Day: November 9, 2020💾

Gradual Money and Cataclysmic Money

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Living in Dryden: Gradual Money and Cataclysmic Money

Cataclysmic money pours into an area in concentrated form, producing drastic changes. As an obverse of this behavior, cataclysmic money sends relatively few trickles into localities not treated to cataclysm.

...these three kinds of money behave not like irrigation systems, bringing life-giving streams to feed steady, continual growth. Instead, they behave like manifestations of malevolent climates beyond the control of man - affording either searing droughts or torrential, eroding floods.

Niagara’s Fall and Asheville’s Unlikely Rise — Strong Towns

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Niagara’s Fall and Asheville’s Unlikely Rise — Strong Towns

Niagara Falls was inundated with “cataclysmic money”—a term coined by Jane Jacobs referring to large influxes of capital under the control of large actors. At its zenith of success, Niagara Falls received checks from Washington and Albany amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars all at once. This type of windfall typically encourages large institutions to make orderly but dumb decisions, rather than employing the careful thinking and testing that comes from having a small amount of money at your disposal (what we call “chaotic but smart"). It’s similar to the experience of lottery winners who mismanage their winnings and end up worse off than before they ever played the game.
Map: Chittening Pond Fishing Area