Part of the joy of working in digital policy in the UK is that many of your days start like this:
I, a Tory politician, have a brilliant plan / erudite commentary / a policy announcement on tech policy strategy. Click here to read it in this EXCLUSIVE Elite Broadsheet Newspaper piece.
We all know full well that this is how the game of politics works. These brilliant plans, erudite commentaries, and policy announcements aren’t made for you plebs. They’re made for the machine to feed the beast inside it.
The bipartisan deal contains a pot of money to repair America’s roads and bridges, and build a few more besides. This is the way we usually do infrastructure in America. First we build a ton of roads and bridges that are highly expensive to maintain, especially with our ruinously high construction costs (see this recent article by Jerusalem Demsas). Then, because costs are so high, we wait for a long time to repair the roads and bridges, until civil engineers start screeching, roads get potholed, and there’s a bridge collapse or two. Then we muster up the political will to throw the requisite shit-ton of money at the problem, the potholes and weak bridges get repaired for twice the amount it would have cost had we done it on a regular schedule and three times the amount it would cost if we were a normal rich country. And the whole cycle begins again.
A businessman finds a fisherman, who is living an idyllic, peaceful life by the sea.
He laughs and tells the fisherman how to get rich instead.
The fisherman asks him what he will do after he gets rich.
He replies that he would retire to an idyllic, peaceful life by the sea.
There's supposed to be a deep life lesson in there, but it's always felt insincere to me.
To me it is better to have reached the heights of a career, or suffered an epic defeat, even if I do end up in the same place as everyone else in the end.
To me simplicity is made more beautiful when understood through a long personal struggle with complexity. When I can dance with it, having turned a mighty nemesis into an old friend, and teach others to do the same.
Better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.