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“The Value of Hawaii” can stand as a snapshot of sorts — a state of the State, compiled in early 2010. But its primary function is to provoke discussions of what is right — at first, in the period before the 2010 elections, but also into the future, as we keep our focus on what is valuable about Hawaii to us, and how to care for this place that we love.

Though many themes emerge from the essays in this collection, here are a few that show up repeatedly.

I. Hawaii will remain economically, socially, and ethically troubled as long as we refuse to come fully to terms with Hawaiian claims to land and sovereignty.

Though the supposed reasons offered have changed with every decade, our government and judiciary have consistently delayed, avoided, and denied. Following this strategy of neglect, as a community we’ve withheld infrastructure funding, questioned the legitimacy of entities we have ourselves created to address the issues, negotiated agreements explicitly intended to prevent resolution, and most recently, actually proposed through legislation simply to sell the contested lands as a one-time budget bailout.

Until Hawaii deals with this more than a century-old injustice, bad faith will continue to haunt everything that we do or don’t do. That’s why the current status of Hawaiians — not as a separate issue, but as a factor that must shape all decisions — is so important to so many of these essays.

II. The collapse of support for regulatory and service agencies has been disastrous for Hawaii.

The essay might be about the economy or water, about Hawaiian sovereignty or Hawaii’s forests, or about the arts, homelessness, or prisons, but the essayists all agree that the gutting of government departments and agencies, and the cutting of funds for the many organizations responsible for Hawaii’s arts, culture, and human services, have not only had obvious impacts — the growing numbers of the homeless, the virtual impossibility of our artists, social workers, cultural practitioners, and community organizers to sustain their work — but has also encouraged exploitive and destructive business and development practices to flourish.

Especially in the last few years, the executive branch has seemed committed to a policy of destroying the government’s ability to plan, preserve, nurture, or enforce. (Apparently the Superferry got the message that filing Environmental Impact Statements is for losers.) As many of our contributors point out, one surefire strategy for turning things around at least somewhat would be to demand that the government have the will, and expend the resources necessary, to enforce its own laws. For whatever reasons, it currently doesn’t.

III. Partnerships between government and “the private sector” are essential — either one without the other is a recipe for disaster.

We are the unfortunate heirs of 30 years of a national demonizing of government, and a knee-jerk faith in an unregulated private sector, that together have damaged all of us profoundly. And at present, Hawaii actually seems to be out of sync with at least some national trends.

The hardline combative approach to budgeting and taxation in the State’s executive branch over the past few years seems to assume that in addition to children, the homeless, the troubled, and the disabled, all public employees, nonprofit workers, artists, and educators are basically welfare recipients. Gratitude for any support is the only appropriate response; furthermore, as dependents, these groups have no real right to express an opinion about their conditions of employment, or about the overall direction of Hawaii, because their status as objects of charity makes them by definition self-interested. (It’s not going too far to say that some people will reject out of hand many of the essays in this book precisely because the people writing them have spent years studying their subject.)

This illusory polarizing of government and “the real world” of the private sector also makes possible some patent contradictions in general attitudes. Why for example is it a cardinal principle that you get what you pay for, unless you’re paying for infrastructure, education, social services, and public protections, where it’s assumed that more can always be done with less? Or to put it another way, how many businesses and independent contractors would accept the obligation to do 100 percent of the agreed upon work, or supply 100 percent of the products, for 40 percent of the necessary money, simply because times are hard for the purchaser?

We need much more frequent and productive discussions of what infrastructure and services are essential for a decent society, and then we must accept the need to pay directly and consistently for them, regardless of economic upheavals, major or minor. Hawaii has demonstrated repeatedly in the past that the people here value and are willing to support such services. Or as one of our contributors put it, “When I go to the all-candidates meetings, I’m going to ask ‘Which of you is going to raise my taxes?’ Because the person who says ‘I will’ is the one who will get my vote.”

Read the essays in this book, and you’ll have a better sense of what some other people believe is important about Hawaii.

Much of what is valuable here we owe to those who came first — who cultivated this place, who preserved it, who came to know it in all the ways that humans have found to love where they live, and who still have undeniable claims to it that must be recognized. And we also need to value our distinctiveness today. The entire world recognizes this, even if only as a tropical fantasy, but we all need to remember to recognize it as well.

To quote a bumper sticker, “This ain’t da mainland.” That’s good, and it’s also our greatest cause for hope. If nothing else, the writers in this collection demonstrate repeatedly that for all the impact of external economic and political forces, we can change course.