Travis Holte sent me this video along with the message, “What? Reason didn’t interview you for this piece???” Travis has an amazing eagle eye for these things, and I shouldn’t promote Reason’s take-offs on my anarcho-Detroit culture since they have never cited me while conducting their imitation of my take on the ground-up, voluntaryist Detroit resurgence that rejects government, but this one is worth mentioning. That is because Michael LaFaive, a Director at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, is quoted as saying that, “Accidentally, the city has created an anarchistic culture….”
[...]I appreciate LaFaive’s take on mentioning “Detroit” and “anarchistic” in the same sentence, Detroit’s anarchy is not accidental, and it has not been “created” by the city. So I will offer up my version of a correction since I have been covering the positive side of Detroit’s resurgence for about the last four years.
Detroit’s ground-up resurrection has not been created by the city, but rather, it has been enabled by the city because in spite of its seemingly unyielding regulatory environment, as presented by the media and some local businessmen, the government-regulatory complex has been too corrupt, too inept, and too inconsequential to enforce its own ridiculous dictates, for the most part. Hence the ‘end around’ on the part of savvy entrepreneurs to establish a service-for-profit base in the city.
The term “create” denotes intelligent, purposeful design while a more appropriate term, “enabling,” can be defined as allowing or permitting via a serendipitous practice. Also, nothing is “accidental” as entrepreneurs have been very canny in learning to navigate the regulatory waters while taking advantage of the lack of rigorous enforcement of the existing regulatory structure. Detroit’s entrepreneurial storm that is rooted in rejection of the conventional political system is purposeful in that creative human capital actually seeks Detroit out as a place where they can potentially launch and operate innovative entrepreneurial efforts with minimal bureaucratic meddling. This is cross-posted at my “
Detroit: From Rust to Riches” blog.
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