18 September

America’s decay isn’t caused by ‘authoritarians’ taking over the country. It’s caused by its cultural obsession, its hatred of public regulation and policing. That’s the theme of every Western movie, right there in plain sight. Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in economics, studied how the ‘commons’ (i.e. public spaces and resources) *must* be strongly and visibly regulated and policed, to function. You’ll see the same arguments even more strongly about road use. The libertarian car enthusiasts believe we’re over-policed, that it’s all ‘revenue raising’. But as the US discovered with its public transport, it’s UNDER-policing that makes it too unsafe for most people to want to use. Cars on the road are the same, they must be strongly regulated and policed, for roads to function as public roads. Read this article, it’s fascinating. And look at the stats on what happens when you under-police, how the prison population explodes. The data for the US is staggering.