In his book Humankind Rutger Bregman talks about the election of a mayor in a city in Venezuela who campaigned on the notion that he wouldn’t do the job. After years of corruption and broken promises from other politicians, the people hated the mayor so much they liked this idea a lot.

Part of his job was to create a budget. So he told everybody to submit a budget, and gave them last year’s as a template. The general consensus was that they’d happily raise their taxes to pay for new parks and bus routes.

(This is a half remembered summary but I highly recommend the entire book.)

I think the real reason we can’t have nice things is because we don’t have a way to make sure nice things can happen.