Quiz for my readers

Posted by Marc Hodak on July 6, 2008 under Politics | Read the First Comment

We have family visiting New York this long weekend. Yesterday they visited the World Trade Center site, just day after an interesting editorial in yesterday’s New York Sun.

Across New York City, there is a visible divide between development projects built by the private sector and those built by the public sector.

The article notes how large-scale, privately managed projects such as Yankee and Mets stadiums, and various commercial and residential projects that have transformed various areas of the city are on their way to completion, or up and running.

In stark contrast, public projects being managed by various governmental agencies are, so to speak, stuck in the mud. Ground zero has become a symbol of political paralysis. A picture of the original design for the Fulton Street station should be in the dictionary under “boondogle.”

Liberal New Yorkers (redundant, I know) look upon these differences with a curious mixture of cynicism and hopefulness. So, here is a little quiz to separate the liberals from the deluded liberals.

The reason that public projects are typically so much more costly and delayed than equivalent private projects is:

a) Because the private projects are run by smarter people. If only we could get better people in the public sector to run those projects, they could be managed just as well.

b) Because the public projects are hampered by funds. If they had more money, they could get more done more quickly.

c) Because the public sector operates under a very different set of incentives and constraints than the private sector. No one should expect better of public management than what they’ve done in the past.

Most liberals choose (a); it’s just a matter of getting the right people in place. They totally buy into the idea that the past public officials dropped the ball and are to blame for the delays. We just need to get better people in office.

Some liberals choose (b), but that’s plain nonsense. Many public projects waste more money than private projects use. And they often do so, by the way, with fewer environmental and other constraints, and far fewer liability concerns, than those faced by private developers.

Naturally, I would choose (c), but would be open to additional possibilities not encountered in this list of choices.

The point here is that there is no reason to blame public officials for incompetence. True, they are an easy target of ridicule, which may be a subtle reason why the media seems to have a strong bias toward public management. The point is that competence shouldn’t be expected to begin with. It would be far more productive to question the credulity of the people who, against all evidence to the contrary, expect public officials to effectively manage big projects.