One thing to understand about Philly is that Fels, the U. Penn governing school that @phillymayor taught at and much of city council has degrees from, fetishizes "innovative" public/private "partnership" to an extreme degree.

I got my MPA there. It was neoliberal torture. https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/1355581234425032707

I knew going in it wasn't gonna be great-- I described it as extremely expensive oppo research to folks-- but (barring a couple classes that were exceptions to the rule) it was just jaw-droppingly dogmatic without even a pretext of encouraging academic rigor or inquiry.

I did this one class where I was assigned to be part of a group presentation on an almost completely untested private/public "partnership" investment model that introduced huge loopholes with incredible potential for corruption mayoral overreach on budget check/balances.

I picked the "cons" section of the report and was like, here are the potential ways this untested model could go sideways.

The professor interrupted my portion of the presentation angrily and demanded I give evidence that these possibilities had ever manifested.

Now, there had been only like 3 times this model had ever even been tried, and those efforts were all incomplete, so there was no proof it worked or didn't.

She didn't even dispute the loopholes *existed.*

She just thought it was unfair to name them until they got used.

She asked what my sources were, and I cited a grad school-level peer review publication's article about it.

Well, she said that couldn't be accurate, because it conflicted with Wikipedia's article on the partnership model.

Wikipedia.

She tore into me in front of the class, then severed me from the rest of the group project (they got A's) and gave me a C.

The sources the other group members had cited?

Almost entirely from an unsourced, biased hype web page promoting the unproven model.

She was so bad that the school literally disinvited her from teaching after this incident, but this was basically the attitude I encountered class after class I attended there.

Privatization/innovation is good. Question that conventional wisdom, expect worse grades.

So, we're a city where reckless speculation, "disruption," and privatization are literally taught as civic virtue to our governing class.

This isn't just the school that officials attend.

A Fels degree is *the* elite status symbol for staffers, too.

It's deeply damaging, and I know from firsthand experience that public officials and staffers who go through this process end up convinced that the smart, "educated" attitude towards "disruptive innovation" is, just do it and don't think too hard about potential consequences.

And that's what happened with the Philly Fights Covid scam.

This privileged college dude presented himself as an Elon Musk-style innovator, and electeds followed Fels-institutionalized conventional wisdom:

Don't get hung up on "theoretical" consequences.

Of course, the trademark of "disruptive innovation" is that it's untested.

And if you refuse to contemplate how shit might go sideways on something untested, *all* of that critical thinking is "theoretical" in the sense that untested things... don't have test results yet.

It's a scam corporations have used on city governments forever.

"We paid statisticians, so we have reams of data proving we're right! Grassroots activists don't have reams of data, so they must be wrong!"

Except, the corporate "data" is unsourced "proprietary" bullshit.

Scam artists-- very much including corporations and "disruptors"-- thrive in environments where they can successfully demand that their opponents do the impossible and prove a negative.

Of course, there's no *proving* mayors will jump through Elon Musk Las Vegas Loop-sized corruption loopholes for their donors, not when those loopholes haven't been tested yet.

That doesn't make it any less irresponsible to just create those loopholes and see what happens.

But, that's the logic that went into our city backing this vaccination con artist scheme.

This was a brand-new "innovation," so there was technically no *proving* it wouldn't work and in fact would backfire immediately and spectacularly.

This fetishization of privatization & the notion that subcontracting with the slickest, most Elon-ass PowerPoint presenter in town is "common sense" is the bane of modern local government.

There's an assumption that the private sector is magical.

It isn't.

It cheats & steals.

Actual common sense says, corporations fuck it up all the time, when they can do it for less it's because they're paying people less, and there are no shortcuts.

Uber won't solve public transit crises. It makes them worse.

Wunderkinds won't solve the vaccination crisis.

We are outsourcing and subcontracting our governments to scam artists, and have been for decades.

And schools like Fels promote that scam artistry as a magic wand that will fix everything.

In reality, it's only made things worse.

We need a new conventional civic wisdom, one that says, nah.

The private sector is almost never the solution to our problems.

These "disruptive innovations" INEVITABLY backfire, because they are never accountable in any meaningful way.

Because, it wouldn't be *profitable* to do civic work accountably.

To profitably make a bid that beats what it would cost the city to do things at-cost, you have to shortchange your workers & cut corners.

Hold them accountable for decent wages/good work, & bids would dry up.

Bad wages and shoddy work that comes back to bite the city in the ass.

That's what "disruptive innovation" always boils down to.

Our standard has to be competency, not "innovation."

Otherwise, this will just keep happening.