Oren Cass's Form of Conservatism All But Abandons the Marketplace

The Once and Future Worker by Oren Cass does not seek to shelter just the jobs and industries of the past. It would also preserve the cities that have given them a home. In doing so, it gives economic conservatism a new meaning — one that all but abandons the marketplace.

Cass’s view seems to be based largely on the assumption that government has an obligation to ensure that existing communities continue to exist, rather than letting the marketplace determine that. But how long should any community be expected to last and under what circumstances?

Should 19th century America have devoted resources to try to keep Buffalo’s economy on the list of top 10 U.S urban economies? Instead, the United States followed the only sensible course: Let rust belt cities rust, to free up people and other resources to make Sun Belt cities shine.

It is true, as Cass points out, that communities have virtually no standing in an economy focused on meeting our needs as consumers. But that is so because towns, cities and regions emerged and grew to meet specific economic goals. They are themselves useful products, but only so long as they facilitate improved overall living standards. Existing towns and cities are the vehicles of progress, not its end destination. Their job is to provide living space for their workers and families, schools for their kids, police and fire services to ensure their safety, and infrastructure to facilitate their mobility. Cities, towns and regions fulfill their role only in order to meet the needs of the consumers they serve; when they fail to do so, or when their services are no longer required, they give way. Cities and towns are not collectibles to be wrapped in plastic and preserved at all costs. Trying to keep Youngstown on life support for steelworkers is like trying to keep the steel industry alive just to provide them with jobs.

Cass scoffs at the notion that towns that can no longer sustain themselves become places that people should just leave, arguing that family and community as well as stable political institutions are essential ingredients for a happy populace. But what do we do to ensure the old does not strangle the new? It makes no sense to attempt to apply CPR to Detroit and Newark, Janesville and Des Moines, at the cost of choking in their crib Phoenix and Austin, Durham and Charlotte.

It is easy to look at the Rust Belt and point to its decay. But the economic slide of Toledo and Scranton is directly related to the enormous economic growth of San Jose and Palo Alto. Jobs that have disappeared from the Rust Belt have been replaced with technologies developed in the Sun Belt, creating new ways to make a living in those leading-edge places. The new jobs are fewer in number but offer greater status and financial rewards — and spinoff jobs. They may offer less security, at least in the short run, but they provide far more opportunity.

It is understandable that some might want to slow down this process. When the world isn’t going your way, there’s enormous temptation to try to stall it and get off. But it is hard to slow economic progress without stopping it in its tracks. And if we try to keep job expectations in place, we diminish incentives to improve them. The past 60 years has seen an explosion in the number of students attending college and university. We could only smother it by trying to protect existing jobs and communities. You can’t encourage people to appreciate Paris by making life in the the farm more attractive. It is hard to encourage new ways of doing things while simultaneously trying to preserve the old.

In the defunct Soviet Union, people had paying jobs - but the stores had little besides empty shelves. Russians used to joke that “we pretend to work and the state pretends to pay us.” That strategy could easily be adapted to more benign goals, in the United States and elsewhere in the West. But keeping faux jobs alive would not help us get ahead. It would just see us running in place.

Yes, ours is a changing world. That only makes it more urgent to adapt to it, rather than expect it to adapt to us. Cities and towns are places to live while we meet today’s needs, not shrines to a more glorious past.