Just Add Water

So there I was, all set to take the week off, and at the last minute a topic popped into mind...during Sunday lunch no less. Just when I thought was out…they pull me back in…

The meaning of Sunday lunch for me, has changed over time. As a youth, that was the family meal of the week. We had no consistent lunch type, but we typically alternated between eating at Baba’s and eating at Martin’s. Unassailable, however, was the notion that everyone in the family would be there. These days, food continues to play major role in my family. I cook every night of the week, and I insist that the four of us eat at the dining room table each night (with the exception of major sporting events when eating in front of the TV is encouraged). Sunday lunch, for whatever reason, is the one meal of the week that I don’t really feel like cooking. This is fine, but it begs the question of where the family will eat.  The challenges I face are that a) I am boycotting a number of restaurants for urban design reasons; b) the restaurants I like either aren’t suitable for children or aren’t open; c) I refuse to venture outside of downtown to eat; and d) the other palates in the household are underdeveloped (that’s the nicest way I can say that the other three like to eat at horrible places that turn my stomach). The upshot of this is a very short list of downtown restaurants that we can all agree on. Yesterday, we decided to go to an old standby- River Street Deli (I highly recommend the tongue sandwich).

Apparently, it is more fun to ride the tiger.

Surprise, surprise, it was another rainy weekend. After lunch, however, there was a brief break so we decided to spend a bit of time in Coolidge Park at the carousel. After the obligatory fight over who got to ride the tiger, we had a couple of spins and were ready to make for the house. Now when I think of my beloved boys (even at the best of times) the words “calm”, “restraint”, and “sane” do not immediately spring to mind. As we left the carousel pavilion, however, they outdid themselves in losing their ever-loving minds. Why? Water. Despite the fact that this substance has kept them inside for two months, has cancelled their soccer games and ruined their plans, the sight of it squirting out of a concrete lion’s mouth sent them into a frenzy.

That’s the fact. Kids and their parents love water in public places. Look at the most successful public spaces in our city- the one thing they have in common is water. Miller Park…water. Miller Plaza…water. Aquarium Plaza…water. Coolidge Park…water. 21st Century Waterfront…water. Renaissance Park...water. It’s not rocket science, if you want to create a successful and well-used public place, put a water feature in it. I think that’s one thing we could use in the Southside. Back in the day we (and by we I mean Eric Myers and Richard Rothman while I sat at a nearby drafting table) tried to incorporate a playful water feature into the 17th Street water tower, but that never quite panned out. As an alternative, I think the triangular public parcel at Main and Rossville (next to the fire hall) is an excellent potential location.

Anyway, big meeting in the morning so I’m out. Feel free to cogitate on the Southside water feature idea. I will probably take the upcoming week off...seriously....I mean it....really...

Each day is a little bit of history

Another semester has come and passed without my name popping on RateMyProfessors.com.  I suppose that is a blessing, I’m not sure my fragile psyche could handle criticism from a group of entitled millennials (or something like that). It is now time to enjoy a bit of respite between the spring and summer semesters. Yes, because of my surplus of free time (that’s sarcasm folks), I have agreed to teach an architecture history class during the summer semester at UTC. This is the first time the course has been offered, so I’ve been given the freedom to develop the course as I see fit. This is a ton of work, but they make up for it by not paying well. All jokes aside, I am seriously beside myself with excitement over the opportunity to teach this class.

Somewhere on the planet Christopher Mead just got a cold shiver and the hair on the back of his neck has stood up. Professor Mead is the greatest architecture historian I have ever had the pleasure to meet. Unfortunately, I was not one of his great students. The issue was that his history of architecture course was offered at 8 a.m. at a time in life when my ability to function fully that early was severely impaired. If there was one course from college I could do over, it would be Professor Mead’s. The man knows his architecture, he is a compelling lecturer, and the subject matter is of great interest to me. It has been interesting to note that as I prepare my lectures I have vivid recollections of Mead lecturing on some subject matter, but there are a few gaps where I don’t recall him at all. These gaps, no doubt, are the result of falling asleep in class back in the early 90’s. (In my defense, it was a large stadium classroom with comfortable, high-backed seating that was very dimly lit to accommodate the projectors. I’m getting sleepy just thinking about it.)

