The Cure for Urban Disease: Government
Decatur Metro | June 22, 2010In a recent post on the New York Times’ Economix blog, Harvard economist Edward Glaeser takes a look the solutions to the inherent problems of close human proximity over the course of American city history and determines that basic survival compels city dwellers to be more government-inclined.
Money quote…
I’m a big fan of the free market, and I see lots to like in liberty. But the downsides of proximity, be they cholera or crime, have never been solved with laissez-faire. Costly, often intrusive public action has often been needed to manage the negative externalities associated with urban density.
In a sense, the gulf between the political attitudes of New York City and Montana can be understood as a reflection of the fact that city dwellers need government a lot more than ranchers do.
h/t: Otis White
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I’m not convinced of the truth of this broad proposition made by an economist about political attitudes.
Don’t ranchers use an awful lot of publicly owned land?
Don’t city dwellers use an awful lot of non-government interaction to spread info on matters of public health, employment, business and crime?
The most irritating assumption is that the problems of city life require a more demanding response than the problems of rural life. I suspect that some of the poorest, sickest and most victimized people in this country live in rural areas.
So who exactly is arguing cholera and crime aren’t problems that government has a role in addressing? If I go out to Montana and steal a car from a rancher, am I to understand that the rancher would see no role for police in arresting me, or in a jail to hold me if convicted? Does everyone in Wyoming drink directly from mountain streams, or do they treat their drinking water to prevent cholera? My bet is that they treat it.
If so, how exactly is a political attitude that accepts the need for basic law enforcement and public health one borne of — or even related to — urban density? It would seem clear that it’s not. Rather, it is a near-universal recognition that there are certain core responsibilities of governments. People disagree about whether universal health care is one of those. They don’t tend to disagree about whether arresting criminals is in the same category. In other words, the “gulf” between NYC and Montana isn’t that residents of those places disagree about the need to prosecute theft, but that they disagree over how much more the government should be doing in addition to its core functions.
It’s not so. The government has no role in keeping cholera out of your Montana well water.
Cholera is spread when sewage comes in contact with drinking water. As long as you can install a septic tank and dig a well and keep them away from each other, you’re golden. No government needed.
And that’s what he’s saying. Greater government intervention is necessary in cities when it comes to things like preventing the spread of cholera because there’s a lot more sharing of resources going on.
“Government” is an agreed-to set of controls to keep us from unfairly taking another person’s rights, wealth and health.
If Edward’s neighboring rancher’s cattle came down with foot and mouth disease he’d be awful glad the government enforces a quarantine on the ranch and destroys the herd whether his neighbor wants to or not.
Household septic systems and wells work in rural areas because the costs of the connections to a centralized service for drinking water and sewage treatment is prohibitive and the sparse land use density permits it. In a dense urban setting the exact opposite is true. Connectivity is cheap and dense land use makes household septic fields a serious health hazard to everyone.
Private business has an opportunity to provide services like a water and sewage system, but by and large it’s left to municipal government. The undertaking has huge installation, maintenance and liability costs. The infrastructure presents a natural monopoly. The operation of the service needs special exemptions to access property, rights of way etc.. The service must be provided to the entire citizenry (at low cost) to work. This precludes attractive profitability and lots of liability. There are private firms offering municipal services like security, education even sewer and water treatment. but at some point they fall under the jurisdiction of a level of government when neccessary.
I’ve re-read this guys article and replaced the word ‘government’ with the word ‘infrastructure’, and then it made perfect sense. It could be a pretty good paper from a high school junior maybe; but no…this is a Harvard professor.
It’s pretty obvious that the more densly populated a place is the more it is necessary for some sort of authority to exist (i.e. government) to solve problems, keep order, mediate disputes, etc.
A rancher in Wyoming does not need or have any day to day contact with government to go about daily life. Sure, they want police or fire protection if necessary, but don’t really need goverment for transportation, cleaning the streets, picking up trash, preventing communicable disease, or any of the basic infrastructure only government can provide (or contract out to a third party) that makes an urban area work.
How could a place like NYC survive, for example, without a strong government running things?
When you live in a place where a stonger government is necessary for things to work correctly, then you’re beliefs about government intervention are probably more liberal. If you are a rancher in Wyoming with no real need or contact with government on a day to day basis you are likely to be more conservative.
Seems pretty obvious not only intellectually, but in voting patterns. Not sure where DEM is coming from.