How to Fix All Those Holes In the Road?

An article in the January 17, 1967 issue of the Daily Mail inspired the third stanza in John Lennon's "A Day in The Life" song.

Potholes.  What to do about them! 

Writing in 1985 in Filters Against Folly, Garrett Hardin observed that when faced with a global problem, it's not always wise to cast your efforts into the unsolvable abyss.  

To illustrate the danger of globalizing every problem he tells the story of the The Global Pothole Problem:

Once upon a time there was a city whose streets suffered a pestilence of potholes. Plainly more tax money was needed to fix the streets, but the people marched to the slogan of "No unfair taxes!" Since every new tax is unfair to somebody, the mayor could not find the money needed to fill the potholes. Things went from bad to worse, until finally the holes became so monstrous that they broke the springs of the mayor's limousine and His Honor had henceforth to come to City Hall in a three-ton truck. The mayor decided things had gone far enough. He asked the local Genius for advice. 

"The answer is simple," said the Genius (after spending six months and seven hundred thousand dollars on a study). "I have made a survey of all the nations and have found potholes everywhere. Clearly we are confronted with a Global Pothole Problem. Everything is connected to everything else. Global problems call for global solutions. If we want to get our potholes filled, we must establish a Global Pothole Authority.

"The GPA will be responsible for first surveying and studying the pothole problem, following which it will resurvey and restudy it. At some point in time it will undertake to fill in the potholes. For uniformity and fairness, all requisitions for this work, from whatever part of the world, must be processed by the central office of the GPA in Geneva. Approval will be based on need. Financing will be by taxes based on national ability to pay. This means that for many years to come all of the potholes filled will be in the poor countries, while the taxes will be levied only against the rich. This is only fair.

"Let me emphasize to Your Honor that this is a great opportunity for polishing up your image as a citizen of the world. By taking the larger view, the global view, you can strike a blow against parochialism, provincialism, bigotry, and selfishness. Global thinking is the mark of the truly civilized man. Under your inspired leadership, our city can make the future happen."

The regional Council of Churches and the local chapter of the United Nations Association got behind the proposal, and the Global Pothole Authority was born. The future began to happen. Unfortunately the city's potholes remained unfilled. The Genius took his fee and bought a cottage in a fashionable lakeside community; he wasn't going to let the potholes bother him. The mayor continued to ride to City Hall in a truck.

To be clear, Garrett Hardin was not arguing for doing more at home. 

Hardin was not pushing to repair streets, houses, and schools in poor neighborhoods, to provide jobs on Indian reservations, to pass laws in opposition to redlining, or to feed the hungry in schools. 

On the 50th Anniversary of his essay, The Tragedy of the Commons, I noted that Hardin was very clever about couching his racist ideas in false parables that sounded smart but were, in fact, poison pills designed to kill change and strengthen white, male, landed hegemony.

Does that mean that Hardin was wrong about potholes?  

Nope.  He was right about potholes. Some problems are best addressed at the local level, and potholes is one of them.

Love is all you need.