The State Capacity Crisis
I write this to you from New York City, where we are governed by Democrats and we pay the highest taxes in the country, but that doesn’t mean we receive the best government services. Our transportation agencies are black holes for money, unable to deliver on their capital plans despite repeated increases in the dedicated taxes that fund them,... See more
The blue cities must be fixed
So here’s where we are: caught in a compound crisis where economic stress reduces cognitive bandwidth, reduced bandwidth enables extraction, extraction deepens economic stress, stress plus overload erodes trust, loss of trust prevents coordination, coordination failure leaves problems unsolved, and unsolved problems deepen the crisis.
This isn’t a... See more
This isn’t a... See more
Everyone is Gambling and No One is Happy
Over the past two generations, such big questions have fallen increasingly to small, local governments. Why? Because our national governments have collectively failed to build the planetary institutions necessary to solve Earth’s biggest problems, from climate change to pandemics, corruption to poverty. They have also failed to protect democracy... See more