Suppose you and I are standing in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge.
We agree we should get off the bridge.
You jump over the side, plummeting a couple hundred feet into the water below.
I walk along the roadway and into Marin.
Neither of us is “laissez faire” when it comes to standing on the bridge.
But my policy for getting off it is better.
UPDATED to add: this is true even though, as urbino points out, my policy prolongs the length of time spent on the bridge.
23 comments
November 7, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Josh
Yeah, but then you’re stuck by the side of the freeway and have to hike over the hill to get anywhere. Better to walk into San Francisco and catch Muni.
November 7, 2008 at 12:24 pm
eric
What if I want to go for a hike in the headlands?
November 7, 2008 at 12:25 pm
urbino
However, your policy does prolong the Embridgement.
November 7, 2008 at 12:25 pm
eric
I hate myself for not thinking of that, urbino.
November 7, 2008 at 12:25 pm
urbino
Sorry, the Great Embridgement.
November 7, 2008 at 12:27 pm
urbino
Eh. Don’t worry about it. You’ll get the hang of this public intellectual thing one of these days. You’re good enough, you’re smart enough, . . .
November 7, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Josh
What if I want to go for a hike in the headlands?
I don’t know that heading into the wilderness is exactly the metaphor you want here…
November 7, 2008 at 12:30 pm
eric
I don’t want to come off extra rugged or TR-like, here, Josh, but I’ve strolled around the headlands and I’ve kayaked around the point to have lunch at Sam’s of Tiburon. I wouldn’t call it wilderness, exactly, unless your idea of wilderness is a brisk walk concluding with a bloody mary and an omelette.
November 7, 2008 at 12:34 pm
andrew
You walk to the ferry and then take it back to San Francisco. (I’ve done this.)
November 7, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Josh
Okay, so it’s not wilderness you’re leading us into, it’s an enclave of rich white people. Whereas if you go the other way, you get to the Exploratorium and the Palace of Fine Arts, educating the masses and open to all. Elitist.
What does an amphibian like yourself need with a kayak, anyway?
November 7, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Richard
Rut ro, now you have minted scholar and brilliant economist Megan McArdle on your case:
http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/11/ouch_2.php
November 7, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Sam-I-am
Who is Megan McArdle and why are people calling her an economist? That’s like calling Sarah Palin a foreign policy expert. [She can see Russia from her house, ya know!]
November 7, 2008 at 1:39 pm
dana
It doesn’t look like McArdle read the piece, either.
November 7, 2008 at 1:45 pm
The Ambrosini Critique » Blog Archive » He’s catching up
[...] Rauchway now seems to be ok with the idea that Roosevelt’s policies prolonged the depression. There’s a trade-off [...]
November 7, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Sam-I-am
This was such a genteel place before you started inviting in the “Real” Americans. I guess I’m just not that fond of bar brawls and lawlessness.
Is there no place for salons in the frontier?
November 7, 2008 at 1:52 pm
urbino
Just saloons.
November 7, 2008 at 1:53 pm
ari
Saloon justice has the benefit of being quick.
November 7, 2008 at 3:25 pm
TF Smith
On the jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge example, do the bodysnatchers (USCG) count as being gainfully employed when they haul the meat out of the Bay?
Even though they are – the horror! – undoubtedly over-paid, under-worked, stamp-licking, leanin’ on a shovel, public sector employees?
You have to go out; you don’t have to come back, after all.
November 7, 2008 at 5:01 pm
andrew
The Golden Gate Bridge could never have been built during a depression, of course.
November 7, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Colin
From a certain distance, it is kind of cool that 70 years later people still get really upset about FDR.
November 8, 2008 at 7:57 am
ScentOfViolets
Well, since this is at least nominally a history blog, hasn’t it been the case for the last hundred years or so that the concerns of the American wealthy have been twofold: that the Yellow Peril, the Godless Communists, the Red Menace was a cummin’ to take their wealth? And, domestically, that the lazy and lawless underclasses were going to convert to Socialism and – drumroll – take their wealth?
November 8, 2008 at 7:59 am
ScentOfViolets
Well, since this is at least nominally a history blog, hasn’t it been the case for the last hundred years or so that the concerns of the American wealthy have been twofold: that the Yellow Peril, the Godless Communists, the Red Menace was a cummin’ to take their wealth? And, domestically, that the lazy and lawless underclasses were going to convert to Socialism and – drumroll – take their wealth?
November 8, 2008 at 12:25 pm
tf smith
What was Jay Gould’s comment – “I can always pay half the poor to kill the other half”?
Thankfully, not quite.