The Distainful Voice of Jane Jacobs

Jacobs does not take to the paternalism of top-heavy, federal and provincial governance all that well. Her chapter on “Dumbed-down taxes” is particularly well-barbed, pithy, and direct.

Standardization is the parent of stagnation. “Dumbed-down taxes,” Dark Age Ahead (p119)

Virtually all ideologues, of any variety, are fearful and insecure, which is why they are drawn to ideologies that promise prefabricated answers for all circumstances. “Dumbed-down taxes,” Dark Age Ahead (p115)

We abandon science (previous chapter posted on here and here). Without subsidiarity we lose local feedback.

Central planning, whether by leftists or conservatives, draws too little on local knowledge and creativity, stifles innovations, and is inefficient and costly because it is circuitous. It bypasses intimate and varied knowledge directly fed back into the system. “Dumbed-down taxes,” Dark Age Ahead (p117)

Many of the examples Jacobs employs revolve around Canada - Toronto specifically. But you can see such stifling in other domestic examples, such as New York’s meddling with NYC’s proposed congestion tax.