In Corporating Public Individuals

I was walking back from my morning coffee this morning, and I noticed the parking police writing tickets on Cayuga Street. this caused me to look at the parking meters at other cars to see if that one car getting a ticket was one of many on the street at one time in one place.I was just wondering about behavior. All of the cars on my side of the street did have running meters, except for the city vehicles parked there, and I am aware that those vehicles would not receive a ticket for their violation.

On the one hand, the parking meter money goes to the city, so city personnel feeding the parking meters for city vehicles would be the equivalent of the city paying itself to park the machinery of official business. On the other hand, the act of treating the city's resources  as a commodity to be sold back to the public while the city acts as proprietor establishes a relationship which extremely unhealthy and dangerous. It promotes organizations as individuals which are parallel to human beings.

I think the parking example is a good one to illustrate this, but added to it are other ones: the police and the fire department violate all traffic and parking regulations when on normal business (not responding to an emergency); they do this even in municipalities of which they are not a part; the city demands that homeowners maintain the sidewalks in front of their properties, no matter what their financial position is, while the city fails to maintain the sidewalks it is responsible for because the magnitude of the repairs is daunting.

If the conceptual city, as an individual, parallel to each of the human individuals of the public, owns the city, and markets the resources of the city to the public, then the city is put, by definition, in opposition to the people as their lord (landlord). In a sense it is as medieval overlord, in that the city is so inaccessible, and omnipresent in all the minions who work  for it.

By contrast, if the laws of the city are instituted for the reasons of public good, and are followed by all, except during specific times of emergency, then we have a government which is a principle (not an individual) which gives a public form to us. In the case of parking, parking is metered in the downtown area to keep cars circulating, to allow access to all persons who are stopping briefly to do business in the city. Long term parking is forced into other accommodations. It is not the money that goes into the meter which is  income to the city (although this is an effect), but it is a way of monitoring the usage of the parking spaces. City vehicles do not belong on the street unless they are stopping briefly, and the parking police need to be able to monitor those vehicles in an ordinary way.

Ownership of the city should be understood not to be by the city, but by the public as a whole, by a constitutional construction which is evaluated from time to time for consenuality. Government (or any other legal construction) should never be made into a man equivalent.