There’s a quote I’ve been meditating on this past week that the late Mike Davis mentions in his novel “City of Quartz” credited to Job Harriman:
“It became apparent to me that a people would never abandon their means of livelihood, good or bad, capitalistic or otherwise, until other methods were developed which would promise advantages at least as good as those by which they were living.”
Harriman came within a hair’s-breadth of being Los Angeles’s first Socialist mayor in 1911 and, post-defeat, founded a socialist cooperative colony known as Llano del Rio near the Mojave Desert that lasted until 1917.
Llano del Rio may not have experienced long-term success, but Harriman captures one of the significant challenges of creating society-wide change. People will only be open to change if a higher quality of life is guaranteed. Even then, that still may not be enough to sway change.
If you live in LA or want to better understand this beautiful, complicated city, City of Quartz is a must-read. Over 30 years later, it still remains the best socio-political critique of modern LA: https://lnkd.in/gPTr8yKy
But Did You Live? 