The Exeter Newsletter has a hilarious summary of Wednesday night’s “vision sessions.” Clearly, Darren Winham is doing exactly what a bureaucrat does: divides communities and laughs at us on his way to the bank.

In a follow-up editorial, amazingly, the ENL asks a useful question, e.g., “Is there too much housing stock, or not enough?” These sorts of questions, i.e., of production are absolutely NOT for voters or bureaucrats to decide. These questions are for producers and consumers to decide. The profit and loss system is what lets entrepreneurs do the cost accounting to determine what “should” be produced, and what “should” be produced would end up being consumers’ most urgently demands. 

When Darren Winham et al get involved, when it becomes a community discussion, it becomes a political game, and the politically connected end up winning one way or the other. This is Exeter’s problem: the people are too dependent on strategic plans and grandiose vision sessions. No: get the town government out of the way. Slash government budgets. Slash taxation. Eliminate all government regulations and have government cede its supposed ownership of all property to the true owners (the tax payers and property abutters). Having discussions over which type of bread would best serve Exeter residents in 10 years is not a question for government.