Why the new state?  We have entered into a new American epoch.  Economic, technological, and political structures that have been the framework of the study and practice of public administration have radically changed.  In the ever so close past, the ends that governing sought were limited to economic development.  Safety, housing, the environment, and education had all become commodities and have been used as means to generate economic development. Privatization, outsourcing, de-regulation, and “creative”  finance are just a few of the tools that public administrators have used to generate economic development.  But now with the collapse of our economy we have realized that the focus on economic development has left us with crumbling infrastructure,  substandard education and environmental policy, over-crowded jails, a food production industry dependent on environmentally devastating practices, massive corruption, a socially stagnant classes with little mobility, and greater wealth accumulation in a ridiculously few.    A self interested society, it turns out, is not sustainable.   Read the rest of this entry »