_does_...

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/hqwy72/ntuc_reaf...

[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/10ypl6c/before_j...

Great post with lots of good links.

Yeah, no kidding. PM Lee's wife, HO Ching is head of Temasek. It is ridiculous. That place is run like an Asian family business -- so much nepotism.

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Ching

> nobody really knows what the role is about

I Googled this question out of curiosity, and found an informative explanation here: https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/j1ofba/comment/g...

Also, Singapore (as well as Zurich and Geneva) is where it is through plain fiscal dumping. Which won't work if everyone does it. It turns growth into a zero sum game, where you grow through sucking other's wealth.

Singapore and Switzerland are successful parasites.

While I agree with some of this post, I am confused this by this part:

    > The state is full of moral decay

What do you mean? And can you provide some clear examples?

I do think many people here are not aware of the political situation in Singapore. On the surface, it is a multi-party democracy. However, looking deeper, you will see the majority party has always been the same since independence from Malaysia: The People's Action Party (PAP). (Man, that party name has such a distopian vibe to it, like a political party name from the original Blade Runner film!) Also, freedom of speech (and media) is incredibly weak -- in name only, similar to Mainland China (and now Hongkong). And, they have very strong libel laws that the gov't frequently uses against critics.

> What do you mean? And can you provide some clear examples?

On top of the things you listed?

Genital mutilation is common and accepted. Sex trafficking is common. Politicians are extremely nepotistic. Politicians are Haskell programmers. They outright murder people convicted of certain crimes. Conversion therapy is legal. Children are not allowed to view content with LGBT people in it. That's just scratching the surface; it is similar to the UAE in that it gets an unreasonably high HDI spot for how few human rights and how little decency it actually respects.

Politicians are Haskell programmers

Sorry if I am being dumb, why is this a bad thing?

I admire your sincere attempt at engaging with this person. I genuinely cannot tell whether he/she is a troll.

- Do you have a reference for 'Genital mutilation is common and accepted'? It seems it only occurs in a minority of the also-minority 15% Muslim group, along with male circumcision. Obviously not great, but phrasing is dramatic. - 'outright murder people convicted of certain crimes' - this is commonly known as the death penalty, which many developed countries unfortunately still practice. The phrasing is certainly dramatic. - Certainly agree re LGBT. They decriminalized male intercourse recently (though this is more symbolic since it was never prosecuted) so there's progress - it is still a conservative Asian society but seems like leaning Western liberal over time.

You realize that is actually a very short list of corruption scandals - 12 over 55 years; and that they were investigated and prosecuted? The list of countries with stronger corruption records is short - this is not a great point to start your argument. And while it's certainly not the best in terms of human trafficking, it still has lower rates than most other developed Western European nations, and the US. I share equal disgust on the Haskell issue, of course.

Taking on debt loads with the expectation that future generations of your city will pay it off is not, in my opinion, ‘competent local government’.

Again, I wish them the best of luck, but philosophically I am an old line conservative. The fiscal kind, not the Jesus freak kind. I’ve seen this end badly before, and have seen no evidence to indicate this time will end any differently. But again, I’m happy to be proven wrong and hope they pull through. (Or rather, I guess I hope their children pull through.)

I'd like to see some of the leading benefactors donate to cities that demonstrate this level of civic service and professional delivery. There's no reason that governments can't receive donations like non-profits and charities do.

> There's no reason that governments can't receive donations like non-profits and charities do.

They do, it’s called taxes.

If a government starts having a donation culture, it’ll just end up becoming a legal way to pay for government favours and exacerbate rise in corruption. (Corruption has been rising more and more now that local journalism is declining, which previously used to bust out local events, embezzling tax payer money by municipalities, etc).

Look at what has happened to colleges which have donations as a major chunk of their income, or colleges which subsidises local students education with international students.

Colleges have easier admissions for children of donators, local students are neglected for international student programmes (happening a ton in Canada right now, a lot of their previously reputed colleges are becoming blacklisted by employers as diploma mills, e.g Conestoga College, Ontario)

When you’re not the payer/customer, YOU. DONT. MATTER.

Corporate lobbying is making votes ineffective, politicians are listening to lobbyists and their donations to campaign funds, than the voter who gets out to cast their votes.

Donations are bad, and should be discouraged for powerful organisations like Gov, College, etc which have a lot of power.

You’re local orphanage would benefit from donations and there’s not much power in their hands over majority of society.

But when you introduce donation culture in more critical places, it becomes a method of corruption.

> When you’re not the payer/customer, YOU. DONT. MATTER.

