From Moral Obligation to Policy - An Observation
Before I get down to 'business', I first want to thank Matt Herrema for setting up and propping this blog, and Russ Graves for hosting it. The fact that both of these guys are in my lifegroup made things really easy, but even so, I'm gonna break down and cry if I think anymore about how grateful I am. (And would I even joke about that?)
Also, for those of you that missed my ... ummm ... stirring rendition of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" after The Rock this evening in Friley, cassette tapes are available for a nominal fee. If demand reaches a certain level, I will be forced to find time from my busy schedule to go on tour.
Anyway, fellow PlanetRockISU blogger Kathy Hanson wrote this entry earlier today about alternative energy. I enjoyed the linked article, but there was a subconscious nag. It got me thinking about the propensity of Americans to fail to distinguish very clearly between moral obligation to solve and the solvency and net benefit of policy initiatives.
Americans (and probably the whole of Western society) seems to be well adjusted to the notion that problem X exists, and the implications are disastrous. This stems from the prosperous, and thus reactionary, nature of the West. Even if it is pretty evident that X is not a problem, or at least a very big one, we are reticent to the notion that said situation could always get better. My favorite example of this is health care, where any system that fails to grant immortality to 100% of patients is considered mankind's doom. (And who wants to be worse than Canadians at something, really?) Another example is education, probably an issue cared about by more Americans than any other. (No, 'moral values' is not an issue, or even a meaningful sequence of words, but that's a discussion for later.)
This inevitably leads to cries of "something must be done!" Granted, we need to act to make society 'all it can be', but here reasoned thought tends to quit. Rarely do we proclaim what exactly should be done, or in doing so, weight all impacts and costs of a policy. I like the thought of every American having health insurance as much as the next guy, but we fail to work out initial monetary costs, logistical concerns, and standards to implement so it doesn't take 3 months to get a dentist's appointment, or so I don't pay for somebody extraneous cosmetic surgeon. Or if somebody does work them out, we tend to not care, or compute what that number means to individuals.
Or contemplate what I consider the worst implication of a typical modern Government's "throw money at the problem" solution: the moral implications of government spending. That is, the fact that a person who may not wish to fund Plan Z has effectively been forced to do so, unless they emigrate. It's fairly obvious how this is counter to a representative government like ours.
The problem is, as basic as this all sounds, people routinely find a 'special interest', and advocate it above the welfare of a group. Consider funding for nuclear power, which probably exists solely due to the intervention of the government, when it should have long ago become self-sustaining, yet has not. Or Ethanol, where nothing is really conclusive, but a certain presidential candidate's energy policy involved subsidizing it to where a ridiculous portion of our nation's corn production would become gasoline. The idea of helping farmers and trying alternative fuels is great, but the money involved, and the sheer absurdity were often unmentioned.
That is the interesting thing about a market system. With some exceptions, if something was meant to be, chances are it is forthcoming. So don't pass that waste of paper bill to help it out, unless you can prove that everybody's gonna get something out of it, or your problem is an instance of market failure that ONLY the government can and is willing to fix.
Comments
I just wanted to give a shout out to ya, Ben. Congrats on the blog.
Posted by: Micah | January 16, 2005 04:00 PM
girls just want to have fun was by and large the BEST performance of friday night, followed closely by pat's like a virgin, and matt's dedication of wind beneath my wings to mr. blair.
great blog, still wondering what you're doing in engineering, but eh, i suppose they need some abstract thinkers over there..
Posted by: Autumn | January 18, 2005 10:06 AM