Great article - coming from the South, this is totally relatable. Our public services have also been outsourced, often because of a combination of budget deficits and absent tax infrastructure and a right to work/anti-union environment. Very different causes than LA but similar experience of overpriced options (or lack of options) for residents. What's interesting tho is that I've been in Colorado all summer and am having a similar experience to yours in Utah, except Colorado IS a blue state, but one with the reputation of being willing to deregulate for the sake of outcomes. so I guess I'm just wondering about the bigger story here, when the poorest and richest states can't seem to have nice things and then the places in between are really (no pun intended) nailing it.
Maybe I am an optimist, but no matter where you go in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors, you will find departments that manage seemingly against all odds to get the job done. The first thing you notice about well run organizations is that they actually know what there job is.
I am a native to Los Angeles and now 67 years of age and 1 of 7 children. As a young child my parents would take us to the LA Zoo. Griffith Park was a treasure and there were summer camps for boys and girls that we went to. It was a child’s paradise. I don’t know where and when things went astray but it has been going on for a while. We lost our way, caving in to ideology and self-interest groups. The pony rides went away. Prices soared. Family and community, what we treasure most, went to the bottom of the list or at least very close. We all need to work together to change this.
I don't know how pieces like this get published. It is entirely anecdotal, based on cherry picked factoids and reflects no expertise I can identify. My answer to the author; maybe it's harder to run Los Angeles than a rural petting zoo.
That's neat and all, but when I ask an LLM to identify the logic in that comment, it says it's in appeal to authority and that there's no argument, so I'm not sure it helped Charles's complaint of a lack of data!
It's funny to read people jumping on you. I would be super curious to read a data-driven version of this, but I also identify with the anecdotal version.
I suspect there is some correlation/causation stuff that confounds some of this, like big cities are more likely to be liberal because of the population dynamics of diverse communities AND it's hard to govern diverse groups of people because there are more opinions at the steering wheel. I also suspect that humans aren't good at governing large groups and once you pass a certain level of complexity everything falls apart.
I feel like you synthesized something interesting by pointing out the fact that US Dems just want to privatize via a series of pseudo-non-profit money laundering schemes (my words, not yours).
Perhaps why I identify with the vibe of this article: My home town in Canada -- Hamilton, Ontario -- is shockingly poorly run. It's a city of ~700k and just an absolute dumpster fire of city government incompetence and probably the union is partly to blame as well. It's relatively diverse I guess, but mostly just people in surburban houses driving SUVs to big rectangular, air conditioned restaurants. There is no leadership or accountability at any level of planning in the city. It's just a bunch of middle-managers hoping that someone else is going to solve the problem. We don't have a zoo, but if we did it would be like LA ;)
Reading this was frustrating. So many fallacies. Why are we spending so much time talking about zoos? Your kids couldn't pet the goats, but poor kids in CA get free school lunches and will likely continue despite cuts to SNAP benefits. Your kids couldn't see any elephants at the one shitty zoo you took them to (ever been to San Diego Zoo, btw? Lots to see there), but women in blue states have access to the full suite of reproductive health care including abortions. Blue states are often mired in bureaucratic red tape and plenty of things aren't functioning well, but in a time when foster kids are about to be kicked off their health coverage and public education, research and science are taking big hits in federal funding, this article feels kinda myopic and whiny. How do we fix the bigger issues? And by "bigger issues" I mean things like the homelessness and affordable housing crises, not the defunct exhibits at the local zoo. It's true that the public needs to hold representatives accountable. But first we need to agree on what the biggest issues are.
Yes totally equating a big city main zoo with a small city suburban petting zoo/farm. Is SLC's zoo a paragon of efficiency?? No data on that though..... The writer believes that "it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail." Well congrats you automated the process with a nail gun!!!🤣
I have looked at the NAEP (education) statistics a bit. The bottom line is a saying now famous in Mississippi. The saying is "thank god for California". Otherwise, Mississippi would be at the bottom of the list. Utah out performs NY state. NY states 'only' spends three (or more) times as much.
That's odd. This NAEP chart I'm looking at (https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile?sfj=NP&chort=1&sub=MAT&sj=&st=MN&year=2024R3) shows plenty of red states below California. What am I missing, Peter? Also, it's worth noting that California has an immigrant population (read: ESL learners) of about 25%, while Mississippi's is about 2.5% of their population. You have to look at more than one data point to get a full picture of what is going on in any given state.
I looked at your chart, CA gets a 233. MS (Mississippi) gets a 239. "Thank god for California". NM gets a 224. Utah, Texas, Wyoming, Florida, and North Dakota get high scores (who did they vote for?). Did I mention that Utah outperforms NY state (according to your chart)?