All of that is to say that a) please bear with me if I start dropping references to the Propylaea, Erechtheion, or an opisthodomos (can you tell that the Greeks are up this week?), and b) this looks to be a very busy summer, so I may take some time off from the blog. I don’t really have a plan for how often I will write- it may be every week, it may be once a month. I’ll keep you posted.  Now back to Chattanooga.

I had the great pleasure of hosting a group of out-of-town clients in our fair city this past week. Their city, like so many others in our country, was once a thriving place but one that suffered decline with the rise of post-WWII suburbia. Some of the challenges they face are ones that we have overcome in the past- a dead river’s edge, large transportation elements that block downtown from the water, a major one-way street pair, a 9-5 downtown, and a communal lack of confidence. As a part of our ongoing work to bring their downtown back, I invited them to Chattanooga to see first-hand how our community overcame some of the challenges that they now face. I took them on a whirlwind tour of downtown, introduced them to some of our players and conveyed the familiar stories of our rebirth while highlighting the projects that are of greatest significance to them. From what I could see the group was genuinely impressed with what they saw and will hopefully take back some of the lessons and philosophies that worked so well for us.

As informative as (I hope) the trip was for them, it was also a great exercise for me. Having them in town, visiting the venerable places that transformed our city, and retelling the tales of our success was refreshing. Over the past few months I have been somewhat preoccupied with our deficiencies and missteps as it relates to the built environment- to be sure that list is long and ever-growing. However, hosting folks who have never been here, showing off what the community has accomplished in thirty years, and seeing the spaces through the eyes of our visitors gave me a fresh perspective. We have indeed done some awesome things. (Of course, I planned the tour to mitigate the visual impact of BWW, Applebee’s, the dreadful new lighting, the cut-rate new intersections on Broad Street, some poor building rehab’s, some buildings that need to be rehabbed, the dilapidated barge on the north shore, etc., etc.)

I am partial to the Nick Saban approach of immediately forgetting past successes and focusing on the things that can be improved. Life, however, is not college football (although I will sometimes argue that college football is life). I think its good to pause from time to time to look at the good that has been done in the city and to celebrate it. So, go look at all the cool the stuff that the community has accomplished…see it? Good. Now, let's go back to making history.

The Good in the 'Hood

The past weekend saw the end of the season for my favorite English team. My Blues finished exactly in the middle of their league after a dour season. Our owner 's  assets have been frozen while he is on trial for money laundering, so I doubt we will be in the market to add quality to the squad this off-season. I will now have to get my soccer fix much closer to home. Fortunately, the season is in full swing for young Spence Rushing. He is currently playing for the CFC Academy and playing in a rec league as well. I love watching Spence play, it is one of the great joys in life. Of course, I’m incredibly biased, but the boy possesses a silky left foot and does the beautiful game justice.

My little Cryuff

The relative downside to his participation is the fact that we have to drive all over Chattanooga to get him to practice. It is a minimum of twenty and thirty minutes one-way to drive to the two fields we typically practice and play on. I don’t leave downtown Chattanooga very often (for the purposes of this post, let’s define it as I-24 to the North Shore and the River to Holtzclaw). I drop off and pick up the boys from school here, my consulting work is done from the Southside, my teaching work is done at UTC, my design/build work is done at Collier Construction on Main St., I shop here, I bank here, I go out to eat here, I go out for a drink here, I buy my cigars here as well as my groceries. In fact, the only regular activity that draws me away from downtown is soccer practice. (Practice!)

Unfortunately, I have spent much of the spring teaching Spence to deal with the anguish of having sports cancelled by inclement weather. I suspect that fully half of our practices and games have been called due to rain or wet fields. Early last week we got the word that the fields were (once again) closed, but that our CFC Academy coach had secured Finley Stadium for our practice. What a joy. The playing surface and the stadium are far superior to the grassy fields we usually play on in the ‘burbs. The boys also enjoyed playing on the same field that the “big boy” CFC players use. The greater value for me, however, was that we were playing in our own neighborhood.

Having a practice for which travel time was 20% of the norm got me thinking about the value of neighborhood institutions. Consider the logic in having a community where people who live in close proximity to one another can send their children to the same neighborhood schools, shop at the same neighborhood grocery store, recreate at the same local park, and eat and drink at the same neighborhood restaurants and pubs. The need to drive is greatly reduced, your interactions with your neighbors are deeper and more frequent, there is “found time” during the day, and the money one spends tends to stay in the community.

