“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Daniel Patrick Moynihan
George Rebane
Sierra Business Council CEO Steven Frisch took to task my criticism of Terry McAteer’s Union column (here) in which he glossed over the real problems that California has under Democrat leadership. Along with McAteer, Frisch also appears to be blind to California socialists’ homegrown catastrophes, and counsels those who would point them out to “stop acting like a bunch of babies and work together.”
Instead of acknowledging the major problems of our state that are worsening by the day, he focuses on our rural economy and proposes a laundry list of things to do with apparently no idea of what has been tried and is still being attempted. The list, reproduced below, reads like something out of a government handbook for how to launch a NGO in rural America. The ‘do-list’ is high sounding pabulum and tautological beyond belief, and would sound impressive only to those not familiar with the history and realities of Nevada County in the 21st century. And in no way do they help find common ground to address America’s polarization and ideological divide. In Mr Frisch’s own words –
“I could list about 10 things that we all could agree on that would lift up rural economies that the people on the opposite side of that divide could embrace and work on:
1. Expand broadband access
2. Create and support rural entrepreneurship programs
3. Provide direct technical assistance to rural businesses to expand markets
4. Create community investment capital and expand access to outside capital
5. Increase opportunities for workforce education and training at every level
6. Increase availability of affordable housing (yes in my back yard)
7. Modernize rural infrastructure (roads, water, waste, electrical, rail)
8. Expand access to the arts and recreation
9. Consciously link rural products to global markets
10. Stop acting like a bunch of babies and work together.”
NC’s population density has been kept low through a series of short-sighted and impractical public policies powered by eco-hysteria and NIMBYs, each seeking in their own way to staunch development and growth. RR has long held that NC’s economical future, in addition to increasing its retiree population and attracting more tourism, is in expanding high-tech enterprises that are information intensive and minimize the handling of materials. We have known for over 20 years that this requires an enormous increase in the availability of broadband in the county. My colleagues and I have been involved in a number of efforts with the county to understand and facilitate greater broadband. The reality is that unless our bankrupt state government provides massive amounts of other people’s money (OPM), the economics of population density will continue to rule.
This reality has led the county into continuing a policy of opportunistic adoption of serendipitous small private enterprise efforts to increase broadband availability here and there. Within the current realities there is no impetus to develop a realizable strategic plan. So, writing down ‘expand broadband access’ as a “thing” to agree on is both simplistic and naïve, but also the traditional work product of redundant NGOs.
A more useful suggestion to achieve this and the other things on such a do-list would be to FIRST find a way to bring together the parties opposed to growth and development, and see if they can be convinced to cease and desist in their active opposition. This is an effort in political education. Everything else on that list which requires or invites private investment will not occur until NC is perceived as a business and people welcoming environment. Today this is something which the statist and stasist progressives show little promise of grasping.
So unless there is something new in the minds of people like Steven Frisch, something that recognizes what already has been/is being ‘created’, ‘supported’, ‘increased’, ‘modernized’, ‘expanded’, ‘improved’, … with available funds in this restrictive environment embedded in the backwater of the nation’s most hyper-progressive, anti-enterprise state, then such a list is useful only to sell a NGO’s consulting services to another unsuspecting local government eager to demonstrate to their voters that it is pro-active in doing something. To most of us who have been active and paying attention, this is doing the same ol’ same ol’ and expecting different results. But it does provide an ongoing and good living for those so engaged.
In many ways, I’m again reminded of all this being the modern day, ‘civilized’ analog of the New Guinea cargo cults that sprang up after WW2 when the C-47s quit bringing all kinds of new things and good stuff to the natives living in the highland jungles. After the war they kept erecting crude wooden replicas of airplanes on hilltops, hoping to attract other airplanes to again land and disgorge their largess. Both efforts are based on attracting OPM while not changing the status quo or taking any additional risk.
So let’s circle back to the point of my McAteer critique in light of Steven Frisch’s response, a welcome one which can’t help but give conservetarians like me another strong dose of confirmation bias about the progressive mind. The overarching problem which now poisons most of our nation’s polity, is today’s impeachment that will cement America’s polar extremes across a divide that has yet to reveal any common ground – Frisch’s inane list withstanding. It turns out that Mr Frisch is nothing more than another grassroots incarnation of the socialist Left’s Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, AOC, …, in short, all those in his ideological pantheon. He apes them on a minor scale, putting forth proposals with no thought to either their practical implementation or funding. The silent implication being that we’ll just increase the size of government and raise more taxes to achieve his stated objectives for the common good, which then bear no relation to any kind of common ground between the Left and Right.
The late Patrick Moynihan’s tagline to this commentary has turned out to be patently false. After decades of union-dominated public schooling with a socialist agenda, it turns out that today everyone is not only entitled to his own opinion, but is also entitled to his own facts. In the public forum there now exist at least two major sets of grossly conflicting ‘facts’ in almost every domain of human experience and knowledge – history, law, economics, behavioral psychology, ‘science’, foreign relations, ecology, … .
The main reason that centrally managed collectivist ideologies have failed to provide any functional organizing principle to social units larger than very small primitive tribes, is that they don’t scale due to the demonstrable characteristics of human behavior. Forcing them on larger social units immediately brings out the worst in people as they begin to avoid the inevitable paupering by various attempts to game the system, which then leads to tyranny in the attempts to enforce such public policies. All this is denied by today’s progressives, starting with their cynical leaders, and ranging down to the sincere but ignorant like Mr Frisch.
To date in mankind’s time on this planet, governance based on free market capitalism has been by far the most successful to organize society. However, free market capitalism has its own warts that need to be monitored and pruned lest they turn cancerous. Even though capitalism beats socialism hands down for providing for the greater good, nothing is free. We have yet to discover the penultimate social organization that can run on autopilot. And if one such method is ever to be discovered, I’d bet the ranch that it would be based on the explicit recognition of human behavioral traits and (finally) the obvious fact that we all arrive with different abilities and proclivities. The latter will continue to give rise to unequal achievements which in the large must then be tolerated to the extent that they cannot be mitigated without the use of force.
All this is anathema to today’s socialists who cite Stalinist scripture (which also recognizes no common ground) in that one must be prepared to crack a few eggs to make an omelet. Today in California we eggs know who we are.
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