Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.08.2005, Side 5

EDITORIALS
Bart Cameron, Editor
WWW.GRAPEVINE.IS
According to some, Iceland is the
dream model for a conservative
government. The former prime
minister and key member of the
Coalition Government, Davíð
Oddsson, has toured the world
touting his conservative policies,
speaking at the neo-con think tank
the American Enterprise Institute
about the miracles he performed
in Iceland by privatizing state-run
corporations. Oddsson, who has
cited Margaret Thatcher as a hero,
has even lambasted former British
Prime Minister Sir John Major in
England for being so foolish as to
pay minimum wage—Iceland doesn’t
have one.
Not that Mr. Oddsson’s pro-
big business, anti-taxation and
government services stance is
anything new. During June 17th,
some local teens put the settlement
of Iceland into perspective. Pointing
to the statue of Iceland founder
Ingolfur Arnarsson, they asked us,
assuming we were run-of-the-mill
foreigners, “Do you know who this
is?”
Our journalist, always looking to
make friends, said “A tax evader and
murderer from Norway?”
“That’s absolutely right,” the
teenagers said, and decided we were
good friends of Iceland.
According to economist David
Friedman and Pulitzer Prize-
winning historian and anthropologist
Jared Diamond, the original
government in Iceland was the
libertarian ideal of the Free State.
For the first three hundred years,
there were no taxes, no police, no
army, the few functions typically
handled by the state in other
countries were initially handled
privately here, including criminal
prosecution. In his essay “Living on
the Moon,” Jared Diamond claims
the Icelandic Free State which lasted
from 930 to 1262 was a disaster and
showed the failure of such a system.
The problem is, many people here,
and many scholars looking at the
system with a healthy perspective,
believe that the Icelandic Free State
succeeded quite well—332 years is
doing better than the system set up
in America, for example.
While the success of the Icelandic
Free State is open to debate, we
can at least acknowledge that when
Davíð Oddsson started pushing
Libertarian values in Iceland, he
was reverting to one of the most
celebrated times in Icelandic history.
And as his Coalition Government
has managed to privatize the last
of the extremely profitable major
state-run corporations in the country
this week, Síminn, the Iceland
telecommunications company,
Oddsson has transformed his home
into something resembling that
glorious Free State of history. And
to his credit, there is a good deal
more wealth in Iceland than there
was fifteen years ago. True, there is
a wider gap between the rich and the
poor, and true, the average personal
debt in the country is enormous, but
the quality of life still seems to have
gone up.
As the current government
chugs along, spouting alarming
anti-government rhetoric, we at
the Grapevine are sometimes cast
as extreme for asking that the
government regulate employers’
treatment of immigrants, or that
government officials who privatize
banks and end up profiting from the
privatization at least be monitored—
we haven’t printed our request that
Iceland begin a recycling program in
earnest because the look of shock on
the faces of Icelanders in the room
convinced that we were truly going
over the top.
The view of so many people
here is “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix
it.” And, most of the year, it’s hard
to argue. Kids with high school
degrees are running multi-million
dollar businesses, there’s work
enough for everyone, and the social
services, while on the decline, are
still available to most. But then you
get days like August 7th, the day
of the Gay Pride Festival, which
should remind locals of the move
by the current government to pass
Gay Union Legislation in 1996,
three years before the first Gay Pride
Festival.
The fact that few in the country
remember extended public debate
over gay partnership laws, and that
nobody has been able to point out
to us any significant public action
that may have spurred on this law,
leads us to follow the conclusion
many locals have about this case: a
few powerful politicians decided to
be forward-thinking, and the nation
followed. By passing a law about
lifestyle, Parliament was able to
shape a tolerant community.

Laws like the Gay Union
Legislation should be celebrated,
but they also remind those of us
interested in politics how much is
at stake, how much good can be
done. Legislation in Iceland led the
way to a more gay-friendly society,
and legislation could lead the way
to a more environmentally-friendly
society, to a better-educated society,
and to a more integrated society
(the diversity is already here(. This
country may have been founded by
a group of landowners who disliked
legislation and enforcement of laws,
and for their time the Icelandic Free
State did some great things, but in
modern times, as demonstrated by
the actions of Mr. Oddsson in 1996,
a more aggressive and conscientious
government is necessary to build
the kind of society that creative and
productive citizens want to be a part
of.
I didn’t used to consider city
planning a particularly interesting
issue. Just uttering the phrase “high-
density urban areas” was enough
to induce a deep yawn from me,
invoking images of a roomful of guys
in horn-rimmed glasses pouring
over stacks of incomprehensible
blueprints. To me, city planning
had all the relevance to my life as
the design of rotary engines for
milkshake machines. My attitude has
since changed radically.
The more research and
interviewing I did for this issue’s
feature, the more I came to the
frightening realization that city
planning can actually be a matter of
life and death. Take my home town
of Baltimore, for example. During
the industrial boom the town saw
during the Second World War, city
planners built an almost entirely
residential area in the southwest area
for those working in the factories.
When the war ended, so did the
jobs. Instead of reaching out to this
community by developing industry
in the southwest, city planners
instead began widening the road,
separating the neighbourhood from
the city centre, changing the road,
eventually, into an expressway. The
result was swift: the neighbourhood,
cut off from the city’s core of goods,
services and jobs by an expressway,
found itself plunged into poverty.
Today, southwest Baltimore’s most
profitable industry is the corner drug
trade, with murders occurring on
an almost daily basis there, at the
highest rate in the US – all because
of shoddy planning.
Reykjavík is at a crucial juncture,
poised to become either a divided
town – like Baltimore – or a thriving,
sustainable city. One of the things
that I love most about living in
Reykjavík is that you can walk from
your residence to your job, to the
shops, and to any number of cultural
activities. That’s an example of a
successful planning strategy called
“integration”: easy access to all the
needs of your daily life. In talking
to the various players with designs
on dealing with Reykjavík’s growing
population, I was pleased to find that
many people want to continue the
city’s integration strategy. On the
other hand, I was horrified by some
of the ideas of others, whose plans
seemed based more on unrealistic
nostalgia than creating a sustainable
city. I mean, building houses on
tiny islands might sound like a
sexier idea than “good integration
of urban space,” but in the end, I’ll
always choose a plan that works over
a pretty idea destined to cripple the
city.
This is why city planning should
be of interest to us. The heart of
planning has nothing to do with
how many pine trees are planted on
a traffic median; it rests on nothing
less than whether or not the city can
keep us alive.
Reykjavík is a long way from
being like Baltimore and hopefully
will never take on my home town’s
more tragic aspects. As City Council
elections are coming up this spring,
this vote might prove to be the most
important one we cast. Ultimately,
it’s a question of casting our ballot
for Reykjavík’s transformation into a
successful city or a failed dream.
Government Intervention Works.
The Libertarians Proved It.
Reykjavík’s Uncertain Future