Our society, unfortunately, doesn’t operate that way. We live in isolated housing subdivisions, shop in generic national chain stores, eat at generic chain restaurants, and organize life based on the concept of economies of scale.  In fact, a sober look at society shows that we have contempt for traditional neighborhood structure. Those who favor bussing children across the county to massive, mega-schools administer our educational system. Our civic recreation philosophy has been one of creating large, regional-scale facilities. We are told that a grocery store can’t exist unless it’s a minimum of 45,000 square feet and serves at least 4,000 people. Spending at chain restaurants (that operate at regional and national scales) represents the lion’s share of that market. The problem with each of these things is that they are being considered in isolation and the wrong metric is being used to judge whether or not the technique is prudent.

The problem lies in judging everything by its monetary value without a consideration of the complexities of life. The argument for bussing children to mega-schools is based on cost. The argument for fewer and bigger parks is based on cost or providing high-level experience for a specialized activity. The scale of grocery store is based on cost. The ability of chain restaurants to succeed is based on their economy of scale. In each case, the various facets of our lives are being considered in isolation and decisions are made based on what makes the most economic within each of those silos.

The fact is that most of the important things in life can’t be quantified economically. The overarching goal should be to improve to quality of our lives. Is there no value in a neighborhood where parents and kids can walk/bike to their neighborhood school, walk/bike to their neighborhood park, walk/bike to their neighborhood grocery store, and walk/bike to their neighborhood restaurants? What is the cost of a lifestyle where the average American spends 2.5 hours a day in a car and spends an additional 2 hours a day working to pay for it? What could you do with a free 4 and half hours a day? What is the cost of land lost to the monotonous monoculture of the sub-urb? What is the cost of repairing and maintaining our crumbling automobile infrastructure? (the better part of $2.2 TRILLION) What is the cost of an obesity epidemic created by sedentary lifestyles and an unhealthy food supply system?

We are told that it costs more money to organize life a neighborhood scale- but I suspect that when the total picture is considered the economic difference isn’t that big. Is it worth paying a few cents extra for groceries in your neighborhood if you pay less for gas and save time? Is it worth forgoing the specialized play equipment at the mega-park to have a neighborhood space you can use as you at your convenience? Is it worth paying a few extra dollars in taxes for a neighborhood school to save dozens of hours and gallons of gas?

A brief example: Compare the trip to the (still relatively close) St. Elmo Bi-lo we used to frequent with a trip to our new neighborhood market- Enzo’s. The Bi-lo trip is a 6-mile, 20 minute roundtrip drive- or in economic terms $3.39 for the drive (based on the GSA rate of .565/mile) and $__ for time (fill in the hourly value). The Enzo’s roundtrip is a 1.6 mile, 10 minute drive – which costs .90 for the car and $__ for time. In hard costs (car) I can afford to spend 2.5% more on my groceries at Enzo’s. In soft costs I have 25% more to spend on groceries, or 10 minutes of life to enjoy. At the end of the year I have an extra $130 in cash plus 9 hours free hours.  Beyond that, the money I spend at Enzo’s goes to my friends who live in Chattanooga while the money I spend at Bi-lo goes off to Jacksonville, FL. Now figure the same for life’s other activities (restaurants, pubs, schools, trips to the park, etc) and you can begin to see why urbanism makes sense from both economic and quality of life standpoints.

Unfortunately, there are a great number of Chattanoogans who don’t have the choice to live in urban neighborhoods with the amenities I've outlined. I don’t believe that the benefits of urbanism should accrue only to a privileged few. I see no reason why every person in the city should not have the opportunity to live and raise their children in a neighborhood with access to great schools, appropriately scaled public space, and healthy food. That is nothing less than the promise of urbanism and the essence of the American Dream.

All Roads Lead to Chattanooga

I’m so excited! Good news from last week has given me a perfect opportunity to tell one of my all time favorite stories…

My undergraduate years at New Mexico were spent in a habitual state of homesickness. At the time, the internet was still unknown to me, news from home was in short supply and contact with friends and family was infrequent. Most of the students at UNM were New Mexican, Californian or from abroad. I never met a fellow Alabamian, and maybe only 5 other southerners in as many years. As a result, I desperately clung to all things Southern. I found that while I was there I starting caring more about Southern sports teams (Braves, Saints, and Falcons), my monomania regarding Alabama football became (unbelievably) even more pronounced, my accent got a bit stronger (particularly when young women were around), and my cravings for Baba’s food sparked an interest in cooking that continues to this day.

