Unlike in third-world countries, when governments in the United States don’t maintain basic standards of cleanliness or order, they are making a choice.
California governor Gavin Newsom visited downtown Los Angeles on January 20 to see the cleanup of the Union Pacific line where the much-publicized train robberies have occurred. After picking up some trash himself, he spoke to reporters.
“I see what you see. I see what you’ve been covering,” Newsom told the reporters gathered. “I’m asking myself, ‘What the hell is going on?’ We look like a third-world country.”
While the “third-world country” line plays well and makes headlines, it’s not quite right. Third-world countries that don’t want to be third-world countries anymore understand better than anyone that the rule of law is one of the key ingredients to development. They also understand that the rule of law is difficult to instill and preserve. Cleaning up rail lines and punishing train robbers is one of the basic things that third-world countries prioritize as they strive toward the rule of law.
Swachh is Hindi for “clean” or “tidy,” and it’s been a major point of emphasis for India’s national government in the past few years. In 2014, the government launched the “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan” (Clean India Mission), with Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying, “A clean India would be the best tribute India could pay to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150th birth anniversary in 2019.” It made global headlines for Modi’s promise to build toilets as a way to reduce open defecation.
As part of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, India’s Ministry of Railways launched the “Swachh Rail, Swachh Bharat” (Clean Rail, Clean India) initiative. The initiative included an annual report based on in-person inspection of hundreds of railway stations and thousands of interviews of passengers. It ranks stations by cleanliness and suggests best practices to improve.
Of course, India is not exactly swachh just yet. Modi announced Phase 2 of the initiative last year, implicitly admitting that Gandhi’s 150th birthday present was not delivered. The Times of India has made fun of the initiative, posting pictures of garbage taken by citizens.
The problem India is running into is common for third-world countries. Everyone agrees on the policy aim, but the government simply doesn’t have the capacity to make it happen. As the country becomes wealthier, higher cleanliness standards will become easier to maintain.
What we are seeing in California is not a third-world problem. It’s not that California was unable to prevent this pattern of train robberies. It was unwilling. The United States is already a wealthy, first-world country. When governments in the United States don’t maintain basic standards of cleanliness or order, they are making a choice.
In this instance, progressives in California made that choice by not prosecuting people who were arrested for stealing from trains. A reporter questioned Newsom on that, noting that Union Pacific wrote a letter to Los Angeles district attorney George Gascón in which it placed blame for the robberies on the county’s lax criminal-justice system. Newsom dodged the question, saying he hadn’t read the letter. He said, “We need to hold folks to account, and we need to focus on what we can do to be more supportive of one another. . . . There’s a burden of responsibility, and all of us share that.”
Not only was he reluctant to blame progressive prosecutors for their failure to enforce the law, he was also reluctant to call organized groups of criminals “gangs.” Earlier in the interview, Newsom (correctly) said, “This is not a one-off. This is organized theft.” Then, he said, “These are organized gangs of people,” and caught himself. “Forgive me for saying, ‘gangs,'” Newsom said. He settled on “organized groups of folks” as his preferred phrase.
Third-world countries don’t have time for these sorts of word games. They don’t have university-educated people who believe basic law enforcement is evidence of “structural oppression” or “white supremacy.” The train robberies in California are the result of putting into practice a progressive ideology that only rich countries could afford.
Third-world countries wish they could uphold the rule of law and find it difficult to do so. California could uphold the rule of law, but many of the progressives in power there wish they didn’t have to. Those are fundamentally different problems, even if they both lead to piles of trash in public.