Category Archives: Politics

Top Ten Bad Assumptions: 8 –The enemy of your enemy is your friend.

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Alternate Assumption:  The enemy of your enemy may also be your enemy.

This was actually next on my bad assumptions list, even before Netanyahu gave his speech before Congress highlighting this point.  In Netanyahu’s speech he stated that even though ISIS is our enemy and Iran is fighting ISIS, that does not make Iran our friend.  Both ISIS and Iran want an Islamic Caliphate to rule the world.  Their fight is over who is going to rule over the caliphate.

The thought process behind this assumption is that we have a black and white world, that every issue has two sides.  In actuality, an issue may have many sides.  Just because we both oppose a solution, that doesn’t mean we agree on the same solution.  I see this a lot in the common poll question, “Do you think the country is on the right track?”  Very seldom does the majority of the country think we are on the right track.  Typically the party out of power uses this as evidence that the majority of the country supports them.  This is just silly.  If 60% of the country think that we are on the wrong track, that could mean that half of them think we are too liberal and half might think we are too conservative.

This assumption has its biggest implication in foreign policy.  It certainly did not start with Iran.  Many people in World War II thought that Stalin was our friend because he was fighting Hitler.  Both Hitler and Stalin wanted the world to be ruled by an iron-fisted dictatorship.  They just disagreed on who should be the dictator.  The United States just agreed on a new treaty with Iran, and now many are saying that we are really allies.  For example, Slate.com ran a column titled “Iran and the U.S. Are Allies Against ISIS but Aren’t Ready to Admit it Yet.”   This is at the same time that Iran’s religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is shouting “Death to America!”  Iran and the United States may have a common enemy, but they are certainly not our friend.

While this assumption is most obviously seen in foreign policy, it rears its head in many places.  For example, two of the American left’s most fervent issues are gay rights and women’s rights.  They were furious when a baker wouldn’t bake a wedding cake for a gay marriage.  Certainly any candidate who is not pro-choice has no chances of winning the Democratic nomination for any significant office.  At the same time the left wing has been fervent supporters of Muslims, even radical Muslim groups such as Hamas.   These same Muslims often brutally suppress women and they kill gays.  Am I the only one who sees something unusual in this?  Why does the left so fervently support Muslims?

I have tried to figure this out for a while.  This is my current theory.  The radical Muslims state that the United States is an evil imperialist country.  The far left believes that the United States is an evil imperialist country.  The enemy of my enemy is my friend.   Therefore the left supports their friends, the Muslims.  Note that I don’t believe the radical Muslims have the same false assumption as they would be more than happy to remove the head of any American, regardless of political affiliation.

Now I realize that I certainly don’t have the evidence to support my theory.  I am offering it as a possible explanation.  I could be totally wrong.  If you think I am wrong, then don’t just say so.  Offer me a better explanation for this gaping contradiction.  I’m waiting.

Top Ten Bad Assumptions: 7 – Judge a policy based on its benefits.

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Alternate Assumption:  Judge a policy based on its benefits and its costs.

This is probably the bad assumption that we see the most.  Policy A helps people.  Therefore Policy A must be good.  If anyone opposes Policy A, that must mean that they don’t want to help people.  This bad assumption usually involves government spending, but it doesn’t have to.  It also applies to both sides of the political spectrum.  A “Jobs bill” might hurt the environment or a “Clean Air” bill might cost jobs.

Generally, any policy has both costs and benefits.  The costs frequently involve spending money, but there can be other costs as well.  For example, raising the minimum wage might reduce the number of minimum wage jobs.  One can debate whether the benefit justifies the cost, but too frequently there is no debate as people only look at the benefit.

The debate on global warming provides a good illustration for this.  Recently Bill O’Reilly said something to the effect  that even if global warming claims are exaggerated, it can’t hurt removing pollutants from the air.  It certainly can hurt.  We each can drastically reduce our carbon footprint.  All we need to do is to stop driving and stop using electricity produced by coal-fired power plants.  Is it worth is?  If the threat is dire enough, yes it is.  If the threat is remote and speculative, then it probably isn’t.  We need to compare the benefits of reducing the carbon emissions to the cost of doing so.  Is it worth giving up driving?  Is it worth losing the millions of jobs we would surely lose if there was no more driving?  You decide.

