David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

"I don't believe that a state-run economy can be as viable as market capitalism in producing mass wealth."

This demonstrates a basic confusion that we Americans have about ourselves, even most "lefties" and "libertarians": The false belief that we live in a free market economy.

The truth is, the state plays a massive role in our economy.

This is especially true for us Silicon Valley entrepreneurial Americans. Because the government's hand is especially strong in high tech.

The Internet. Microcomputers. Lasers. Jets. Robots. Siri. You name a major high-tech innovation, and it's probably got DARPA or NASA behind it in the earliest, highest-risk, most capital-intensive stages. Look again and you'll probably find lots more government support in bringing the technology to market through procurement.

This is all the more damning for our system's poverty. The rich and powerful are fully in favor of a strong, powerful state-run economy that serves their needs. That's why it's done under the rubric of military spending -- "we have to spend trillions of taxpayer dollars on this because we have to defend ourselves" sounds better than "because we need it to produce the Silicon Valley economic miracle."

Because the latter would suggest it's fair to direct major taxpayer support for other economic investments like education, health care and housing.

Instead, the state-supported rich and powerful can claim we live in a "free market economy" that just happens to have trillions of state-sponsored investment, for them.

I'd love to meet the "sensible people" who believe that debt, both personal and national, is not at all implicated in the economic divide between rich and poor that David Simon speaks of.

The speech is partly about degrees and dropping the hypocrisy, not advocating Marxist solutions.

To quote Theodore Roosevelt,

> The citizen must have high ideals, and yet he must be able to achieve them in practical fashion. No permanent good comes from aspirations so lofty that they have grown fantastic and have become impossible and indeed undesirable to realize. The impractical visionary is far less often the guide and precursor than he is the embittered foe of the real reformer, of the man who, with stumblings and shortcoming, yet does in some shape, in practical fashion, give effect to the hopes and desires of those who strive for better things. Woe to the empty phrase-maker, to the empty idealist, who, instead of making ready the ground for the man of action, turns against him when he appears and hampers him when he does work! Moreover, the preacher of ideals must remember how sorry and contemptible is the figure which he will cut, how great the damage that he will do, if he does not himself, in his own life, strive measurably to realize the ideals that he preaches for others. Let him remember also that the worth of the ideal must be largely determined by the success with which it can in practice be realized. We should abhor the so-called "practical" men whose practicality assumes the shape of that peculiar baseness which finds its expression in disbelief in morality and decency, in disregard of high standards of living and conduct. Such a creature is the worst enemy of the body of politic. But only less desirable as a citizen is his nominal opponent and real ally, the man of fantastic vision who makes the impossible better forever the enemy of the possible good.

tldr: don't make perfect the enemy of good. This comes several paragraphs after the famous "Man in the Arena" bit.

This is a great idea! Why not do the same for government-run schoolteachers? This may help attract and retain high quality staff, as well as providing low-skilled teachers an incentive to leave.