Influenced

by Harry Boyte, I believe

that opportunities for people to contribute public goods have shrunk

over the last century. Government is increasingly "rational"

(in Weber’s sense): this means that important functions are divided

into specialized tasks and assigned to experts, who are given minimal

discretion. The government as a whole does good, but relatively few

people can gain deep personal satisfaction from their own public service.

Meanwhile, the private sector grows ever more efficient and competitive.

As a result, there are few niches for people who want to work in business

for partly public purposes. (An example would be the demise of the

old publishing houses, which were "for profit," but not

very efficient about it; editors saw themselves mainly as friends

of literature.)

The loss of opportunities for public work is unfortunate, because

we waste the talents and energies of millions of citizens. It also

means that people lose the very special satisfaction that comes from

creating public goods. And I believe that it partly explains the decline

of other forms of citizenship, such as voting and reading the newspaper.

People who don’t make public goods are less likely to participate

in other ways.

Now we face a national crisis, terrorism, and it seems worthwhile

to look for opportunities to involve many citizens in significant

public work. Only an expert on national security could tell us what

jobs people are equipped to do. Spying on our fellow citizens is not

a good idea (the damage to privacy and due process is too great).

Thus I offer some very ill-informed ideas about some other roles that

citizens might play. My main goal here is to provoke others to think

of better ideas:

• The military personnel who are doing peace-keeping and nation-building

  work in Iraq are creating public goods. They are creative and improvisational,

  in the best tradition of public work. We should celebrate them as

  good citizens, and recognize the (non-martial) virtues that they are

  displaying—virtues that we also need in civilian life. Everyone

  wants Iraqis to play a larger role; but for the time being, let’s

  recognize that Americans are exemplifying citizenship in Iraq. (This

  is true even if the invasion was ill-advised or even illegal.) We

  also need ways to help veterans of Iraq to use their skills back home.

• Citizens could deliberately learn strategic languages, such as Pashto

  or Malay; read newspapers and websites in those languages; and then

  post their own translations of key excerpts online. Their audience

  would be US experts in foreign affairs, and also fellow citizens who

  are trying to understand a complex world. Clearly, volunteers would

  have to learn these languages from someone. This suggests

  a great opportunity to employ immigrants as language teachers.

• Citizens could assist in planning the emergency evacuation of major

  cities. Big highways would be quickly jammed after a catastophe, so

  we need to figure out how to move large numbers of people through

  side streets. Citizens could collect data on the capacity of each

  street segment to carry heavy traffic. Fed into GIS software, these

  data would show alternative evacuation routes.

• There are many ways for citizens to work together to conserve oil,

  thereby reducing our dependence on middle eastern sources.

  I’m sure there are better ideas than these. It’s a shame that our

  creativity and dedication were not tapped soon after 9/11, when

  people were desperate to serve. But it’s not too late.