How Big Cities Go Bad/The Entitlement Economy

In "3 ways big cities go bad," Robert Robb, a columnist for the Arizona Republic, gives us an update on the thinking of Fred Siegel. I consider Siegel's The Future Once Happened Here to be one of the more important works on the decline of municipalities over the past 40 years. In combination with Molotch's work on the City as a Growth Machine, you really understand the underlying processes of why what happens the way it does.

In the profession, Siegel is considered to be "conservative" but he describes himself as a small-government Democrat. From the article:

Siegel believes there are three fundamental ways in which big cities go bad. The first is to lose control of order and civility in their public space - the streets, sidewalks and parks. This was an essential part of New York's deterioration and subsequent crime epidemic and the primary element of its recovery. ...

The other two ways big cities go bad, according to Siegel, are interrelated: control of city politics by municipal unions and an economy that becomes too much government-driven and too little privately-driven ...

All municipal politics tend to be an insiders' affair, characterized by small-turnout elections dominated by groups with a stake in the outcome - neighborhood associations, the cultural community, downtown-development interests and city workers.

When municipal unions dominate the mix, in essence choosing their bosses, fiscal discipline becomes impossible. And once government overhead passes a critical point, the only way to create space for private-sector growth is to shrink government, a virtually impossible task once city unions dominate elections.

The result is what Siegel has called an "entitlement economy," where opportunity depends on political decisions, not private initiative

Entitlement economy is an update from the book of the concept, "dependent individualism," expanded and extended to include the entire system, rather than merely the attitudes and behaviors of individuals.

There is no question that in the capital of the federal government, the bulk of the economy depends on currying favors, and achieving benefits often at the expense of others. It's an extension of the Marxist concept of Rentier capitalism. Instead of making their money from property rather than production, they make their income through the manipulation of the political decisionmaking process.