Santa Barbara City Council’s Magical Thinking

I want our political leaders to succeed in making our lives better. That is their job. One wonders why they seem to fail at this task and just make things more complicated for us. After all, when our political leaders make mistakes, it is we citizens who bear the consequences. They rarely have skin in the game.

Our local political leaders tackle significant issues like escalating rents, homelessness, poverty, and the environment. Yet their solutions either fail to achieve their goals or they seem to perpetuate the problems. My thesis here is that they don’t have sufficient knowledge about these issues to make effective policy decisions. 

I recently quoted a saying by Thomas Aquinas, the sainted Christian philosopher (1225-1274): “I fear the man of one book.” Forget for the moment what you think it means or what ancient scholars thought it meant. What it means to me is that dogmatists accept only the doctrine that they support and fail to consider other ideas that contradict their philosophy of how the world ought to work. 

Recently the Council majority (Gutierrez, Harmon, Santamaria, and Sneddon) pushed through a temporary freeze on apartment rents and a plan for a rent control ordinance 

This is where Aquinas’s quote comes in. I label these councilmembers as Progressives which is a synonym for Democratic Socialists. You may think I am exaggerating about the socialist label. Perhaps. But I think this is what drives their ideas and resulting policies. I would guess that they don’t necessarily believe they are socialists, but they seem to align with solutions favored by Bernie Sanders, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, and Zohran Mandami, each of whom members are of the Democratic Socialists of America. 

I don’t think our Progressive councilmembers understand that their socialist-Progressive philosophy supports a system that has consistently failed to achieve the results they intended. This is not in dispute. History and many economic studies support this conclusion: socialism and top-down planning doesn’t work. In other words, they unquestioningly adhere to one philosophy and have not studied or considered facts, data, and logic of the overwhelming weight of evidence that shows what works and what doesn’t. This is why I say they do not have the expertise to pass these recent laws.

It’s not that they haven’t heard the arguments against programs like rent control. Time after time, experts and scholars have presented the facts at public hearings and in commentary. They laughingly ignore it and accuse those who would challenge their ideas as Oldthink (see Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 about the disassembly of language by government to control people). Mea culpa.

Liberals, Progressives, socialists, and MAGA Republicans believe they can just pass laws and their policy goals will be achieved. That is what is called “magical thinking.” You can’t just pass a law and expect it to work. This type of thinking is a “cognitive distortion where individuals believe their thoughts, actions, or rituals directly influence external events, despite a lack of logical or causal connection.”

Unfortunately, most politicians fall into magical thinking. Very few have not been captured by a single philosophy that amounts to dogma or political expediency. What passes for intellectual discussion among our council members is an outline of the problem as they see it and a statement of the ordinance they believe will solve it. They never venture into the arena and present facts as to why their solutions will work and why those opposing it are wrong. 

Instead they vilify the opposition. Rent control opponents are called “greedy landlords.” It’s even worse if you are a “corporate landlord” because, as we all know, they are the worst of the worst. None of these people have skin in the game and they don’t know what they are talking about. Perhaps they should examine what causes high rents rather than demonizing apartment owners. Why don’t they do this?

The answer is relatively simple: it’s all about politics and getting re-elected. It’s a good, well-paying job; it’s a step up the political ladder to higher pay and more power; maybe Congress or the Senate, or even… it’s not about fixing the problems. It’s about power.

Here’s an offer. I know a lot about real estate. I taught real estate investment at Santa Barbara City College. I don’t own any residential rentals, so no conflicts of interest. I went to SBCC and UCSB and I’ve lived here for 50+ years. I was a real estate lawyer. If I am so commissioned by the Council, I and a panel of experts will offer to study and present workable nonpartisan solutions to rental housing issues. I’ll do it for free. You will then have information on which to make decisions based on facts not magical thinking. 

Any takers?