Comment by rossdavidh
3 days ago
The article reminds me of commentary I have read in the past on Elinor Ostrom, another innovative thinker who the left likes because she was female and opposed the status quo received wisdom, but feel uncomfortable with because she was very skeptical of Big Plans from the federal government or other remote centers of power. If want to advocate for Big Plans to achieve leftist ideals, then being told that Big Plans From The Center Of Power are the main source of the problem, is a difficult truth to accept.
It is a shame when people let current alliances override their actual thinking on general principles. I mean, it is necessary to make compromises for the sake of accomplishing things, but we should be aware of the fact that it is a compromise.
Also, I sort of wish the language around “big plans from the center of power” was more… nuanced I guess. Like we can believe that centralized organizations generally are not so bad for producing healthcare guidance but still not want them to make people’s healthcare decisions for them.
I feel for this. There's a "bothness" that's important for organizing from the center and from the edges. Either approach in isolation would utterly fail. Either approach overrepresented beyond the other fails to a lesser degree. Finding the razor edge balance that (1) supports the best decisions to navigate a model of the future that actually unfolds and (2) that's stable in a given context, that is the whole of the work imho
It's hard to stay on that razor edge (except in aggregate)..
There's another hidden razor edge in the call to download accountabilities. (The other side advocates for only distributing resources, for good reason: local centers of power are also ripe for abuse)
Crucially, it's the abstractions themselves that need to be fine-tuned. Jacobs had her own blunt ones-- I'd even say that yours sharpens the (overly-)general prescriptions that came out of Systems of Survival :)
It won't be a bad idea to fixate on oxymorons, because that's what these "life-giving razor edges" shall look to like to us mortals, for now. An older one is festina lente, due to Augustus. A center of power handing out .. Something
Wat? I'm left and for decentralising power, lots of ppl I know in my political circles love Ostrom. Leftist people who think concentration of power is the solution don't fangirl over her. Her whole jam is about "downloading" power ("down" as in, to lower levels of government) and distributing responsibility. ppl who aren't down with that have no reason to be interested in her work.
So I'm not actually seeing any dissonance or contradiction from inside communities that appreciate her work?