A piece of wisdom lost on extremists of all stripes is that Control and Anarchy are yin and yang. Both opposing and complimentary. People are generally predisposed to one or the other, but when a society goes too far in either direction, pain and destruction follow.
My armchair guess is that historically, things have fallen out of balance in the Control direction more often than not but, occasionally, societies, like individuals, go too hard toward Anarchy. They do things that only make sense in a fantasy world where humans are perfectly virtuous and where things happen in the way they should because we really want them to and no authority or hierarchy is needed. Most, but not all, individuals get beyond this tendency by the time they reach adulthood. They learn to face the world as it is and see the deep flaws in humanity that need to be limited. As to why societies and institutions make the same mistake, I don't know. I suppose if enough individuals in the society are so inclined to fantasy perhaps a tipping point is reached and the whole thing goes south.
For some reason unfathomable to me, in the wake of Covid, folks took the opportunity to riot over racism. Any psychological explanation is going to sound absurd. Was it that in the face of all the dire restrictions of Covid -- most of which have since proved to be useless or outright manipulations -- people were desperate for anything to dominate their lives instead of the pandemic and so decided they would protest for woke-ish causes for which they would get massive support from the establishment? Or was it a welling of nihilism in the face of a natural disaster that we could not really control; a huge collective cry of "What's the point of anything?" Who knows, but having yielded to the anarchist impulse, the pain is now coming.
Now all that lost wisdom has to be re-learned. And the epicenter of that learning is Portland, Oregon. Portland went as far over to anarchy as they could, thanks to a particularly weak set of leaders who seemed delighted to just give in to anyone who was acting righteous enough. A section of the city was simply left to its own devices, no policing, no laws. But even beyond that area, policing was cut way back, laws left unenforced, crime was relatively free of consequence. As any adult could have predicted, it turned into a pocket of brutal dystopia. Crime rates soared. People openly shoplifted. Folks put signs on their homes and businesses begging rioters not to burn and wreck them (they did anyway). For the anarchy cheerleaders it was a thrilling act of self-gratification. But now the bill has come due. At the time I wrote, "Can you imagine anyone looking to start a business in Portland?" because I am an adult.
Couple of years later, not only is no one starting a business there, existing businesses are fleeing, nearly all of them citing customer and employee safety as a major concern along with shoplifting losses. These are not just Mom-and-Pops who can't handle the pressure. Walmart, Whole Foods, REI, Nike, Cracker Barrel have all exited Portland. The Apple Store has been described as a fortress.
This is all new to the people of Portland. They have experienced strong growth for all the years of their existence until now. Suddenly they are losing businesses and population is dropping for the first time in their history. They are behaving like this is just a blip and they will recover; in time, Portlandia will return.
It won't. Portland is deluding itself. I say this as someone who has watched his birthplace of Detroit play this game for his entire life. Detroit has been "recovering" for 70 years. What will happen in the short term is the weak leaders of Portland will start to make some minor changes, more out of shock at how bad things are than from any wisdom. These will do no good. In time, these weaklings will leave office declaring victory which will fool nobody but themselves. A new regime will come in and even though they may actually want to make changes that would help, plunging tax revenues and dysfunctional governmental bureaucracy will stop them. The spiral will continue. The bottom is decades into the future. And there is no guarantee of a turnaround even at the bottom. It may, just like Detroit, lay on the ground forever with a core population continuing to insist, "It's not that bad."
Here's my prediction for Portland 50 years hence, long after I'm gone: Population and business losses will continue to slowly erode the city. Public services and safety will erode with it. Lots of grand initiatives will be announced and celebrated, but they will never pay off in any meaningful way. The best they will be able to do is keep a few blocks of a core downtown area viable as a lifeline, centered around their single pro sports team and maybe a museum or two or an open market and a handful of restaurants. In time, and after grueling debate, they will permit casino gambling in a desperate grab for cash. Outside of those few blocks, the rest of the city will continue to shrink and repel civilization. And the whole way cheerleaders will be insisting "It's not that bad" or "It's a great recovery story".
I don't know how to fix it. I've never seen a city recover from self-destruction. The leaders of Portland should be deeply, deeply ashamed at the destruction and pain they've permitted and even encouraged. They won't be, though. They will continue to delude themselves that it was circumstances out of their control that brought about this degradation, if they even get far enough to admit the degradation they see before their eyes.
A rebalancing toward Control might work but that would require people to outright admit they were wrong. A fate few people, and certainly no politician, can accept. The only thing we can hope is that the wisdom has been relearned elsewhere from Portland's example.