Step back in time to the spring of 19 and 92. I was skint and unable to join any of my friends on their spring break journeys. A small handful of us stayed behind for what was, as I recall, a remarkably boring week. Our rather large house, which was usually abuzz with commotion, had become a ghost town. Midway through this most boring week came a brief spark of excitement. Out of the blue, four strangers showed up at the house. They were fraternity brothers from Vanderbilt stopping by on their way to points west. I was beyond excited to see fellow Southerners and to get to chat with some normal people (for let’s face it, New Mexicans and Californians are weird). They stayed long enough to have a couple of beers and shoot the breeze and then continued on their way. The rest of the week passed uneventfully, and the memories of the week were retired to the farthest corners of my brain.

Last week I wrote that the thought of a city Department of Transportation scares the (expletive deleted) out of me. One need only look at what the various levels of D’sOT have done to our country over the past seventy years to find my justification. In my estimation, the way in which we have built our transportation system is the single greatest physical problem facing the country. The problem is so great that it extends beyond issues of urban design and land use and has a very real impact in the realms of finance, physical and mental health, environmental quality, and food security. D’sOT at every level spend massive amounts of money with virtually all of it spent on the automobile- and this has been going on for a few generations. So, please forgive my initial flinch at another layer of transportation bureaucracy.

Our community has spent the last several years counting down the days until a new Mayor would take the helm. Mayor Berke has arrived on the scene with a massive weight of expectation- and to this point he has not disappointed. On Friday, he appointed Blythe Bailey as Administrator of Transportation- this is a win for our community. I say that not simply because Blythe is a friend, but because he comes to the position with a firm grasp of urbanism and an understanding of the important role that a well-balanced transportation system plays in the life a healthy community. I suspect that he will face a number of challenges from the various layers of bureaucracy (which are driven by the transportation/industrial complex), but I will sleep well at night knowing that he will be an advocate for balance and sanity.

In the spring of 2002 I was working for Stroud at the Design Studio. My cubicle mate was none other than our kid Blythe Bailey. We worked together for probably nine months before we realized that we were brothers in the bond of Phi Delta Theta.  After discovering that I was a Lobo, he told me about the time that he and his buddies stopped by our chapter house on their way to Arizona back in spring of ’92. We quickly surmised that we had indeed met each other ten years prior, a thousand miles away, under vastly different circumstances. That night, I returned home and dug out my box of old college photos (I really must remember to burn that), and rifled through images of my misspent youth until I found an photograph of a young C.Rushing posing with four brothers from Vanderbilt, a young B.Bailey among them…

C.Rushing and B.Bailey- New Mexico, 1992.
I can't begin to tell you how much I loved that hat,
though I can offer no excuse for the acid-washed jeans.

It is indeed a small world and all roads lead to Chattanooga. With Mr. Bailey in this new position there is hope that it will be not only roads, but bike paths, transit, greenways, trails and sidewalks that lead here as well.

Flick of the Finger

Well, the week got past me before I had an opportunity to come up with a cogent post. (That's not entirely true, I wrote a thousand words about how TDOT came to layeth the smacketh down by kickstarting US-27. But on this occasion I decided to channel my inner Herm Edwards and will keep my thoughts to myself for now). Last week was roundly horrible and my mind is scattered, so this post will reflect that. Without further ado, it's clip post time...

-It appears that the City is getting an organizational facelift. This has the potential to be a very good thing. I must admit, however, that the thought of a city Department of Transportation scares the ever-loving shit out of me. There is reason for optimism though, that this new transportation construct will be an agent of positive change.

-At Auburn's A-Day game weekend, they unveiled a redesign for Toomer's Corner. Please note that "historical character" is code for uninspired design fence-sitting. To be fair, that was to be expected, I couldn't really see them doing anything else. To be sure, a lost opportunity when you consider that they are dropping seven figures on it.

-A couple of my favorite bands are coming out with new stuff. To get fired up check out the new Beady Eye. The song contains one of the great revolutionary quotes of all time by Jean-Paul Marat:

“Don’t be taken in when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there’s no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretense of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they’ll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces.”

