A Dispatch from the Future

Over a few days this week, I read George Packer's "The Valley," a comprehensive take on Phoenix, Arizona and its surroundings published in The Atlantic Monthly, and it reminded me of how his "The Megacity" from The New Yorker, on Lagos, Nigeria, is perhaps my very favorite in the genre of travel to a city and write about it in detail. This recent Harper's Magazine piece on Branson, Missouri is another recent favorite.

the state of ponzi

The news from Florida likely led to this 2009 George Packer essay, "The Ponzi State," appearing on The New Yorker page I glanced at earlier today:
According to an investigative series in the Miami Herald, oversight by the state’s Office of Financial Regulation and its commissioner, Don Saxon, was so negligent that more than ten thousand convicted criminals got jobs in the mortgage business, including four thousand as licensed brokers, some of whom engaged in fraudulent deals. Until the rules were recently changed, felons in Florida lost the right to vote but could still sell mortgages. (Under pressure from Sink, Saxon resigned this past August.) Kathy Castor, Tampa’s representative in Congress, told me, “Florida was particularly lax when it comes to mortgage regulation.” She connected the mortgage crisis and the lack of oversight with state politics and the political power of developers. “We were hit by two Bushes, George and Jeb”—Florida’s governor from 1998 to 2006—“and there was very loose growth management. Because Jeb was aligned with the development industry, it was a speculator’s paradise.”

Also, this week The New York Times covered the plight immigrants who bought taxi medallions in New York City in the years before Uber and other ride-hailing apps moved in, and found that their investments have lost such value so quickly that's it's nearly impossible to break even or survive at all.

I should say that in both cases, Florida housing and New York ride services, although neither is entirely unlike a ponzi scheme, there's a difference between buying at or near a bubble's top and a ponzi scheme as traditionally understood. I imagine that in America in 2017, we are accustomed to various unfortunates facing financial ruin due to the rapid rise and fall of prices.

toilet talk

It's good to see that there are international officials who refuse to censor themselves and are willing to speak sincerely about some of the major global issues of our time. Because literature is written, at least in part, to inform, I've enjoyed pairing George Packer's essay "The Megacity" and Uwem Akpan's short story "Baptizing the Gun." Both concern Lagos, Nigeria and, at least in part, address open-air squatting. Indoor-pooping progress anywhere will lead to healthier lives everywhere.

Indeed, in these potty times, it's good to see The New Yorker take the lead in offering full and extended coverage of all that surrounds the bathroom scene.