Marketers like to talk about a product’s Unique Selling Proposition; that is, the things that differentiate a product from other products in the category.
El Paso is as culturally unique as New Orleans, or San Francisco, or New York.
No other city in the world shares El Paso’s culture. Our particular blend of cultures is not found anywhere else. Nowhere else can you walk, almost seamlessly, from one nation to another. Nowhere else do you find so large a concentration of bilingual English/Spanish speakers. Nowhere else do you find a city with our food and music and history.
That should be a good thing. That should be our Unique Selling Proposition.
Instead, our city leaders are trying to make us more like the rest of the United States. City Council courts out-of-town businesses that compete with our local businesses for a share of a pie that has remained practically unchanged since 2012.
An economy grows by becoming more productive. One way to do that is to encourage investment from out of town. But out-of-town investors have lots of options. We have an underutilized resource here, already: our people.
We should be helping El Pasoans to be more productive instead of encouraging outside investors to move here. We should invest in ourselves, and not the carpetbaggers looking to make a quick buck and send it home.
Exactly! Some of us, going back to our opposition to the tearing down of City Hall, and the wasteful spending on the so called QoL projects, have tried to point this out, and bring things back on point, but over and over, elected representatives choose to ignore our uniqueness in favor of trying for the bland, same ol/same ol crap that prevails everywhere else. Let’s push those things that set us apart, and encourage a spreading of the knowledge that that means!
Man, John Dungan, we spend money on the worst things. That huge canister of water at the railroad tracks at Pershing before it turns into dyer is a monolith to stupidity. Bet that water is pretty hot. Have you seen this stupidity? Of course ep is broke. 2 billion in long term and some short term liabilities? Who will be able to pay that bill. A disaster and no one sees the trees in the forest
Hey Rich, this is a great post. You are one of the smartest guys in El Paso. Definitely the smartest blogger. DavidK and now Max Powers call us “you guys” (translation “you people”). You are one us, you get it and write about it better than anyone.
Thank you, Mr. Hope. I have a lot of respect for those bloggers. Most of the time.