It’s held as a matter of faith in conservative circles that Detroit’s decline is the result of decades of liberal Democratic political mismanagement.
This is a significant oversimplification, of course, that ignores the impacts of deindustrialization, racial mistrust, and suburbanization. At the same time, in so much as “liberal Democrat” is a code for central planners, there is a kernel of truth to the charge.
From Coleman Young using eminent domain to give Poletown to General Motors, at the expense of a viable working class neighborhood, to I-375 obliterating the Paradise Valley commercial district, government schemes truly have been no friend of Detroit.
Even something as basic the city’s health and nutrition challenges are affected government interference in the food markets to incentivize the production and consumption of processed food products like high fructose corn syrup over healthier options.
With that context in mind, the libertarian Reason Foundation’s “Revitalizing Detroit After Bankruptcy” panel at Pontchartrain Hotel Thursday shouldn’t be dismissed out-of-hand, even if Reason’s politics differ from the politics of the vast majority of Detroiters.
The problem with the event, aside from the total attendance of 24 (including the six panelists and myself) is no one offered much in the way actual new ideas for Detroit or anywhere else.
Privatization was the watchword of the day. No surprise there. But this is warmed over material. After all, just yesterday the city approved a contract to privatize trash collection.
There is plenty to be discussed about scale of privatization efforts — private police, thank you but no — but no reasonable person disagrees with the idea that Detroit can experience significant savings by putting some operations out to bid and regionalizing others.
Detroit is actually doing that. Cobo and Belle Isle have been spun off. A regional authority now operates the lighting system. John Hantz was able to buy his land. The water system will likely be regionalized sooner rather than later.
Sincere privatization advocates should look at the current situation, declare victory, and move onto the next fight.
And here is the fundamental problem with the American right — it isn’t sincere about policy. Why do the careful, hard work of building a governing majority to further affect policy change, when you can keep selling the same recycled talking points to a small, but lucrative market segment of conservative donors and newsletter subscribers?
The entire operation is an exercise in profiting on confirmation bias.
The Mackinac Center’s Michael LaFaive spoke Tuesday morning about how much money Pontiac saved through private and intergovernmental contracting. He presented Pontiac as a model for Detroit. Yet, however more fiscally responsible Pontiac may be, it isn’t necessarily more attractive to businesses and residents than it was ten years ago.
How interesting it would have been to hear how Pontiac could be more than a struggling city with a better balance sheet. Or, how the economies of scale created by Pontiac’s policing relationship with the Oakland County Sheriff—LaFaive says the city save $5.8M annually on the deal—could be replicated across the state with some kind of comprehensive municipal reform.
Instead of all that, the Reason Foundation brings Dr. E.S. Savas to Detroit to say that privatization is super-neato.
“There have been mercenary armies for hundreds of years,” he explained Tuesday morning, citing the Hessian fighters during the Revolutionary War as an example. One hopes Rizzo’s employees are more effective picking up Detroit’s garbage than the Hessians were on Dec. 26, 1776.
Uninspiring historical examples aside, Savas, a professor at the City University of New York, is a dubious advocate for privatization.
He left his job as Assistant Secretary of Housing And Urban Development under a cloud of scandal. The Justice Department concluded he abused his office by having federal employees help him write a book about privatization. That’s the ultimate irony — privatization advocate requires government help to argue for privatization.
He was also accused of accepting $19,000 in consulting fees from Ecodata Inc. in 1981, before his division awarded Ecodata a contract even though their bid was $190,000 more than two competing bids.
Rather than a fresh voice with new ideas, E.S. Savas would fit right in a broken political culture that gave us Kwame Kilpatrick, Turkia Mullin, and Andy Dillon.
But to truly understand the insincerity of the Reason Foundation’s interest in Detroit’s future you had to have witnessed their final panelist: Businessman Rodney Lockwood of “Commonwealth of Belle Isle” fame.
Lockwood latest flight of fantasy is to acquire and control a large swath of Detroit starting with City Airport and stretching to the Detroit River, including (according to his map) Belle Isle.
With this property, he would build a logistics and transportation hub, which would (according to Lockwood) attract 200,000 new residents, create 100,000 new jobs, and increase land value to $1000/square foot.
How it would do all that is unclear, but Lockwood seems convinced.
He points out that Memphis’ logistics industry as a model for creating such prosperity. Much of Memphis’ success, of course, is based on the fact that FedEx is located there. But again, one can’t be sidetracked by details when laying out a shining path to prosperity.
Lockwood’s plan is simple in the way a small child’s plan for world peace might be simple.
First Detroit gives him everything it owns in the Lockwoodland zone. City creditors exchange their debt with the city for a piece of Lockwoodville. Vacant lots sold to “homesteaders” for a $1 and when they sell their property for the magic $1000/square foot and then split the profit with the company. Eventually everyone will have good jobs and big profits.
Oh, and the part about the city selling him everything in the borders of Lockwoodistan, that’s not just land and buildings. He said Tuesday that he’d want all assets including (his words) “the fire trucks.”
Effectively, everyone in this Democratic People’s Republic of Lockwood will cease to be Detroiters ruled by Constitutional civil government. They would have to submit to the governance of a corporate Board of Directors.
For a guy who claims to be libertarian, Rod Lockwood doesn't have much use for anything resembling a libertarian society. He may like it when libertarians talk about lower taxes and less regulation for his businesses, but Rodney Lockwood is anything but a fan of civil liberty.
In truth, Lockwood may be the closest thing to an American Fascist since Huey Long and Gerald L.K. Smith. He is, fundamentally, a central planner who wants to replace Constitutional civil government with an autocratic corporation that governs in Rod Lockwood’s image.
Imagine for a second if a mayor or governor or senator proposed such schemes. The very people who sit shoulder-to-shoulder with Rodney Lockwood on panels like this one would be rightfully outraged.
Yet, for some reason, they cheer this would-be cross between Charles Foster Kane and Robert Moses as hero of liberty.
That alone should tell you just how irrelevant the intellectual right has become.
