[Note: This post is an encapsulation of what I was going to present at TEDxTamaya, but was unable to, due to having to bolt from the conference suddenly after a panic phone call from my wife Bonnie that Willow had banged her head against the edge of a door. Fortunately, Willow was fine, and so I am posting some of the slides and ideas from my TEDx talk]

For most of this year, I have been pretty occupied in trying to understand our political world, the relationship between the public and private realms, why things are the way they are, and why we, as a society, seem to be endlessly debating who is in charge of what. 

I believe fundamentally we are still smack in the middle of a very human debate that goes back for centuries, seeing the worst upheavals around these issues in the forms of two world wars in the beginning and middle of the twentieth century. The philosophical tug-of-war that defines our political existence globally is really more or less about the role of government in our lives: government as active in our lives vs government as passive in our lives. It's all very philosophical, about the primacy of the state vs the primacy of the individual. What complicates matters is that no one seems to be able to agree on where the line is drawn, and at the end of the day, all political struggle is about where this line is.

A few months ago, my family and I visited Houston (where I grew up) to celebrate my dad's 70th birthday. My brother Nam's family and mine went to visit the Houston Children's Museum one afternoon, and I was delighted to discover their new Kidtropolis exhibit, which is an incredibly elaborate and detailed microcosm that brilliantly expresses the interplay between public and private, between democracy and capitalism in the United States. From their literature:

It's a City for Kids, Run by Kids!

Kidtropolis, USA marks a brand new spot on the map as a real-life kid metropolis complete with a skyline, city government, occupations and the systems that make a city work. It's where kids choose to be whatever they want to be!

Kids will keep the city running by taking on the roles of:

• city leaders
• voters
• workers
• shoppers
• business owners

They'll participate in a sophisticated, simulated economy where they can spend money on items and experiences throughout the city. But, like in real life, they will have to get jobs to earn money, and that's where the KidCard comes in handy!

The Kid Card is an ATM card which has a stipend of 40 Kidtropolis dollars on it. With it, kids can go on a shopping spree of tantalizing food items, special art workshops and other cool stuff. They can deposit their paychecks into a kids savings or checking account or hit the town for a day out!

Kidtropolis mirrors a real city, complete with its own city hall, municipal building, mercantile center, bank, news center, market, diner, art school, and even a vet clinic. Children can even elect a mayor, run for office, and decide what ordinances to pass!

I have included a slideshow of my visit, as well some diagrams below which show how Kidtropolis is such a great way to see a very distilled version of our complex society, specifically where the "line" between public and private undergirds any and all political discourse in this country and abroad. Some quick observations as you flip through the slideshow:

• I caught a little girl red-handed stealing Kid Cash from the grocery store checkout cash drawer
• My daughter Willow was obsessed with breaking into the Chase Bank vault (what's with little girls wanting to STEAL?)
• All the exhibits were pretty evenly packed, except for....City Hall
• There was always a line at the Kid ATM
• In the diner exhibit, no kid required a tutorial - they just put on the restaurant hats and smocks and went right to work flipping burgers
• I asked the kid who was playing bank teller if I could apply for an ARM that did not float with LIBOR. He said, "Wha? You want some cash or what?"
• My daughter Willow was the only kid (while we attended) that watched the candidate debates in City Hall and voted (bless her heart. she's 3)
• The fiscal budgeting game was brilliant. You had a limited number of money cards and many more slots of potential city services to pay for. You had to think about what got funded and what didn't
• Willow's favorite exhibit was the mini-HEB grocery store. She loves to shop, just like her mom.

Here are all the things that were represented at Kidtropolis: Municipal Building, City Hall, Bank, Stock Exchange, Veterinarian's clinic, Grocery Store, Art School, New Station, Diner. Aside from that there was a seamless economy based on Kid Cash: in order to have money, kids had to earn it working, and they could spend it shopping or eating. They made deposits at the bank with the smart Kid Cards, and withdrew liberally at the Kid ATM.

This is the line that we know best, a hard delineation between City Hall/Municipal Building...and everything else.

If you think about it, however, there are many things that straddle this line between public and private, schools and healthcare being two such examples. And you wonder why the current healthcare reform debates are so heated. It's all about crossing that line.

In the wake of the financial crisis, we saw the government spend billions (if not trillions) of taxpayer dollars bailing out financial institutions, thereby increasing government ownership of these institutions. The conservative right is up in arms about this because what you are seeing is what a socialist model actually looks like. 

Taken to an extreme, if all of the grey institutions belong in the public sector, then what you have is China, an autocratic yet capitalist (based on their recent market reforms) regime. I think this is what the right fears most. Oh no! American Communism!

The other extreme looks like this. Small to no government at all. This is the Libertarian fantasy. So, where do you think the line should be drawn, and why?

Update on Feb 3, 2010 at 07:54AM by Gong Szeto

And it appears there's a Kidtropolis-type place in China....