And to calm back down check out Junip's new stuff.

-A brief note on perspective. This weekend while prepping some mis en place for dinner I had an unfortunate encounter with my beloved Global 8" chef's knife. While in the emergency room talking with the nurse about whether or not my fingernail was going to grow back properly, there was a bit of a commotion in the ER. A few minutes later, the nurse returned and noted that a man had just come in with his (unattached) hand in a bag. Of course, at that moment I felt foolish and was reminded that no matter what problems I think I have, there is always someone who has it worse.

-This

Back next week (hopefully on topic). Cheers.

Bright or Right?

Several weeks back I wrote about the embarrassing state of the city’s pedestrian lights. More specifically, I noted that we now have nine (9) different types of pdestrian lighting fixtures. You can read the details here. How we use the lights to reinforce the concept of a shared public realm is very important- but let’s be frank, this is not a life and death matter. The primary implications are for whether or not we are living up to our standard of excellence for the public realm, and whether or not the city and EPB are being efficient. It appears, however, that our pedestrian lights are potentially about to become more overtly harmful.

I speak of the new LED lighting fixtures that are about to be installed in all of downtown. On the face, this seems like a good thing- a standardized, networked series of efficient lights that can be remotely dimmed or brightened. In theory, this can save in electric costs, and provide emergency responders an extra tool to help them do their job more efficiently. The lighting company noted that even turned down to half output, the new fixtures are brighter than the existing fixtures. This is all good right? Not so fast my friend. From the things I have read (granted, I have no firsthand experience) the emphasis with the new lighting fixtures is on the technology- not on the act of providing good light. To wit, their claims speak of making lights brighter to increase safety and touting that the lights are brighter than the existing pedestrian lights. That all sounds well and good, but it actually exposes a fundamental lack of understanding of how human’s see or of empirical lighting research.

A decade ago, Councilman Littlefield tapped the Design Studio to draft a lighting ordinance for the City of Chattanooga. As we all know, shit rolls down hill, so this project fell into my lap. I won’t bore you with the details, but in the process of drafting a competent piece of legislation (if I do say so myself), I learned a great deal about the in’s and out’s of exterior lighting. That story ended when, after a robust stakeholder process and numerous revisions of the draft produced no controversy, the work was never brought to council for action. But I digress, back to the new lights.

The human eye is a wondrous, marvelous thing. But like anything, it has strengths and it has weaknesses. Its strength is that it can detect subtle nuance in very low lighting conditions. Think about what you can see when you wake up in the middle of the night and walk through the house. The reason you can see well in that case is that the eye is very good at adapting to low levels of light as long as the level of light is consistent. The weakness of the eye is that it does not do well with high contrast- a phenomenon we call glare. Think now about what happens when you open the fridge or someone turns a flashlight in your dark house- your eye adjusts to the brightest object and your ability to see other things in the room is severely degraded. With this understanding, the goal of exterior lighting should be to create even lighting, not necessarily bright lighting. In fact, bright lighting can actually impair visibility. So when we hear the lighting producers touting the brightness of their fixtures, it hints at a lack of understanding of what the ultimate goal is.

As of the time of my little ordinance experience, there was not a single study that made the correlation between lighting and increased safety. In fact, there are actually a number of studies that show that reduced lighting can actually reduce crime. There is, however, a substantial link between lighting and the perception of safety. It appears that we are afraid of the dark. In our quest to increase the perception of safety, however, it is quite possible to make places more dangerous. The first way this is possible lies with the way our eyes work. With increased lighting levels comes an increase in shadows and a decrease in the ability of a person to see everything in their environment. This creates places from criminal to hide, and places of darkness in which nefarious activities can occur undetected. The second potential danger is to drivers. As the pedestrian lights are typically installed near roads, the debilitating glare of over-bright fixtures makes it more difficult for drivers to see what is ahead of them. Obviously, visually impaired drivers are not a good thing.

It seems that the new lights are built around efficiency, sustainability, and cost savings. Those are worthy goals, but should be co-equal or secondary to what should be the first goal of lighting- to provide an excellent level of visibility. Beyond the reasons stated above, the charge can be further illustrated by the fact that the proposed fixtures are not shielded or cut-off. Shielded and cut-off fixtures reduce glare, ensure that fixtures are lighting what they are designed to, and reduce light pollution and urban sky glow. Frankly, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to even find non-shielded fixtures (TDOT even uses full cutoffs fixture for crying out loud).

