It's striking to me how many successful modern liberal institutions, public and private, become victims of their own success by developing vetocracies driven by multiple competing constituencies. You mention NYC urban governance-- SF is at least as much an example-- but I saw exactly the same phenomenon metastasize at Google when I was there through the 2010s.
It seems worth thinking about whether this is a post-Cold War modernity thing, or just a universal rich human institution thing, or what.
It's striking to me how many successful modern liberal institutions, public and private, become victims of their own success by developing vetocracies driven by multiple competing constituencies. You mention NYC urban governance-- SF is at least as much an example-- but I saw exactly the same phenomenon metastasize at Google when I was there through the 2010s.
It seems worth thinking about whether this is a post-Cold War modernity thing, or just a universal rich human institution thing, or what.