Why Local Governments Can’t Stop The Spend

50 of the 75 largest US cities are currently operating with budget deficits. While 100% of American Federal Governments are operating with a budget deficit, the Federal Government faces constant scrutiny, but these cities avoid scrutiny even while in close proximity to the communities they overspend for. It would be far easier for people to pressure their cities into more fiscal responsibility if they cared, but very few people want to put their time and energy towards such a thing. The mismatch between attention and agency is the first reason for the inability of cities to operate with a surplus. Additionally, the classic buy now pay later mindset is seen in all forms of government. People will not be able to stand up for limited spending until objective values can be openly invoked in public debate. All governments must make expenditures, and it is only possible to draw and justify a line between necessary expenses and waste if we can step above the language of mutual agreement to universal truth.

While cities and towns mediate a great amount of our interaction with governments around the world, they receive far less of our attention than the national government does. We do not realize how much power they actually have, and thus put our energy towards countless other things that would have less ability to meaningfully improve our lives. Attention is upstream from political action and political action is upstream from government. Until this disconnect is solved, local governments will operate in a sort of limbo, trying to act without receiving too much scrutiny. The current tendencies of Americans makes it too easy to exploit this gap of attention. While there are far more natural barriers to the endless expansion of local government, the attention dominance of the Federal Government makes the reactions of the people towards the local government much more tempered and slow. This problem with attention allocation cannot be solved by governments themselves, but rather should be solved by local attention, which could create institutions more conducive to holding the attention of the people. Although it may be difficult to change your institutions to ones that thrive under scrutiny rather than away from it, once it happens, we will be able to reap the benefits for decades. Attention is unenforceable, but some institutions are built to avoid it while others welcome it.…