"If it's broke, fix it"
I would not say that's the main goal of this thread, so much as a desire to turn a plain-Jane motor city mediocrity into a magnificent muscle car.
Do our existing methods work? Sure they do. Can they work better? I don't think that's in dispute either; of course they can. The question is: where do we go from here?
Economists from Adam Smith to Walter E. Williams have advocated the 'market' as the best way to address myriad social ills. Assuming this is the case, how does one apply market dynamics to further code compliance?
"Bribery" can be seen as market forces working against code compliance. Insurance premiums can be seen as a way to engourage certain actions: instal sprinklers and you pay less (as an example).
Government is government, no matter the task. I think the approach Missouri has taken with their DMV suggests possibilities as for how to introduce market forces into the equation.
Unlike the example some of you have cited, there is no single private group given a monopoly over any area. You can go to any "DMV" office and accomplish what you need. Indeed, this is what my family does, shunning the nearest office for a better-run operation a few towns over.
This is quite different from -to cite another local example- the way electrical contracting is handled in St. Louis county, where one person reigns like a monarch, deciding who may do electrical work. Whether that person does a good job is not the issue; by all accounts, the person currently in the job attempts to do as good a job as they can. Yet, even saints die- and there's no way to assure that the next one will do as well.
Is the missouri DMV showing us the way to 'change the dynamic' in a good way?
