I often here from people that, “Government ought to be run like a business.”  Recently a very cool, very smart Republican friend of mine offered up an observation he thought proved this point.  Walt Disney World, he argued is in fact just like a city.  We had this discussion before I went on a trip with my 7-year-old to Disney World.  So I figured I would test out this idea while I was there.

Actually, there is a fair amount of academic literature on Disney and Disney World.  I did a quick search and found 847 academic articles written with Disney World somewhere in the title.  In addition to business, marketing, and psychology journals Disneyworld articles also appeared in urban planning journals from around the world including a German one called, Geschichtsdidaktik.  So maybe my friend isn’t crazy.

So, to begin, Disney is in fact structured like a small town America in many ways.  There is a Town Hall building when you first go in.  There is a main street and lots of different neighborhoods, although they all seem to end in “land” which being from New Jersey strikes me as a lack of imagination.  But I there is a small-town vibe that Disney World kicks off.

Part of my friend’s argument began that one key ingredient in a well-run city or state is transportation.  At Disney, the primary mode of transportation is electric buses, but there are a wide variety of other transportation options.  These include, a light rail/monorail system, short “people mover” walkways and even a gondola.  There are lots of cars, but it is really expensive to use them and especially to park them (rates of around $65 per day are not uncommon).  But Disney’s transportation system works… well like clockwork.  The buses come on time and often, they are clean and the bus drivers exceedingly friendly and polite.

Another key to a great city is housing. The vast majority of the Disney housing stock is mixed use.  This means that within a specific housing development you have a mix of both high-end and low-end housing units.  While there appear to be a few economically segregated neighborhoods (rich and poor primarily) most often there is a mix of economic classes in the same neighborhood.  The housing options also universally come with retail options attached to them, which lowers the need for cars.

Cities need great healthcare and law enforcement.  Disney World has both. On this trip, I saw a small child fall and get a bad scrape on her knee.  Before Goofy could complete a sentence, a health care professional showed up with a band-aid and a hug.  Disney World’s Epcot Center has full serves bars which serve as ethnic and cultural showcases of different countries.  I saw an un-armed public safety officer quickly, quietly and professionally escort a significantly overserved young man out of the fake British pub without rancor or incident.

Perhaps the most innovative approach taken is that Disney World is virtually cash free.  The vast majority of transactions from food to housing to transportation to entertainment are done with a cashless automatic debit system.  You use pre-paid watch bands for basic expenses and each person can choose from a variety of plans that best fit their needs and wallet.  It is incredibly efficient.

On any given day, Disneyworld has more people in it than Newark and Jersey City combined.  Yet in Disney World, everything works. Everything and everyone is nice.  It is clean, it is safe.  You get where you want to go quickly and easily, no delays.  You have people who help you rather than ignore you.  You get choices of how and where you want to live and eat and buy.   After two days of hanging out with the Mouse, I was thinking perhaps, maybe my illustrious Republican friend is on to something.

Why we can run our cities the way Disney runs their business?

Luckily, I got back home to New Jersey reality and came up with a bunch of good reasons.

First of all, Disney is wicked expensive.  The average cost for one full week at Disney is about 1/4^th  the average yearly property tax bill in New Jersey.  So, if we want things to work like they do in Disney or they work in any other business, we would need to pay for it like we pay for Disney.  I am guessing raising property taxes 10-fold would do it. That is probably enough to make people re-think the business case for municipalities.

Second, all those shiny, happy, friendly “municipal” employees at Disney?  They have a significantly higher average wage than most municipal/government employees.  It is true that on the low end of the pay scale government works tend to do better than private sectors employees.  How Disney gets happy janitors is still a mystery.  However, the pay differential totally disappears when you move up the ladder.  The guy who runs “Fantasyland” likely makes 2 times the borough administrator of a similarly sized municipality, like Metuchen.

Third, not everyone gets to go to Disney.  There really is no way around it.  Private businesses, like Disney, have the capacity to discriminate because they don’t have to provide services to everyone.  They have the capacity to exclude people (those who can’t pay) in ways that Newark or Jersey City or Metuchen just can’t.  Yes, having a cashless city is wicked cool and really efficient for the businesses doing it but it also discriminates against those who don’t have access to electronic credit options, so much so New Jersey banned the idea almost a year ago.

So here is the point. The next time someone says to you that we ought to run government like a business just ask them how long they have been in favor of higher taxes and more discrimination.  Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of things government might learn from business about risk, savings, endowment financing and the long-term depreciation of assets.   But we should leave running things like a business to the entities like the Mouse.  They are nice places to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Matt Hale

Seton Hall University