Theft at the Public Till
how much to bet on it. How they are supposed to do this has always been left unstated. In theory, smart citizens do not need to be informed, galvanized, or mobilized by mass organizations; only the uneducated and apathetic need third parties to stimulate their civic interest. The theory holds that politics should represent the aggregate views of the individual citizen. But for this ideal to work, Americans must believe in their government and believe in its goals. And the government must attempt to relate those goals to lives of each and every citizen. Americans want to live in an economy that provides sustainable and widely shared growth in the standard of living. They arc prepared to work hard and make sacrifices to that end if they see the connection between the effort and the result. People want high-quality public services - schools that teach modern skills, retraining opportunities for workers who lose jobs, effi- cient transportation, health care for those who need it-but they also want to know what happens to the taxes they pay and see some evidence close to home that public efforts make a difference. Sincerity and good intentions, even when widely shared, are no guarantee of support; success in delivering services is. Within society we may expect the abundance of choice to lead to the erosion of any one dominant set of values. No longer will we see some seek- ing to set or change the rules, while others, the majority, wait to keep the rules they set. “Anything (or almost anything) goes” will be the message of the next decade. It will be increasingly acceptable to do your own thing provided that thing does not interfere with the choices of too many others. NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) has always become the plea or bleat of those who seek, at the same time, to promote individual liberty and to defend their own islands of privacy, words once again heralding a change of tune. Achievement and contentment in this society will have many differ- ent facets. It could be called a tolerant society, but it could also be a very fragmented society as an individualism rooted in personal achievement and material success replaces the mixture of institutional paternalism and dependency which we grew up in-good news for the strong but not for the weak. Choice, in the end, is only good news for all if everyone has enough to choose from, enough information and enough inner resources. To put it
253
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online