Designer Anchors
Brad Pitt is leading an initiative to build a bunch of houses designed by fancy architecture firms in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. That’s nice. But why not build these houses elsewhere, perhaps a place less likely to flood, a place with jobs?
Responding to critics who question the wisdom of rebuilding at all in an area likely to get hit again, Mr. Pitt said: “My first answer to that is, talk to the people who’ve lived there and have raised their kids there. People are needing to get back in their homes.”
I don’t think this helps Pitt’s case, exactly. People ought to be encouraged to move where the opportunities are, not enticed with designer accommodations to stay in a struggling place prone to disaster. The stories we tell ourselves about who we are and where we’re from can, through some good old-fashioned emotional alchemy, create pride from deprivation. When that’s all you’ve got—or all you can get—that’s a great thing indeed. But our narratives of place and tribe are too often an identity-arresting form of self-indulgence that can consign our kids to second-class lives. We may fear that we will disintegrate or disappear if we leave the neighborhood, quit the church, forsake our roots, sell out, but we won’t. Those fears are deep, terrifying, and almost completely unfounded. Our allegiance to our stories and our enchanted places do not save us so much as comfort us against the specters of uncertainty and enable us to feel righteous in inaction. People are not needing to get back in their homes.
Writing about Clive Crook’s clear-headed essay on the downsides of homeownership, a, umm…, certain Economist blogger said something that could just as well apply to Pitt’s project.
Subsidising homeownership through huge tax breaks not only reinforces a cultural ethos in which home ownership is considered central to the American Dream, but also reinforces pernicious communitarian myths of the profound romance in seeing nothing and going nowhere.
This is an exceedingly unpopular thought, but it is a necessary one. Often, when we discourage people from leaving, we discourage them from thriving. When a better life is a bus ride away, it is obviously inhuman to slap a tax on tickets. And just how different from that is a subsidy to stay? I’ll be very pleased if the people who are given these houses thrive, but I also won’t be astonished if their lives aren’t transformed by their sleek new designer anchors.
December 4th, 2007 01:55
“When a better life is a bus ride away, it is obviously inhuman to slap a tax on tickets. And just how different from that is a subsidy to stay?”
Well, the former shrinks the choice set, while the latter expands it. A larger choice set shouldn’t reduce anyone’s utility, unless we are willing to posit some kind of cognitive bias on the part of the poor subsidy recipients that prevents them from seeing the full benefits of going elsewhere (or the full costs of staying).
Bryan Caplan has made this argument with respect to public welfare; basically, the idea is that the traditional conservative “welfare trap” argument works only if we have irrational welfare recipients, since rational people will only accept the hand-outs if doing so will make them (on net, in the long run) better off. Thus, Caplan says the paternalistic arguments coming out of behavioral economics sometimes militate against state intervention.
December 4th, 2007 09:39
Glen, I don’t follow this. The choices for the residents were already fixed: stay or go. The house subsidy, like the bus ticket tax, just rigs the relative prices of the alternatives in favor of staying. But I was also thinking of Pitt’s choice: subsidize people to stay in New Orleans, or subsidize them to move elsewhere.
In any case, I think my main point was precisely that we suffer from biases that anchor us to familiar places at the expense of our long-term welfare.
December 10th, 2007 14:27
Oh I get it. So when my factory closes and I’m forced to move away from kith and kin for a new job I should realize it’s just the invisible hand “encouraging me to thrive” and I should smile. I actually agree with you here on building these houses somewhere else but I don’t think you realize some inefficiencies can actually be good for people. I don’t think you understand human beings, or take human nature into account. Your analysis of a situation concerning robots would not be any different.
December 11th, 2007 08:07
James, no, you should not smile but in truth the answer is “tough luck buddy”. Your personal economic interests in the here-and-now should not get force backed protection from the state.
I understand human beings rather well, which is why I try to tell people they must not allow anyone (say, you for example) to use the political system to distort markets just because you would rather not have to deal with the reality that most of your fellow countrymen do not have a problem with closing said factory and putting you out of a job if someone in Korea can do your job better and thereby save *them* some money by providing a cheaper or better product. That’s life, buy a helmet.
January 13th, 2008 14:28
-I think my main point was precisely that we suffer from biases that anchor us to familiar places at the expense of our long-term welfare -
Not just familiar places - but in the case of New Orleans an utterly unique place. Many evacuees did notice improved schools, infrastructure and job opportunities. Yet they missed the unique culture, sense of community, traditions, food, music and generally accepted attitude of daily life that exists only in New Orleans. It seems Brad Pitt understands this.