What a wonderful epithet to claim as your own. "Richard the Lion-Hearted" pales in comparison to Jacob, the "Ticket scalper and occasional writer". Innovative.
It is not just LA, California can't get things done. My favorite example, is the (unfinished) California HSR (better known at the train to nowhere). By contrast, China has 25,000+ miles of HSR. My overall comment is that China builds dams. The US enforces PC. Which system will dominate this century?
I'm really not convinced by the framing of this article, mostly because it doesn't seem to address the theory I find more "obvious", namely, what if the way people act in big cities is different from the way they act in your favorite farm in Utah?
It would have been nice to see some data or statistics to help make a comparison, though I'll admit that a lot of possible stats would seem arbitry (See Yascha's comparison of European QOL and American QOL for a really fantastic job of picking stats out of a hat that don't feel bullshit).
Now you might be thinking: Alex, you could do this yourself. You're correct, I could, but I'm confused why THIS article didn't already do the work. It opened with some fun strong anecdotes and had an amusing tone throughout, but ultimately rose to a similar level of convincingness as Scott Aaronson's "On Blankfaces" https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=5675
So what’s different about places that still work? Why can Salt Lake County run a gem of a community farm? Why does Boise have a well-regarded county-run tubing operation when L.A. can’t even subcontract out a zoo?
Partly it’s the unions, it’s the Groups, it’s our degraded political culture, in some cases the sheer size of these states or metros—all the standard Abundance stuff. But I’d push back against Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. The belief that good governance can be engineered—that there’s a correct way to govern, some set of magical processes that, if followed, will achieve optimal results—is what led cities to outsource core functions to consultants and nonprofits in the first place. And replacing one bloated public-private technocracy with a slightly more efficient public-private technocracy doesn’t solve this fundamental problem.
Jacob when you can provide us with more than transparent straw man arguments and ad hominem attacks we can totally have an honest dialog....Please be sure to actually read the book, I don't see any real evidence that you did anything but skim AI summaries of it... crack the book and get back to us...
Great article - coming from the South, this is totally relatable. Our public services have also been outsourced, often because of a combination of budget deficits and absent tax infrastructure and a right to work/anti-union environment. Very different causes than LA but similar experience of overpriced options (or lack of options) for residents. What's interesting tho is that I've been in Colorado all summer and am having a similar experience to yours in Utah, except Colorado IS a blue state, but one with the reputation of being willing to deregulate for the sake of outcomes. so I guess I'm just wondering about the bigger story here, when the poorest and richest states can't seem to have nice things and then the places in between are really (no pun intended) nailing it.
Maybe it’s actually not a red state/blue state thing—just about not letting ideology and bureaucracy get in the way.
Maybe I am an optimist, but no matter where you go in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors, you will find departments that manage seemingly against all odds to get the job done. The first thing you notice about well run organizations is that they actually know what there job is.
That would help!😂
I am a native to Los Angeles and now 67 years of age and 1 of 7 children. As a young child my parents would take us to the LA Zoo. Griffith Park was a treasure and there were summer camps for boys and girls that we went to. It was a child’s paradise. I don’t know where and when things went astray but it has been going on for a while. We lost our way, caving in to ideology and self-interest groups. The pony rides went away. Prices soared. Family and community, what we treasure most, went to the bottom of the list or at least very close. We all need to work together to change this.
I don't know how pieces like this get published. It is entirely anecdotal, based on cherry picked factoids and reflects no expertise I can identify. My answer to the author; maybe it's harder to run Los Angeles than a rural petting zoo.
I actually have 3 PhD's in Urban Planning -- Harvard, MIT, and Berkeley.
That's neat and all, but when I ask an LLM to identify the logic in that comment, it says it's in appeal to authority and that there's no argument, so I'm not sure it helped Charles's complaint of a lack of data!
It's funny to read people jumping on you. I would be super curious to read a data-driven version of this, but I also identify with the anecdotal version.
I suspect there is some correlation/causation stuff that confounds some of this, like big cities are more likely to be liberal because of the population dynamics of diverse communities AND it's hard to govern diverse groups of people because there are more opinions at the steering wheel. I also suspect that humans aren't good at governing large groups and once you pass a certain level of complexity everything falls apart.
I feel like you synthesized something interesting by pointing out the fact that US Dems just want to privatize via a series of pseudo-non-profit money laundering schemes (my words, not yours).
