SEEKING SEWER SOCIALISTS.

A Chicago Tribune editorial includes this bit of what might most charitably be called slacker logic, or as my dad would put it, "Why compare yourself to the worst?"

The garbage is picked up on time. In the winter, the streets are plowed quickly after each snowfall. In the spring, an army of gardeners nurtures the flowers budding in hundreds of municipal planters across the city.

Chicago is an efficient city. Decisions are made and carried out with dispatch.

If memory serves, one machine-anointed mayor was voted out of office for failure to manage the snows correctly. And what was I saying about never lacking for work? Efficiency is identifying and acting on all possible games from trade. Decisions can be reached quickly, but they don't have to be efficient, or even effective? Can you say Reign of Terror, dear reader?

That's the way it works in a one-party town, particularly in a place with one-man rule. No pesky debates to worry about. No need for compromise or consensus. No messy democracy to get in the way.

There is a price to pay, though: Corruption.

Yes, and heads sometimes roll, mon ami (tovarisch, for my readers in Piter.) But I don't recall anyone ever suggesting that Frank Zeidler, or his successor Henry Maier, were on the take. But the trash and garbage were picked up, and the parks were tidy, and the snow was cleared (the rubbish trucks doubled as plows.)

And let's not conflate corruption with public choice.

When there's no opposition party to provide checks and balances to the ruling group, corruption is unavoidable. There was corruption in the Soviet Politburo, and in the court of Queen Elizabeth I, and in the inner circle of Roman Emperor Nero. If Attila the Hun had kept any records, they'd surely show skullduggery by his aides.

Sure, because conspiring to fleece the taxpayer is more rewarding than doing the taxpayer's bidding. (Therein lies the Republican coalition's discontent with the Republican Congress. There's plenty of money for the districts of influential Members, but little progress on deregulation for the libertarians or abortion for the believers and some of the recipients of corporate welfare still vote Democratic.)

But that doesn't stop the editorialists from engaging in flights of fancy.

In a two-party city, debate would happen. Things wouldn't run as efficiently. That might impact garbage collection and snow removal. Not so many flowers might be planted.

But it certainly would make it harder for officeholders to lie, cheat, steal and defraud.

Maybe that would be its own kind of efficiency.

I've heard my friendly connection Milt Rosenberg sometimes advance this "Chicago works because there's corruption" argument. But there might be a good Extension 720 program (no, Sean, I'm not going to do a regular show prep feature here) on whether corruption is either necessary or sufficient for municipal services to run well.