Paul Rosenberg
Sunni: Is a good portion of your current income from your writing, Paul?
Paul: Yeah, I support myself as a writer, and have for a long time. I’ve written lots of books, and for almost all of the big publishers: Prentice-Hall, Macmillan, Wiley, Simon & Schuster, McGraw-Hill, and others. Hundreds of magazine articles too. But, you wouldn’t notice them unless you were looking for a specific topic. I usually have a book or two in a Barnes & Noble or Borders, either in the engineering or how-to sections.
Sunni: So you started in technical, nonfiction writing? Are you willing to tell me some other titles?
Paul: Gosh, there are a lot of titles. Audel’s Basic Electronics
Sunni: You mentioned that you started in the construction business in Chicago. I imagine you have loads of interesting stories from those times!
Paul: [laughing] Uhh, yeah I do! And the stories go back to when I was a kid. One of the first things I ever did, after getting my driver’s license, was to deliver a bribe or two. Now, this wasn’t mob-type stuff; it was more like, “Deliver this coat to Mrs. X”—the coat being a returned favor for her husband giving a construction project to the right guy. But, I was a pretty oblivious kid in some ways. I gave almost no thought to the bribe aspects; I was just happy to drive around in a nice car!
Sunni: [laughs] A typical teenage boy, in other words—at least in that regard. Is Chicago really as corrupt as many contend, do you think?
Paul: Yes and no. There is certainly a lot of monkey business going on. This politician’s friend gets this contract, another one’s friend gets that contract, and so on. But, everyone who plays the game knows that they have to perform too. If they give you a contract to build a road, you had damn well better build that road on time. So, it’s a type of corruption with effective feedback mechanisms. Weird, huh?
Sunni: Yes it is. Certainly not the interminable red tape of other places!
Paul: Most of the time, it works moderately well. Of course, the groups that are associated with federal power don’t function as well: teachers’ unions, transit systems, and so on. The local feedback mechanisms aren’t fully effective for them. Also, the mayors—the current Rich Daley and his father—have been clean. I’ve never seen a credible charge of a Daley feathering his personal nest. Their friends are/were highly questionable, but the mayors themselves have never touched such things directly.
In the end, Chicago usually lives up to its motto as “the city that works”. Now, I’m not mentioning a few trouble areas, and I’m definitely not defending corruption; I’m just commenting on general results. And, like anywhere else, government here can do some really stupid things.
Sunni: Well, now we’re getting into interesting philosophical territory, at least for me. Businessmen rely on their networks all the time—not just for supplies or whatever, but for recommendations and such. It usually doesn’t take long to figure out who keeps his word and who’s a pompous windbag—and a businessman would be stupid to repeatedly waste his resources on someone unreliable. Most people would agree that he’d be just as stupid to expend energy on considering every possible source for a given item or service each time he needed it. So why is it smart for businessmen to build up and rely on such networks, but when the city of Chicago does, it’s called corruption?
Paul: Well, you make a good point.
Sunni: All the same, I know that all that sidesteps two fundamental objections to coercive government: the involuntary nature of the beasts and the fact that they’re funded by money stolen from productive individuals.
Paul: Right, the complicating factor in all of this is that the money is taken from people involuntarily. That makes it an exercise in managed crime. The thing that makes it “corruption” is the citizen oversight mechanism. The one used in Chicago differs greatly from the one they use in Kansas. Plus, some of the operators are not very nice folks.
