Infrastructure and the Future
Secondly, there are inherent monopolies in a lot of the things that we call civic infrastructure. We shouldn’t let the private sector develop electricity, for example. Deregulation was a good example of why that’s a civic infrastructure. Thirdly, what I’m seeing a lot of in developing countries is that infrastructure has a return on investment over a private sector horizon. There’s just no electricity and water and sanitation in Africa and India. If you want to develop a world-class development, you have to build your own roads, and your own water, your own electricity. They build it so poorly because their return on investment is only five years. It’s clearly not a civic infrastructure when the private sector does it. And fourthly, civic infrastructure is clearly just for public benefit. Sanitation is a public benefit, and that’s why it’s a civic infrastructure. Sarah Williams Goldhagen Adam Smith actually wrote in the Wealth of Nations that the one thing that governments have a responsibility to provide is civic infrastructure and public good because it will never be profitable for private corporations. Societies and economies can’t function without them, which is more or less what you’re saying. Marilyn Taylor I thought I’d twist it around just a little bit. Instead of saying “what are civic infrastructures,” say “what makes infrastructure civic.” For me there’s sort of a conflation—and I agree with it—between public and civic. I tend to think of infrastructure that is civic as an outcome, and not just an objective. That is, there is a true public benefit in a very broad way. It represents society; it promotes the goals such as environmental sustainability, opportunities for individuals, or competitive advantage. If we want to address it successfully, we have to think of it not as just a label that is easily generalized to include everything.
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