This is why I prefer local governments to be indexed to sales taxes, property taxes & income taxes. It encourages them to create economic activity.

I dislike it when local governments rely almost entirely on funding from central government. There's little incentive to create economic activity because it often creates more work in building infrastructure & social services. And less political incentive to improve public services, because you can always blame central government for a lack of funding.

You can donate to the US government: https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.h...

Reminds me of this tweet: https://twitter.com/WillManidis/status/1611369969916207108

Apparently, they don't need benefactors, they can just take on more debt!

I’m not sure how this ends well.

Some of the northern suburbs of DFW have done a good job managing explosive growth. Lots of parks, trails, mixed use development and places to actually live a life and not just work/getdrunk. It wasn’t that long ago when Frisco was just a blinking yellow light and a row of “massage parlors” in trailer homes (quite literally). Now it’s the poster child for successful suburb.

+1. I'm less familiar with Frisco but its neighbor Plano is similar and has a comprehensive development plan for the next 20 years available online: https://planocompplan.org/DocumentCenter/View/1951/Executive...

Both are great places to live for families with kids.

There are probably better examples to be found. The "competence" comes at a price - extremely high levels of inequality, utter lack of civil liberties, a one-party authoritarian regime and so forth.

Do you have any specific examples of this happening in the cities listed in the article?

What I mean is Singapore is hardly the ideal city to be measured against if we take into account the non-materiale aspects of life.

He's referring to Singapore.

A lot of places have all those problems, without the competence.

The only difference between an efficient, totalitarian regime and an inefficient totalitarian regime is time. Just give Singapore some time.

A system in which there are no or few effective feedback mechanisms are bound to diverge over time.

There are a couple of dimensions to consider. It's like how in a control system you can get better performance by reducing the level of damping, but at the expense of reduced stability or oscillation. It's possible to have too much damping, but stability is crucial too.

Notice how the list of negatives leaves out the 800 pound gorilla in the room? High levels of debt taken on to finance their, uh, ‘competence’.

People praising their ‘competence’ seem to ignore it. And the people complaining seem to ignore it. We’re beset on both sides of our political divide by fiscal apathy.

If places like Carmel fail, I’m certain their failure will have much more to do with bad debt than homelessness.

Without at least an appearance of competence (well, technically, tax-raising power), nobody would lend them the money.

Should Singapore really be put on a pedestal? They have inhumane laws and violate human rights regularly. Even free speech doesn’t truly exist there - some topics like criticizing religions are off limits. Competency in some areas through authoritarianism isn’t a sign of competency in general.

Singapore cannot be a benchmark for a city in the US. The tradeoffs are not worth it.

The tradeoffs are plenty worth for people who enjoy living in a clean, peaceful and prosperous environment

Who are these people that you speak of/for?

Worth it for Eduardo Saverin.

Was this comment written by the hands & fingers of an alderman from Chicago/Illinois?

If so, why are you sending money (eg. from parking meters...) to Qatar?

My goodness, nowhere near Singapore efficiency. 10 years to reduce to 60% homelessness. Singapore did to 90% in less than 10 years with near nothing other than pure debts and human capital in the 70s. And not only that they managed to maintain that for more than 3 decades. I would like to see Camel in 10 years time when they flip or some incompetent mayor voted in. When they able to do it 3 decades in a row, come back and let me know. PLUS all the example cited spread across multiple cities. Singapore had done it all in one single city and much more with less than 3-5M people. Again when you have something like that in America then I am impress. Otherwise, American achievement mentioned there dime a nickel many spread across Eastern Asia. Don't ride on Singapore tailcoat. USA is one of the worst country in a lot of metrics to benchmark against Singapore. Even the so call journalism freedom metric is just mirage in USA....look who employ those journalists. Their news outlet are so bizzare is like they reporting an alternate multiverse USA that I am not aware of.

Singapore is the most boring, sterile place I've ever been. I'd take Tokyo, Taipei, or Hong Kong over it in a heartbeat. The entire country reminds me of a mall. William Gibson's 1993 Wired article "Disneyland with the Death Penalty" (https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/) is still as relevant as ever.

I saw a fascinating talk that convincingly argued that the Chinese Communist Party has taken its game plan over the last 30 years from Singapore, a de facto one party state led by the People's Action Party. It's interesting to note that this party was founded on socialist principles but is now firmly capitalist.

Here’s a book that argues for the same. [0]

Makes one wonder whether such articles (OP’s) are part of a spin campaign..

[0] https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691211411/sp...