Perhaps why I identify with the vibe of this article: My home town in Canada -- Hamilton, Ontario -- is shockingly poorly run. It's a city of ~700k and just an absolute dumpster fire of city government incompetence and probably the union is partly to blame as well. It's relatively diverse I guess, but mostly just people in surburban houses driving SUVs to big rectangular, air conditioned restaurants. There is no leadership or accountability at any level of planning in the city. It's just a bunch of middle-managers hoping that someone else is going to solve the problem. We don't have a zoo, but if we did it would be like LA ;)
Reading this was frustrating. So many fallacies. Why are we spending so much time talking about zoos? Your kids couldn't pet the goats, but poor kids in CA get free school lunches and will likely continue despite cuts to SNAP benefits. Your kids couldn't see any elephants at the one shitty zoo you took them to (ever been to San Diego Zoo, btw? Lots to see there), but women in blue states have access to the full suite of reproductive health care including abortions. Blue states are often mired in bureaucratic red tape and plenty of things aren't functioning well, but in a time when foster kids are about to be kicked off their health coverage and public education, research and science are taking big hits in federal funding, this article feels kinda myopic and whiny. How do we fix the bigger issues? And by "bigger issues" I mean things like the homelessness and affordable housing crises, not the defunct exhibits at the local zoo. It's true that the public needs to hold representatives accountable. But first we need to agree on what the biggest issues are.
why talk about anything, ever, except for the things you want to talk about?
Sorry to jam up your comment thread with my trivial concerns, Jacob.
"Blue states are often mired in bureaucratic red tape and plenty of things aren't functioning well" -- you said it pretty well yourself.
Yes totally equating a big city main zoo with a small city suburban petting zoo/farm. Is SLC's zoo a paragon of efficiency?? No data on that though..... The writer believes that "it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail." Well congrats you automated the process with a nail gun!!!🤣
I have looked at the NAEP (education) statistics a bit. The bottom line is a saying now famous in Mississippi. The saying is "thank god for California". Otherwise, Mississippi would be at the bottom of the list. Utah out performs NY state. NY states 'only' spends three (or more) times as much.
That's odd. This NAEP chart I'm looking at (https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile?sfj=NP&chort=1&sub=MAT&sj=&st=MN&year=2024R3) shows plenty of red states below California. What am I missing, Peter? Also, it's worth noting that California has an immigrant population (read: ESL learners) of about 25%, while Mississippi's is about 2.5% of their population. You have to look at more than one data point to get a full picture of what is going on in any given state.
I looked at your chart, CA gets a 233. MS (Mississippi) gets a 239. "Thank god for California". NM gets a 224. Utah, Texas, Wyoming, Florida, and North Dakota get high scores (who did they vote for?). Did I mention that Utah outperforms NY state (according to your chart)?
What a wonderful epithet to claim as your own. "Richard the Lion-Hearted" pales in comparison to Jacob, the "Ticket scalper and occasional writer". Innovative.
Tempting to broad brush the analysis. Bronx Zoo is pricey but seems to run well.
not all public-private partnerships are terrible -- my argument is they're a symptom of a refusal to actually govern, though.
It is not just LA, California can't get things done. My favorite example, is the (unfinished) California HSR (better known at the train to nowhere). By contrast, China has 25,000+ miles of HSR. My overall comment is that China builds dams. The US enforces PC. Which system will dominate this century?
I'm really not convinced by the framing of this article, mostly because it doesn't seem to address the theory I find more "obvious", namely, what if the way people act in big cities is different from the way they act in your favorite farm in Utah?
It would have been nice to see some data or statistics to help make a comparison, though I'll admit that a lot of possible stats would seem arbitry (See Yascha's comparison of European QOL and American QOL for a really fantastic job of picking stats out of a hat that don't feel bullshit).
Now you might be thinking: Alex, you could do this yourself. You're correct, I could, but I'm confused why THIS article didn't already do the work. It opened with some fun strong anecdotes and had an amusing tone throughout, but ultimately rose to a similar level of convincingness as Scott Aaronson's "On Blankfaces" https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=5675
So what’s different about places that still work? Why can Salt Lake County run a gem of a community farm? Why does Boise have a well-regarded county-run tubing operation when L.A. can’t even subcontract out a zoo?
Partly it’s the unions, it’s the Groups, it’s our degraded political culture, in some cases the sheer size of these states or metros—all the standard Abundance stuff. But I’d push back against Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. The belief that good governance can be engineered—that there’s a correct way to govern, some set of magical processes that, if followed, will achieve optimal results—is what led cities to outsource core functions to consultants and nonprofits in the first place. And replacing one bloated public-private technocracy with a slightly more efficient public-private technocracy doesn’t solve this fundamental problem.
Jacob when you can provide us with more than transparent straw man arguments and ad hominem attacks we can totally have an honest dialog....Please be sure to actually read the book, I don't see any real evidence that you did anything but skim AI summaries of it... crack the book and get back to us...