Right now the national debt is approximately $17 trillion.  Of this, $7 trillion has been accumulated in the last six years under Obama.  This should alarm both conservatives and liberals.  Let’s say you are a devout  liberal and you believe that government has the obligation to help the needy.  There is a new proposal to spend $50 billion on anti-poverty programs.  The question you typically ask is does this program provide real help to people who need help.  Let’s assume the answer is yes.  As a result, you support this bill.

I suggest that you are asking the wrong question.  The question you should ask is does this program provide enough help to justify borrowing the money from China that one day our children and grandchildren will have to repay.  Moreover, since you believe that government should help the needy, does it provide enough help to the needy today to justify the fact that there won’t be any money available for government to help the needy in future generations?

We can’t just look at the benefits.  We need to look at the benefits and the costs.

Top Ten Bad Assumptions: 6 – Every problem has a good solution.

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Alternate Assumption:  Some problems have no good solution.  We need to find the least bad solution.

I have an acquaintance who shall remain nameless.  In a recent election one candidate agreed with 90% of his views the other candidate agreed with 10%.  He refused to vote for the 90% candidate because of their differences.  I told him that if there was an election between Lincoln and Hitler he would say that Lincoln suspended Habeus Corpus so he wouldn’t vote at all or he would vote for Hitler.

We all like to think that every problem has a solution.  We strive for that perfect solution.  Unfortunately some problems are not soluble.  We seek to eliminate poverty, but there has always been poverty and there always will be.  There may never be peace in the Middle East.  The irony is that too often we reject solutions that might make things better because they aren’t perfect.  To quote Voltaire, “Perfect is the enemy of better!”

The perfect solution assumption hinders both the left and the right.  On the left, environmentalists predict that global warming due to carbon emissions will devastate the climate.  Lets assume for the moment that this is correct.  Cheaper natural gas produced from fracking has caused many power plants to convert away from high carbon emitting coal to clean natural gas.  So far, fracking has shown itself to be the only practical method for substantially reducing carbon emissions.  Environmentalists, however, oppose fracking because of environmental concerns about contamination.  Let’s assume now that these concerns are also valid.

The environmentalists predictions of the devastation caused by global warming far exceeds their predictions of damage caused by fracking.  To environmentalists, fracking should be the least bad of two bad alternatives.  Environmentalists though strongly oppose fracking.  Perfect is the enemy of better.

On the right, conservatives oppose Obamacare and want it repealed.  They wanted Congress to defund Obamacare which would of course result in an Obama veto and shutdown of the government.  Historical evidence shows that this would be very unpopular and it would reduce the chance of electing a Republican in the next election who might actually repeal it.  Perfect is the enemy of better.

The current Iran situation is a vivid example of this problem.  If economic sanctions don’t deter Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and there is no indication that they will deter Iran, then the world may have to choose between two horrible choices:

  • We can do nothing and let Iran, who supports terrorists, and has vowed to to annihilate Israel develop a nuclear bomb.
  • We can use military force to attack Iran to try to forcibly stop them.   This would throw the world into turmoil and might not even  be successful.

Both of these choices are terrible.  Which is worse?  If we do nothing, we have made a choice.

The search for the perfect solution often sounds very noble.  In real life, it can have devastating consequences.

Top Ten Bad Assumptions: 5 – The way to peace is to be so nice that nobody will want to attack us.

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Alternate Assumption:  The way to peace is to be strong enough that nobody will dare to attack us.

The debate on whether it is better to wear iron or velvet gloves is not new.   Before World War II Winston Churchill argued that we needed to be strong and forceful to stop the Nazis.  Instead Neville Chamberlain, the prime minister of England at that time, appeased Hitler and declared that he had achieved “peace in our time”.  We all know what happened after that.  During the cold war the nuclear freeze movement argued that if we stop building nuclear weapons and eventually disarm, the Russians will stop being afraid of us and this will lead to peace.  In current times, we are fighting Islamic extremists.  The debate centers over whether we need to destroy the extremists or whether we need to stop provoking them.

It is easy to point to Neville Chamberlain and his policy of appeasement as proof of the need for peace through strength.  It isn’t that simple though.  The post-war Marshall plan achieved subsequent peace in western Europe through kindness.  In his book  “David vs. Goliath”, Malcolm Gladwell shows how the brutality of the British troops in Northern Ireland caused the country to explode.  I also think it is fair to state that over two hundred years ago if the British had been a lot nicer to the American colonists, there may never have been an American Revolution.

So it seems that sometimes “Peace through Strength” works best and sometimes “Peace through Kindness” works best.  How do we determine which to use then?  I believe that it depends on the mindset of who we are dealing with. The key words are “Live and Let Live”.

