The history lesson would be very long and repetitive as is all history. 1.- Many years ago the City collected the garbage and someone figured out it would be more efficient and cheaper to farm it out to a professional company who would run it like a business to they hired an outside company to do it. 2.- For several years this independent company collected the garbage and someone figured out it would be more efficient and cheaper for the City to do it itself so they fired the outside company and started doing it themselves. 3.- So for several years the City collected the garbage and someone figured out it would be more efficient and cheaper to farm it out to a professional company who would run it like a business to they hired an outside company to do it. 4.- (Can you guess where we are now and what is coming next?) They have applied for a $50 million peso loan so they can buy 60 garbage trucks and do it themselves. 5.- The problem is basically one of a.- no one wants to pay for anything (the City owes a couple of million dollars--not pesos--to Domus, the current company and is fining them about that much for not doing a good job when Domus can't pay its people or buy gas or fix their trucks.) and b.- contracts are made to be broken c.- The "no-reelection" of public servants insures that you have no one with experience in any job. Well, that wasn't exactly the short version but there it is and reminds one of the phrase about learning from the mistakes of history. It doesn't make any difference who collects the garbage, the City or the company they currently have a "contract" with. Whoever it is, they will do it inefficiently, sporadically and badly.
I'm sure I don't even have to say it.. but do you really think that all of that money will go towards the purchase of new trucks? (and not into the pockets of certain people in local government) and doesn't the city have a whole lot full of garbage trucks "awaiting repair" on Ruta 4?
So it seems like you are saying that here the politicians do not learn from history. Maybe politicians everywhere are guilty of that to some degree. But it definitely seems that here in Mexico the govt, and many institutions, do not have an "institutional memory." One of my issues with the Women's Club here is that it doesn't have any institutional memory either. Every time I sit on the board it revisits the same issues that the last board worked on...and I say "but last year we figured that out..." But the new board never reads the minutes from the old board's meetings...because that would be, what?, too obvious? Harumph.
I think in both the general and the particular that human beings have selective, self-justifying, short-term memories and we tend to think we are unique and better than those who came before and therefore what we are doing, saying and focusing on are all unique things and better than what "they" have done, said and thought about.
Well, that may be. But it's still no excuse, people can and should do better, especially when they are in power.
"Should" seems to be a word we apply more often to others than to ourselves. I too would like to control other people and their actions but trying to do so only causes me and people around me seemingly greater problems. Like trying to make a pig dance--neither one of us ends up happy. I will try to work on controlling me (an even greater struggle it seems!) and sweep my side of the street.