I would also mention Reno, Nevada which what managed to hugely transform the downtown/midtown area from what was an incredibly seedy place with hourly motels and homeless to something closer to average that you can take your family to. Lots more hip bars and restaurants, walkable areas, upgraded bus transport in the downtown/midtown area, and the UNR campus which abuts the downtown is significantly upgraded from what it was 10 years ago with beautiful new buildings and lots of new student housing.

Key actions: - Far more housing built, especially mid-upper end apartments - Actively partnered with real estate developers to get rid of unutilized land in downtown/midtown and purchase and upgrade what were once sketchy motels - New transportation options in the area to make it more walkable/accessible with a scooter partnership (geofenced to the area) and bus service

Edit to add: Almost all of this has been under the leadership of the current three term mayor who is an independent (or nonpartisan, forget exactly how she bills herself) showing how impactful local office can be. However, she does get some flak for not solving the local homeless problem, but personally having lived in SF, I understand how that's a much more difficult/intractable issue.

Isn't Singapore basically relying on the cheap labor of malaysian workers from right across the border?

Why can’t the US set up a second class temporary worker program a la Singapore for people who are otherwise illegal immigrants

Why do you think all of Singapore's immigrants are legal :)

Singapore actively catches, jails, and canes illegal immigrants:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_Singapo...

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/repeat-immigration...

Malaysians dominate the lowly paid and unprotected accounting industry. F&B and hospitality is a mix of south-east Asian nationalities. Construction comes mostly from Bangladesh.

Undereducated and/or burnt out Singapore citizens and permanent residents have the privilege of being able to do gig work, being private hire drivers and food delivery.

Americans might like the results; but they would take up arms against the big overbearing state and its socialism if anyone suggested any of the reality.

That sounds to me like Americans aren't that bright, or they've been tricked by typical party propaganda.

Cities need investment and if Americans aren't willing to invest in the places that they live, so they deserve nice things?

The government you elect is the government you deserve.

I am 1 person. I live in a city of 100,000.

Why do I deserve the outcome of 50,000 people's choices? (and if you say, 'just get involved in politics')

Okay, lets scale this, I'm 1 person, 100,000,000 people will be voting in November, why do I deserve the outcome?

(btw, I'm currently leaning less on democracy due to fear of populist demagogues, I want a republic where educated people have disproportional power to those who are less educated and produce less value)

>I want a republic where educated people have disproportional power to those who are less educated and produce less value

I assume you see yourself in the educated and valuable group?

And consequently, your choices and happiness is more important than some poor rural farmer? This sounds backward and feudalistic to me. You deserve the outcome of 50000 people's choices the same way they deserve outcome of your choices.

> This sounds backward and feudalistic to me.

Just because your emotions make you feel like that, doesnt mean there is any rational reason here.

The modern era has shown humans likely do not have free will, thus things like pop Media has disproportionate impact on democractic elections. Makes me think its regressive to think that popular outcome is the best way to decide things like justice. What makes you think that is better than a scientific approach?

At the end of the day, we want to limit pain and increase pleasure. What good is having a charlatan being president?

Even equalizing political power between an urban and rural person would be a vast improvement, rather than the current setup where the minority rural wolves have the urban sheep for dinner

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-rural-america-needs-c...

The government you (plural) elect is the government you (plural) deserve. If as a society you (plural) cannot figure out how to work together--due to ideological intransigence, culture values that preclude it, unwillingness to put in the hard work of figuring out why "they" feel the way they do, etc.--then you (plural) get fractious government, or what the Greeks called stasis.

> I want a republic where educated people have disproportional power to those who are less educated and produce less value

Because production of "value" should be the basis of aristocracy? And what is the definition of value? Does the uneducated farmer produce less value than the highly paid FAANG engineer? Well, if the transportation lanes get clogged, their value is going to go up in a hurry when there are shortages in the grocery stores. Does the uneducated garbage man produce less value? Well, stop collecting garbage in the city and you'll figure out what his value is. Does the uneducated janitor have little value? Well, have your company fire them all and you'll see what value they produce.

Plato saw the ideal aristocracy as wise, selfless civil servants, which seems like a better system. (Note that education does not produce wisdom. Some educated people are unwise, and some uneducated people are wise.)

>“Why do I deserve the outcome of 50,000 people's choices?”

<i>(In no way, shape or form I want to antagonize you, I want to prove an argument.)</i>

You deserve that outcome because:

· you're afraid of cops, SWAT, FBI, ATF, DEA, CIA, national guard etc.;

· you're afraid of DAs, prosecutors, jury, and judges;

· you're afraid of having a rap sheet stuck to your name for the rest of your life (+other lists that prohibits you from doing/owing/going A, B, C...);

· you're afraid of prison;

· you're afraid of death and/or what comes after death.

