Jamaica: State under pressure from non-state actors

Jamaica is a most recent addition to the list of states experiencing open, violent confrontation with centers of power outside the state. In this case Jamaican military and police are attacking a Kingston slum in the current prime minister's electoral district, allegedly controlled by drug lords with ties to the ruling Labor party. Public-private partnership gone wrong?

Here's what AlJazeera says in a report from today.

Prime minister Bruce Golding "went on television to address the nation. He said the gunmen were making 'a calculated assault on the authority of the state that cannot be tolerated and will not be allowed to continue. The criminal element who have placed society under siege will not be allowed to triumph.'" (from The Guardian)

What happens if representatives of the state can't make good on the state's basic promises?

Mini-states outperform the big dogs

So says Time.com in Most Competitive Nation? Hong Kong, Singapore Beat U.S.

Why not create more Hong Kongs and Singapores?

Look how well the UAE has done - the distance they've come since the 1980s - despite significant impact due to the global credit crisis. Consider the Dubai International Financial Center: they've created a world class legal and regulatory environment within the UAE's already-favorable business and tax structure.

They are deliberately competing with full-service financial centers like Hong Kong, New York and London "unlike 'offshore' tax havens" (from their website).

The proprietors of the DIFC are legal system/environmental entrepreneurs. The DIFC's courts website has a customer-service tone is unlike anything I'd expect given my limited experience observing in Pennsylania and Federal courts, or given my citizen-level interactions with a variety of government officials. I'd love to hear from anyone who has actual experience doing business in the DIFC or who can give a first-hand impression of the DIFC legal environment.

Incentive & Capacity

Multi-tenant landlords, to the degree that they are private entrepreneurial managers, have more incentive and greater capacity (over time) to deliver effective public services than the state's political managers.

In his inaugural address President Obama said:

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works... Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

In just 300 years the human race, working within the social framework of private property, free association and voluntary exchange, has created an abundant flow of increasingly useful goods and services at declining real costs. Despite the present global financial crisis, and perhaps in part due to the state's vulnerability and apparent decline as service provider, I believe that entrepreneurial community managers will embrace good government as a service to be developed and refined on the market.

In terms of social policy and so-called family values let me offer a thought experiment:

Suppose that there is an urgent need for boys and young men to have fathers active in their lives, and suppose the evidence shows the harmful effect a father's absence has on a young man. As I understand it, states and political community managers lack the incentive and capacity to effectively process the social and economic feedback that indicates this urgent need. It could make a huge difference to establish a new and honored place for marriage in society, one that honors being a real man, a father and husband. If marriage really works as a practical agent for creating happy and prosperous society, then entrepreneurial managers have every incentive to discover this fact ...and develop environments that foster marriage as the productive heart of community. In a similar way, because they are guided by the continuous feedback of profit and loss, entrepreneurial managers are in a position to embrace a variety of social innovations that allow their communities and individual tenants to flourish and prosper.

Profitable Public Services on Private Property

This notebook was inspired by Spencer H. MacCallum's idea: in pursuing its business interests, the commercial real estate industry will, over time, voluntarily assume full provision of public services for its tenants and visitors.

This blog will explore developments in commercial real estate that point to the profitable and sustainable private provision of public services.

Read Spencer H. MacCallum's article The Enterprise of Community

My PropertySynthesis.com site will soon be online.