2023: No Profit in Being a Prophet

Originally published May 26 2017

Today’s post is inspired by this Strong Towns article by Arian Horbovetz “The Big Urban Mistake: Building for Tourism vs Livability”:

“You can facilitate local small business and community development, or you can create a short-lived wow-factor by opening the floodgates to developers and business interests who take money out of our communities.”

I don’t have any formal training in economics. When I moved to Austin in 1980 to attend UT I had to take a basic economics class which framed the whole world in guns & butter. Of course I believe butter is better, but I also know that you don’t bring a stick of butter to a gun fight.

At that time Austin’s economy was driven by the twin slow-moving turbines of education and state government. Nobody said “I’m going to Austin to get rich!” if money was your driver, you migrated to Houston or Dallas.

In the mid-1990s everything changed. A third economic driver entered the scene in the form of technology which had a different set of players who positioned Austin as a profit-focused global player. Suddenly everything moved faster, buildings got bigger and the story of Austin was no longer in the hands of those who had been here for years creating & enjoying the scene.

Here we are in 2017, Austin is on every ‘best’ list, attracting new people & their dreams. However, those dreams have a price tag and it’s being paid by those of us on the ground while the big ‘guns’ enjoy their view far from the scene of the economic crime.

We all saw this coming, but it’s clear that there’s no profit in being a prophet and as many of us have experienced, “no prophet is accepted in his own hometown.”