The LA Conundrum

This is the Los Angeles Conundrum: What makes this place an exciting and open and progressive place to live is what makes it so poorly run. It's pretty much a regional distillation of the California Conundrum.

Many regions of the US demonstrate a greater combination of civic-mindedness and community cohesion than LA. Think of, say, Cincinnati. Yet those regions typically foster less innovation, less of the progressive spirit that fuels creativity and cultural and economic growth. LA people are independent spirits and less willing to see themselves as personally invested in the identity of their larger community. That's why they left places like Cincinnati.

The damaging irony is that, because LA and California people are more progressive than citizens of most other states, we have a tendency during salad days to come up with costly utopian programs and stifling utopian regulations that compromise our competitiveness over the long haul. So Jonathan's right: our giving up some "non-essential" service now may teach us a thing or two about what's really essential.