Commercial Syndrome: Be optimistic

[T]he government did such a really good job of scaring the jeebers out of us that this recession has creating what he called a legacy of doubt. And that may be the case.

~Bob Moon, “Economy really not as bad as it looks” Marketplace

Through Kate, Jane Jacobs points out that newspapers formed for the sake of business:

Business people are forever trying to protect themselves from nasty surprises. They try to penetrate the future with forecasts, surveys, and voracious consumption of the news. “Kate on the Commercial Syndrome” Systems of Survival (p43)

This would be why I enjoy the Wall Street Journal and The Economist, even though I don’t always agree with their viewpoint: their coverage of the world’s events is excellent. This obsession with security and forecasting may not seem in line with one of the virtures of the commercial syndrome: be optimistic. However, Kate makes the point that the very preoccupation suggest that commercial people aren’t fatalistic, which will come up in discussion of the guardian syndrome. Rather, they hope to forstall misfortune.

Failing to follow other attributes of the commercial syndrome, commerce failed. Recession. Optimism has been in short supply. The government has been catapulted into fulfilling the roles of both the guardian and the commercial syndrome, doing better at the former than the latter.

That should be worth exploring next week.

Market Urbanism

I’ve found out about some interesting new sites in just watching my site statistics tracking referrers and checking out “retweeters.” I’ve gotten some traffic from Streetsblog and Sustainable Cities Collective for some time now.

Recently I’ve gotten some traffic from Market Urbanism. While I’m not a libertarian, I’ve always had fruitful discussions with libertarians about urban economics. In my view, you have to strive for market efficiency before you start talking about equity. So, I’m quite pleased to find a blog that’s taken up this torch: to school the libertarians in some urban economics. Where else am I going to find someone steering folks away from Frank Lloyd Wright, which will have some bearing on tomorrow’s post on visual order as we launch back into The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

Though I don’t subscribe to all the views there, I do subscribe to the RSS feed. Check it out if you’re curious.