Is America giving up on the idea of the public?

[marmar]

from OnTheCommons.org:




Is America giving up on the idea of the public?
Thoughts from Charlotte, North Carolina

By Mary Newsom



This week my daughter had to phone Live Nation about some concert tickets. As she worked her way through endless voice-mail menus and critiqued the different “on hold” songs, I told her a story about the olden days.

Before you were born, I said, when you called places people answered. Lacking voice mail menus, companies hired people whose job was to answer the phone and deal with your problem.

It reminded me of what I’ve come to consider the Golden Age of Air Travel. Remember in the 1970s and ’80s? You had leg room, pillows, meals and usually a vacant seat next to you. The stewardesses were all smiles and service. Ticket agents were cheerful. And with government regulation, airlines were profitable.

Compare that to today’s scenes, such as JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater’s behavior Monday. After an unpleasant passenger encounter – who hurled the first curse is under dispute – he swore at the passenger, opened the inflatable slide, grabbed a beer and slid off the job.

And in my job as an editor at the Charlotte Observer I’ve written about the new greenway along Charlotte’s Little Sugar Creek. Not a few people have told me how they hate to see the “waste” of public money on things like the greenway’s stone bridges (actually, that stone is inexpensive molded concrete), public art and the rockwork clock tower (clock donated by the Rotary Club). It’s as if people here are so unused to places that celebrate the public that they think it’s wastefully lavish for a public park to hold anything nicer than cinder-block buildings and utilitarian metal bridges. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://onthecommons.org/america-giving-idea-public

[dkf]

1. So true.

Sigh.

[old mark]

2. Seems like it to me. There are still some great things happening - there is a local

dog park in the works, for example, but that is on private land that has been donated for the purpose. I KNOW it it had been a tax funded project, it never would have been done. Lower tax revenues here are leading to cutbacks in many "people" related services,and I'm sure more are on the way out.
Sad - it took so much time and effort to get them started, and with the GOP the way it is now, I am sure many will never come back.

mark

[supernova]

3. Off the the Greatest page

Excellent article. She laments the same losses we talk about every day on DU.

[xchrom]

4. what a sad recommend. nt

[Goldstein1984]

5. The public is now the herd

[Javaman]

6. Once the meme was changed from citizen to consumer...

the concept of the individual vanished from the landscape.

No longer are we looked upon as people but now as unit buying machines.

Welcome to the zombie consumer apocalypse (I've already copyrighted that ;) ) lol