> I want a republic where educated people have disproportional power to those who are less educated and produce less value

That's not a democracy. That's an aristocracy. Who decides what "value" is?

Part of living in a society is trading things off. The system functions /because/ there is an opposition to keep the elected leadership in check. Living in a truly homogenous society sounds both dangerous and truly terrible to me.

If you are unhappy about the 50,000 "thems" that chose an outcome that you don't agree with, and you are unwilling to understand why the chose the way they chose, then you can go to the countryside where you can be educated and wise over all the farm animals.

Americans wouldn't tolerate the Singapore rules on cars or firearms, despite those being important factors in the Singaporeness.

Singaporians hate the car rules. It's easily among the most status driven of societies on earth, and those rules keep shit cars like Prius's costing minimum of 100K per year to operate.

I was shocked to find a society with some of the best transit in the world and a society that abjectly hates its own transit systems. The car lust I witnessed there makes American car enthusiasts look like mass transit zealots.

I’d say Korea is similar. One of the best public transit systems in the world in Seoul, yet everyone aspires to own a car.

Those huge skyscraper apartment complexes you see everywhere in the Seoul skyline? They’re sitting atop enormous underground parking garages.

That’s not to say everyone drives everywhere everyday. The awesome public transit system is indeed heavily utilized. But people still want the freedom that comes with owning a personal automobile.

Singaporean here. I grew up in a family without a car, know very little about cars, still don't have a driving licence, and didn't really care for a licence until recently. Many of my friends (in tech, especially) don't drive or care to own a car either.

I think our public transit is fine, despite the very infrequent delay. What I can't stand is the lack of transparency and constant cover-ups surrounding any breakdown or delay, because the transit operators have standards to meet.

>“Americans wouldn't tolerate the Singapore rules on cars or firearms(...)”

Give it time. I know how this can be done but I don't want to jinx it by having my comment read/archived/studied by a 3rd-party. But know that this can be done.

To this list I would add: San Mateo county, California. I live there. Our house is located in a valley below street grade and so we have a sewage ejector pump. That pump is maintained by the county. In the ~15 years we have lived here it has failed twice. Both times we called the county and a crew came out to fix it without an hour. Both times we had to pay nothing. It was, quite literally, our tax dollars at work.

This is the thing that drive me batshit crazy about the libertarian tech bros who live here. They appear to be willfully ignorant of the fact that the reason quality of life here is so high is not because we have no government, but because we have competent government that quietly and without fanfare just takes care of business behind the scenes so that the tech bros can do their thing without having to worry about fixing their sewage ejector pumps.

There are some policies and government functions that are not that expensive and have a huge return on investment for society.

It’s when there’s either no government or a huge government that you run into problems.

i mean, San Mateo is like one of the richest counties in America - i'd hope they would be able to do basic things like what you stated.

Well, the US are one of the richest countries in the world - so it's a bit mind-boggling that most cities (apparently) have problems providing basic services...

You have to ask which way the causality runs. Is SMC government good because SMC is full of rich people, or is SMC full of rich people because it has good government, which attracts rich people to move there? Or is it both working in a virtuous cycle?

it probably is a bit of a virtuous cycle but i'd argue that richer people generally demand more accountability and have more power to enact change from their local government than poor people - whether this is due to richer people being better educated, or having more free time to think about local politics, or a sense of entitlement for getting more out of society etc... i think they all play a part in being engaged in local politics and having agency to effect change.

That's more a question of having competent plumbers available on demand. The infrastructure behind those plumbers (funding, training, organization) can be achieved many different ways. So it is with most things. Roads, healthcare etc. At the end of the day, someone provides the service and it's organised somehow. But there are many possible ways to set it up.

> there are many possible ways to set it up.

And all of them require competent government.

To which I would add: different ways of setting it up have different consequences. The fact that this service is both reliable and free means that I have no incentive not to get my pump fixed when it fails, which makes it less likely that a failed pump will go unrepaired and leak raw sewage into the creek behind my house.

(This is one of the (many) things that I never see libertarians address: how do you deal with externalities?)

Oh for sure, there needs to be a central authority to look after the commons. It's whoever controls that area, be it the federal/state/local government, or more traditionally the local lord or the king or whoever.

I'm in a rural area with water provided by a private organization. Any issue is generally resolved within an hour or two.

TL;DR: Investing money smartly at the local level and cooperation between stakeholders on a long-term vision produces positive outcomes.

Agreeing on long-term outcomes is not always so easy and is vulnerable to extremists from either side.

Only with this agreement in place can stakeholders cooperate.

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