Seth Godin, natch:
The shift that is happening right now is that the people who insist on keeping the world as it was are going to get more and more frustrated until they lose their jobs. People who want to invent a whole new set of rules, a new paradigm, can’t believe their good fortune and how lucky they are that the people in the industry aren’t noticing an opportunity…
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Brad Burnham’s investment strategy:
… arbitrage the difference between the capabilities of the new medium and readiness of the existing economic and social structures to exploit those capabilities.
Wonkish, yes, but there’s a clear resonance with me, and it only continues to intensify. I believe I have come up with something big, the only remaining question is whether I can sell it, unless of course it sells itself.
As always, more soon.
Digby, pointed as ever:
If Obama were to succeed in fixing the economy, re-regulating the financial system, enacting health care and a modern environmental and energy policy, the right would be discredited for a couple of generations — and the wealthy would lose many of their unfair advantages under a fair and equitable system. They not only do not want to take that chance, they also see this crisis as an opportunity to bury liberal economics and end the government programs that ensure a stable and prosperous society with a vast middle class. The stakes are huge for both sides.
Those of you expecting the republicans to pause and reflect on the previous eight years are sorely mistaken. The future health and well-being of our people and our republic will be decided in the next two years; the rich and powerful will leave nothing to chance.
Regrettably, we are sorely unprepared for this battle.
Eric of San Francisco’s Transbay Blog writes:
City streets, unlike freeways, naturally support a variety of transportation modes; and they can support those modes even better if we implement complete street design principles that calm traffic, and prioritize a high-quality pedestrian streetscape above moving cars faster. By proposing that intersection-dense street networks qualify as a single project unit for the purposes of stimulus funding, CNU’s proposal shifts investment away from freeways and toward our nation’s neglected city centers.
Under the proposal, any street in a qualifying network could be enhanced with stimulus money. Note that this does involve spending money on the roads themselves. Roads should be kept in good working condition. Given that some money must be spent on road networks, it is preferable to invest in city streets, because funds can be applied both to repaving and to creating complete streets that are friendly and accessible to all users no matter their travel mode.
The result will be increased concentration of human and economic activity in our cities — in the exact areas where trips are generally shorter, and where it is often easier to walk, bike, or take transit than it is to drive. And as noted above, a high-quality pedestrian experience is absolutely central to the success of this vision. Attractive, walkable, complete streets encourage people to shift to other modes and reduce their automobile usage, and they carry great economic benefits for cities.
My emphasis in bold, line breaks added for legibility. Eric’s thoughts heavily influenced my previous riff on urban infrastructure.
Imagine streets oriented to the human scale: peaceful, walkable, supporting both a density and diversity of development. This is not only a vision for New York or San Francisco, this was the blueprint of small towns and close-knit communities before the birth of the automobile, and as such it can be applied anywhere in America to reinvigorate what was once lost. Coupled with light rail to link adjacent communities, it forms the basis for a genuine rebirth of our neighborhoods and cities.
Again, I don’t expect Obama to fund these projects in year one, but I do hope that his administration strongly advocates for sustainable development, and shifts to making wise investments in the infrastructure that can benefit the greatest number of people. We can no longer afford to support the suburban model, we must recognize that and get over it, then move forward with more a sustainable approach to organizing our communities and cities.
Gregor defines the problem:
The problem the country faces right now is that we already invested in the wrong things. Wrong things have little sustainable payoff. We invested in Houses and Cars, and did so for decades. But houses and cars are really just tools that are supposed to set us up to do the larger work. In the United States the car and the home became economic fetishes. Alot of the country now lives in a home that’s too big, in a town too far from work. Continuing to invest in this structure is crazy, given that oil prices will be sky-high again in the near future. Politically, however, it will be difficult for the nation’s Governors to do otherwise, and therein lies a problem.
And the solutions:
The value proposition of commuter and light rail is so powerful, on so many different levels, that I cannot understand why it’s not in the Number One position in current discussions of the Obama plan. It should be above Carbon and Climate issues, Solar and Wind issues, vehicle standards issues, and certainly well above Road and Bridge issues. The only comparable investment theme I find in the proposed stimulus plan relates to the Grid. We will indeed need a new Grid to feed power from new sources of utility grade solar and wind, into electrified public rail transport.
In many ways, I think Obama’s hands are tied on this one as a result of timing more so than desire. I think we’ll see some more conventional “Road and Bridge” projects in the first year, and I can live with that. Fact is, we aren’t going to end our reliance on cars overnight, so maintenance and modest improvements on our existing infrastructure is a prudent move. And we desperately need to put people to work.
I expect to see more substantial big thinking projects in the following years. Changes to the Grid aren’t going to happen overnight, but they will happen in the next five to ten years, and must begin to lay that groundwork now. Light rail can make denser development more attractive, and once again make walking the principal form of transportation in older, more urban communities. Suburban sprawl is killing our cities, and our heavy reliance on the automobile is unsustainable, so we have no choice but to change the way we now live.
As only Jim Kunstler can:
To me, GWB will remain the perfect representative of his time, place, and culture. During his years in Washington, America became a nation of clowns posturing in cowboy hats, bethinking ourselves righteous agents of Jesus in a Las Vegas of the spirit, where wishing was enough to get something for nothing, where “mistakes were made,” but everybody was excused from the consequences of bad choices. The break from that mentality will be very severe, and we may look back in twelve months and wonder how we ever fell for the whole package. The answering of that question will occupy historians for ages to come.
Never sure if reading Kunstler first thing every Monday morning is good for me or not. Hilarious, yes, but depressing too.
I have no idea how he does it, so prolific and spot on:
Instead of working so hard to make everything okay, perhaps it is more helpful to work hard at living with a world that rarely is.
Expect to see many more here in the days and weeks to come.
The opportunity this year is bigger than ever: to lead change, to create a movement in a direction you want to go. While the rest of your world huddles and holds back, here’s a golden chance to use cheap media, available attention and great talent to make something that matters.
Seth has been saying this stuff for years, and I have always agreed but never acted. I really believe the moment for me is now.