If I didn’t know that this presentation was held in Rhode Island, I would have guessed that it was held in a third-world country, banana republic, or apartheid state somewhere else in the world. Racial division, top-down steering of the economy through expert advisors? Are these really the appropriate conversations for a struggling New England community to be having? Most of the states in this country have done fine without this kind of radical progressive interventionism.
Apparently Rhode Island is suffering from some sort of severe racial strife that I never experienced living there for 26 of the last 28 years. But I suppose to these race-obsessed social-equity/social-justice consulting groups, when the government grant money is flowing like cheap champagne and you find yourself holding a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail. I’m not sure why a “minority entrepeneur” is more desirable to Rhode Island than any other kind. I thought the key was generating jobs.
Okay, so it’s “economic gardening” now instead of economic development or central economic planning. A slick new promotional jacket on the same old fallacy that planners in government or paid consultants can identify and predict demand better than local knowledge in the market economy can. “Invest in this company, not that company; this industry, not that industry,” et cetera. I want to know why these geniuses don’t trounce the stock market or make a killing in venture capital if they have such profound insight into where the tide of public demand is headed and what companies can do to capture it.