BEVERLY, MA In our last local election, my longtime city councilor’s re-election message was a list of the things he’d opposed. Highlights on the list were stopping a gymnastics place from opening and successfully blocking the licensing of a new day care in our part of town; his lowlight was that he’d tried and failed to stop the new Whole Foods from going in. Happily for the neighborhood, his failure to stop the Whole Foods ensured that the old dump by the highway overpass was turned into an ok little shopping plaza.
What causes the physical status quo to hold strongly in a person’s mind that they believe it to be the only good? Who would take a stand for the old dump and against, well, anything from being constructed in it’s place?
There’s something a little off with we view our problems and thus a lot off with how we decide to tackle them.
The first link this week is a simply delightful WSJ piece on a big fight in Nantucket: whether to disallow short term rentals. This piece has everything: from stupidly rich people to stupid people; locals fighting about who is more local; and a dim idea of the future any of them want. Most of the people want some slice of an imagined past where everyone got the beachfront house they wanted for cheap. How would you vote in the Nantucket vs. Airbnb fight?
The next two pieces are interesting attempts to explain our neuroses. The idea that we’re creating our own zero-sum games seems bang-on to me. But I’m not quite sure how to stop it. The idea that our lowers classes suffer from a unique set of social problems is as obvious as the prima facie failure of the sneering “just move out” of Appalachia solution.
I’m not sure what’s wrong with us, but here’s some good reading about it. And what more could you want from a little email newsletter?
