Actually, Tuesdays are now the best day for the NYT’s op-ed page since in addition to Ross there’s David Brooks. His column today is a good one, making the point that the response to the swine flu outbreak offers a fresh example of the debate Brooks frames as:
Gordon Brown is, you will be shocked to discover, in the former camp. Brooks, sensibly, puts himself in the latter. This is not, you’ll appreciate, merely a question of how best to deal with an infectios disease. Much the same balance of risk and reward applies to the financial crisis.Do we build centralized global institutions that are strong enough to respond to transnational threats? Or do we rely on diverse and decentralized communities and nation-states?
The world is a big and complicated place and, as Brooks suggests, the divide between the Centralisers and the Diffusers is one of the key questions of the moment.
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