NIMBY: Not In My Backyard. This is the poison that contaminates the wellspring of democracy in the United States.
Alexis De Tocqueville put it this way: “A democracy ... can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."
An example of NIMBY is school districts across the country that have a hard time closing down old, small, expensive to maintain, and crowded school buildings to consolidate students, and save the tax payers mounds of money. Every time a school board gets up the gumption to announce its intention to close down some old schools and send the students from those small old schools over to a new, large, and modern facility a couple neighborhoods away, the response in predicable.
The parents troop their kids into the cold weather, making their kids hold hand-painted signs that read: “don’t close my school!” They get their kids testify before the community hearing on it, reading statements about how they love their school and their teachers, the local news station puts the picture on the night’s broadcast, and the insensitive boneheads on the school board have nothing to say in response to the kid who asks, “why are you doing this horrible thing to me?” and the school board member has really nothing really to say in response, because how do you explain economies of scale, seismic instability of buildings built in the 1940s, and the significant savings of tax payers money to a 3rd grader anyway?
So the parents manipulate their kids, the kids paint some misleading signs, shed a few tears, the school board member looks like a deer in the headlights on the news, and the community gets all riled up because the local school board is going to kick that cute 3rd grader out of school and directly onto skid row.
Why? Because the parents who take their kids to the school down the road (the very school the parents went to when they were kids) don’t want to lose the nostalgia of having the neighborhood school in the neighborhood, nor do they want to have to drive their kids an additional 15 blocks to the larger and more modern school.
The result of all of this? Schools districts continue to be short of money, and the burden of keeping those little, old, and inefficient schools is shifted onto additional tax payers. (Now, for those of you who are sensitive, let me be clear that there are many other examples of NIMBYism. I'm not picking on you old school building lovers. I just picked you as my example.)
Now, our friend De Tocqueville described what I like to call "reverse NIBMYism". That is, instead of saying “everybody else, but not me,” we say “for me, but not anyone else.”
This is where earmarks come into play, and voting oneself largesse out of the public treasury. How many of you curse the very existence of earmarks that Congressmen write into the federal budget for their home districts as “buying votes”, etc., while praising your hometown Congressman for getting a lane added to the crowded highway near your home, or providing money for your community police to buy modern communications equipment, or funding youth drug and alcohol abuse prevention programs at your schools?
This is reverse NIMBYism, and exactly what De Tocqueville was talking about. The answer to this lies in the character of the American people. Does selfishness prevail in our population? Of course it does. It seems to be the guiding light for most on our society. So it shouldn’t be any surprise that folks are looking out for themselves, and nobody else.
I submit that we must consider what’s best for ourselves (only natural and responsible) and what’s best for everyone else (somewhat unnatural, but also responsible). So, in the case of the school down the road, while I would prefer to have a nice small building a couple blocks away, I can suck it up for the good of everyone else (school budgets) and live with the inconvenience of having to take my kid a couple neighborhoods away to school. In the case of earmarks, if I demand that Congressmen keep their hands out of the public trough and leave the micro-spending decisions to the folks in the Executive Branch of government, then I must also voice opposition to earmarks that would benefit me and my community.
Alexis De Tocqueville put it this way: “A democracy ... can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."
An example of NIMBY is school districts across the country that have a hard time closing down old, small, expensive to maintain, and crowded school buildings to consolidate students, and save the tax payers mounds of money. Every time a school board gets up the gumption to announce its intention to close down some old schools and send the students from those small old schools over to a new, large, and modern facility a couple neighborhoods away, the response in predicable.
The parents troop their kids into the cold weather, making their kids hold hand-painted signs that read: “don’t close my school!” They get their kids testify before the community hearing on it, reading statements about how they love their school and their teachers, the local news station puts the picture on the night’s broadcast, and the insensitive boneheads on the school board have nothing to say in response to the kid who asks, “why are you doing this horrible thing to me?
So the parents manipulate their kids, the kids paint some misleading signs, shed a few tears, the school board member looks like a deer in the headlights on the news, and the community gets all riled up because the local school board is going to kick that cute 3rd grader out of school and directly onto skid row.
Why? Because the parents who take their kids to the school down the road (the very school the parents went to when they were kids) don’t want to lose the nostalgia of having the neighborhood school in the neighborhood, nor do they want to have to drive their kids an additional 15 blocks to the larger and more modern school.
The result of all of this? Schools districts continue to be short of money, and the burden of keeping those little, old, and inefficient schools is shifted onto additional tax payers. (Now, for those of you who are sensitive, let me be clear that there are many other examples of NIMBYism. I'm not picking on you old school building lovers. I just picked you as my example.)
Now, our friend De Tocqueville described what I like to call "reverse NIBMYism". That is, instead of saying “everybody else, but not me,” we say “for me, but not anyone else.”
This is where earmarks come into play, and voting oneself largesse out of the public treasury. How many of you curse the very existence of earmarks that Congressmen write into the federal budget for their home districts as “buying votes”, etc., while praising your hometown Congressman for getting a lane added to the crowded highway near your home, or providing money for your community police to buy modern communications equipment, or funding youth drug and alcohol abuse prevention programs at your schools?
This is reverse NIMBYism, and exactly what De Tocqueville was talking about. The answer to this lies in the character of the American people. Does selfishness prevail in our population? Of course it does. It seems to be the guiding light for most on our society. So it shouldn’t be any surprise that folks are looking out for themselves, and nobody else.
I submit that we must consider what’s best for ourselves (only natural and responsible) and what’s best for everyone else (somewhat unnatural, but also responsible). So, in the case of the school down the road, while I would prefer to have a nice small building a couple blocks away, I can suck it up for the good of everyone else (school budgets) and live with the inconvenience of having to take my kid a couple neighborhoods away to school. In the case of earmarks, if I demand that Congressmen keep their hands out of the public trough and leave the micro-spending decisions to the folks in the Executive Branch of government, then I must also voice opposition to earmarks that would benefit me and my community.
Who's prepared to do that? If you are, stop trooping your kids in front of school boards when they're just trying to make good use of tax payers money. And if you're not one of those parents, then be one of those people who shows up and supports the beleaguered school board members.
If you say you are, then go to your congressman's web page, look for the press releases that tout all the earmarks they got in your community, then call the recipients of those earmarks (Mayors, city councilors, police chiefs, transportation managers, rehab clinics, etc), and kindly ask them to no longer badger their Congressman for earmarks. While you're at it, also voice to your Congressman that you would prefer Congress to determine the overall program budgets, but to leave the micro-spending decisions the Executive Branch of government.
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