Despite my earlier assertion that aesthetics are not a matter of life and death, they are indeed still important. If you consider that the lights are actually seen more during daylight hours when they are off than they are while illuminated at night, this is very real issue. As I wrote a few weeks ago, we have fixtures that were designed specifically for Chattanooga. This contributes to our authenticity and uniqueness. The components of the new lights seem to be chosen from a stock catalog and are likely produced in Asia- there is nothing unique or authentic about them. I had heard rumor that they are trying to retrofit their components to the standard fixtures- if this is indeed the case, hurrah!

All of that having been said, I think there is tremendous potential in a “smart” street lighting network. It is my sincere hope that the city, and/or EPB, and/or the manufacturer establish a set of best practices to ensure that we’re not actually doing more harm than good. If untrained individuals have the ability to adjust the lighting as they see fit, it is not inconceivable that downtown will be a glare bomb from dusk to dawn. If you have a chance, wait till it gets dark and take a trip to Frazier Avenue. The glaring lights that threaten to burn out your retinas are the new fixtures. Hopefully, this is not the future of downtown.

Size Matters

This post doesn’t really have a conclusion and I’m not sure it has anything to do with urban design in Chattanooga specifically. It is about scale and how we live, however, so I suppose there is a tangential connection. Be forewarned, it's another downer...

I must admit that I’m a bit worn out on basketball. Every year when the men’s NCAA basketball tournament rolls around, we get to listen Dickie V and his peers talk about parity in the sport. Every time our bracket gets busted because a team from a mid-major conference upsets a traditional power, we talk about how the playing field has been leveled. Every time a five seed makes it to the final four we hear that in the modern era any team could win it all. That is now an accepted concept and one that we hear incessantly. The only problem is that it is complete and utter bull-honkus. If the playing field is level, and if any team can win it all, then surely it would have happened at least once since I’ve been seriously following the sport (1986). Read through this list of the last 27 champions and see if you can find the Cinderella:

Louisville (also playing in this year’s championship game)

Indiana

Kansas (twice)

Michigan (also playing in this year’s championship game)

UNLV

Duke (four times)

North Carolina (three times)

Arkansas

UCLA

Kentucky (three times)

Arizona

UConn (three times)

Michigan State

Maryland

Syracuse (mad this year’s final four)

Florida (twice)

You will find that there is no Cinderella in that list. You will find that power teams from power conferences dominate the sport to the exclusion of others. So next year, when East Bumble State University gets to the sweet sixteen and folks roll out the tired story of parity- please feel free to call bull-honkus. This is not limited to college basketball, however. If you look at our society, you will find the same thing happening all around us.

Our financial system has been essentially hi-jacked by a few private institutions. They have even elevated themselves to the point where they are “Too Big To Fail”. That is capitalism Nirvana- becoming an entity that a system cannot operate without. (Kunstler does a decent job of writing about this from time to time).

Our society is driven on oil and gas. Virtually every activity we undertake on a daily basis has involved fossil fuels at some point- what we eat, what we drink, what we wear, where we live, how we move around, etc, etc, etc.

Our food supply is the hands of couple of large companies. My Facebook feed has blown up over the past couple of weeks with articles on the “Mansanto Protection Act”, seed security, and the (now proven) dangers of GMO’s. I feel awkward writing about this because I am frankly ignorant on the subject and it reeks of conspiracy theory. But if even a small percentage of the theories are true, it does not bode well for us.

Oh, so you’re an off-the-grid locavore who grows their own food, makes their own clothes and rides a one-speed everywhere? That’s fantastic and I applaud you, but there are 500,000 “typical Americans” for every one of you.

Americans are capitalists, and if you are a true capitalist, then the big companies are good things. They are the pinnacle of the capitalistic system- companies that have vanquished their competitors. Those corporations did things well enough and made enough money to beat their competition. They then use the money they made to be able to influence others to help them prevent competition and thereby make more money.

As promised, there is no moral to this story and I'm pretty sure I still believe in capitalism, these are just my observations. It seems to me, however, that the endeavors that impact human lives most  directly (I'm not talking basketball) are ones where there is the least amount of competition.  I think that's depressing.