Another way

Antanas Mockus

Bogotá, Colombia's "eccentric" recent ex-mayor turned the city around in two short years from a place that "was choked with violence, lawless traffic, corruption, and gangs of street children who mugged and stole. It was a city perceived by some to be on the verge of chaos.

...He also asked people to pay 10 percent extra in voluntary taxes. To the surprise of many, 63,000 people voluntarily paid the extra taxes. A dramatic indicator of the shift in the attitude of "Bogotanos" during Mockus' tenure is that, in 2002, the city collected more than three times the revenues it had garnered in 1990.

How did he accomplish such a feat, and other tangibles like drastic reductions in homicides and traffic fatalities?

With humor, incentives, transparency and "revolutionary" ideas. And...humility.

Check it out at the Harvard Gazette.

It's a very encouraging story in today's crap-filled world.

I'm reminded of an old, old science fiction TV show that I saw when I was young, which made a big impression on me for some reason. I remember the name - The Richest Man in Bogatá. And while I don't remember anything of the show, I remember this much of the plot: everyone in Bogatá was blind, except this one man - the richest man in Bogatá.