Between Hell and High Water

Threats to Freedom of Speech Are Real; Threats from Freedom of Ignorance May Be Even More Immediate

By Mike Koetting September 26, 2023

For several years now, I have been stock-piling notes for a possible blog on freedom of speech. I haven’t done one, however, because thinking about it always makes my head hurt. The over-riding principles are straightforward and almost universally accepted. But applying them is excruciating difficult. As often the case, Scott Stantis nails it:

Perhaps someday I’ll write that blog. But in the meantime, I am more concerned about a different problem, which I will call “freedom of ignorance”–the idea that anything one says is as valid as anything else and there are no obligations to consider either the foundations or implications of one’s opinion. Combine this with the ability of people to self-select their media sphere, and society is at great danger from people exercising their constitutional right to never hear any contrary news.

What We Can Learn from Coverage of the Chinese Economy

By Mike Koetting September 12, 2023

Today’s post is not about China. Well, maybe sort of. But it’s really about what we can learn from the recent turn in the Chinese economy.

For the past few weeks there has been a tidal wave of coverage about the slowdown in the Chinese economy. From Al Jazeera to the Wall Street Journal, everyone has had a prominent story about how the Chinese economy is sagging. I don’t know enough about either China or economics to assess the situation in detail, but the biggest question in my mind is “Why would anyone be surprised at this?”

There are a host of specific partial answers to that question, but most of them are covered by an observation that society doesn’t typically anticipate the future very well. No surprise. As the old witticism goes, “It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.” Even if you’re pretty sure you know what is going to happen, you might not know when, or how much, or what other events will also affect the consequences. And sometimes the anticipated event doesn’t even happen. So the easiest thing to do is assume that things will continue more or less along the current path. This is particularly tempting if it looks like the future is going to involve major changes in what the “powers that be” had planned.

Essential Issues over Six Years

By Mike Koetting September 1, 2023

As I am restarting after a break, I thought it might be a good time to make a really high-level review of the three things I identified as core issues for the country and the world when I started the blog, six years ago:

Dealing with vast inequity of resources among people
Radically revising our relationship with the environment
Rethinking the nature of work

It is my impression these are still the critical issues. Moreover, it also seems there is a fourth major question that didn’t seem as omnipresent six years ago.

Assuring the future of democracy

How’s the world been doing on these issues?

Keeping American Healthcare Prices High: A Peep into the Circus Tent

By Mike Koetting August 1, 2023

I wasn’t planning to write a blog in August, but when I ran a across an article on how “drug coupons”—a relatively arcane item that I will describe below—drive up drug costs, I couldn’t resist. It is such a perfect illustration of why our healthcare is so complex and the costs so absurdly high. I felt it was like a little tear in the circus tent that allowed you to see inside to watch the circus-like complexities of our health system.

Looking Into the Political Telescope

By Mike Koetting July 4, 2023

Today being the Fourth of July, and less than 18 months from the next election, it’s as good a time as any other to offer my overview of where we are in the American political wilderness.

I think the short version is that for the last three years we’ve been hovering around a tipping point: one way leads, however gradually, to political sanity. The other, probably less gradually, to a radical change in American life. In either case, the specifics are murky, but I have a feeling the next 18 months will call the question.

The Paris Metro as a Window on America

By Mike Koetting June 22, 2023

I just returned from a (too short) visit to Paris. We used the Metro extensively. The stops are plentiful, the trains run every few minutes, the stations are clean, everything works and the people use it—even us tourists.

Part of the secret is the relatively compact nature of Paris. Building that kind of rail density in Chicago would be prohibitively expensive. But, it seems, building any transit in the US approaches prohibitive expense.

Urban Violence: Let’s Not Hide Beyond Hopelessness

By Mike Koetting June 6, 2023

I’ve been thinking about urban violence for a while—I am on the board of some gun violence reduction organizations and my wife has been involved for years with an organization providing services to families of homicide victims. Despite my concerns, I sometimes find myself slipping into too much resignation to the killing.

Let’s Minimize Parking Minimums

By Mike Koetting May 23, 2023

Most of the concern about automobiles in America centers on their carbon emissions. Today’s blog, however, focuses on a different aspect of the impact of America’s car culture–how parking spaces can become a bad use of society’s resources. It also reminds us that the fabric of our lives is shaped by an invisible, even if in plain sight, network of rules and laws that we rarely think about but that we could change.

Central Cities

I got started thinking about this issue after reading a blog by the son of a friend on the impact of laws in Chicago creating minimums for the number of parking places required as part of construction. (As a complete aside, I note there is something simultaneously disquieting and reassuring when you start seeing cogent articles from people you knew as a baby.) He argued that mandating parking space minimums imposes a meaningful drag on the real estate markets because, in many circumstances, it is leading to more spaces than necessary. Excess spaces drive up construction costs which increase rents in order to cover the excess spaces. Research in Chicago shows that in the central city, about one-third of all parking spaces in large residential buildings are empty at 4 AM, the expected point of maximum use. This is consistent with the excess rate found in several other cities. These excess spaces are estimated to add 17% to the rental costs in these buildings.

Knee-capping the IRS Is Apparently a Core Republican Value

By Mike Koetting May 9, 2023

The bill that Republicans (by themselves) passed to increase the debt ceiling limit is a basket of pernicious ideas, including cancelling incentives for alternative fuels that was part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), creating incentives to actually increase use of fossil fuel, cancelling student debt relief, and adding “work” requirements for Medicaid. But, even within this legislative rogues’ gallery, there is one that, more than any other, illustrates the disconnect between Republican rhetoric and their true motives. That is the provision to reduce the IRS budget by $71 billion. This is most of the amount of new funding that was included in the IRA to fix recognized problems in that agency.

Not Many of Us Can Worry about the Environment without Hypocrisy

By Mike Koetting April 25, 2023

Earth Day was Saturday and, as always, it’s an occasion for considering the state of the world. Literally, not figuratively.

The most recent UN report shows it’s getting worse. I’ll bet few of us are surprised.

We all know the trajectory is more or less exactly what scientists have been predicting for years and we assume not a whole lot has happened that would change that. Which, when you think about it, is kind of weird. There’s this thing happening that the best scientists tell us has a high likelihood of causing material damage and we pretty much take it for granted that there is no response remotely commensurate with the problem. Why should that be?

I submit it is because we have become habituated to—indeed secretly demand—a mega-level of hypocrisy on environmental issues.