If you are dealing with “Live and Let Live” people then kindness is the best approach and you can negotiate for a “win/win” solution where both sides benefit.  These people don’t want to hurt you.  They just want to live their lives without you hurting them.

If, on the other hand, we are dealing with people who already want to kill you, who espouse a philosophy of “Live and Let Die”, then kindness  becomes appeasement.  These people do not believe in a “win/win” solution.  They only want “win/lose”.  In a win/win” negotiation, then a concession is seen as a first step to which the other side must also take a step towards you by making their own concession.  In a “win/lose” negotiation, any concession you make is seen as a sign of weakness and the other side hardens its demands, taking a step away from you.  Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak conceded on almost every issue to the Palestinians, giving them over 90% of their demands.  PLO leader Yasser Arafat responded by launching the infitada and its suicide bombers at Israel.

So when I say that “Peace through Kindness” is a bad assumption, I don’t mean that it is always wrong and without merit.  I believe it is a dangerous assumption when you are dealing with people who want to kill you.  When people have a “Live and Let Die” philosophy, you must be strong enough so they know they can’t kill you and live.  We avoided nuclear war throughout the cold war because the Russians knew if they killed us, we would kill them too.

Now we have a new challenge with enemies who have a philosophy of “Die and Let Die”.  These people can’t be deterred through kindness or strength.  They can only be destroyed.  Of course in the act of destroying them we risk turning other people who might currently “Live and Let Live” to “Live and Let Die”.

There is no simple, clean solution.  And that is the segue into the next bad assumption…

Top Ten Bad Assumptions: 4 – Government helps people. Business exploits people.

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Alternate Assumption:  People are helpful when they have an incentive to be helpful.

We hear this all the time.  Government is compassionate and caring.  Business is heartless and cruel.  This assumption was a cornerstone of the argument for nationalizing healthcare.  Health insurance companies have a reputation, deserved or not, for denying benefits.  I have seen countless stories in the newspaper about a very ill person whose insurance company denies a needed operation or medication.  If only government ran healthcare, it would be much more compassionate.

Before we even look at government, let’s look at a different type of insurance.  My city of St. Louis was hit by a major hailstorm a few years ago and my roof was damaged.  Within two days my insurance company had an adjuster at our house.  The adjuster was based out of Dallas.  After the hailstorm, the insurance company flew in adjusters from all over the country to quickly handle the huge influx of claims.  The insurance company could not have been nicer to work with and they quickly paid the claim.  I heard similar stories from friends and neighbors who had different insurance companies.

Should we assume from this that people who work for property insurance companies are nicer than people who work for health insurance companies, or is there another factor here?  Property insurance is an extremely competitive business.  There are many different companies.  Everybody chooses his or her own insurance.  The insurance company’s reputation for being easy to work with and prompt in paying claims is a key factor in the sale.  If a property insurance company gets a bad reputation, their sales plummet.  The property insurance companies have a very strong incentive to be fast and fair in paying claims.

Contrast this with health insurance.  Due to regulations, there are very few health insurance companies to choose from in a state.  Moreover, most people don’t choose their own health insurance.  Their employer chooses the health insurance.  You can’t change your health insurance without changing your job.  The employer wants a benefits package that on paper is at least comparable to health insurance offered by other employers.  If the benefits package appears inadequate, the user might lose values employees or might have to pay additional salary to compensate.  For a given benefits package, the employer is then looking for the insurer who can provide it for the cheapest cost.

Nowhere in this sales equation is there a factor for how promptly, fairly, and courteously the insurance company handles claims.  If a health insurance company is especially generous in handling claims, it may raise their cost basis which would make them less competitive and therefore hurt their business.  Property insurance companies have the incentive to be helpful and health insurance companies have the incentive to not be helpful.

The Veteran’s Administration is a current example of where government runs healthcare.  It is known for providing poor healthcare.  In a recent scandal, veterans died as they were on a months long waiting list for care.

My belief is that neither government nor business is inherently good or bad.  All organizations are composed of people, both good and bad.  Most of us are good when it comes with family and friends we care about.  When we deal with strangers, while there are a few Mother Theresa’s in the world, but most of us try to be polite. On occasion we are more than polite, but on an every day basis, we don’t go out of our way to help people if there is no advantage to us in helping them.  While we may wish that everybody was a whole lot nicer, this is the way that people are, and we are not going to change human nature.

So, for example, if we want to make health insurance more responsive, would it be better to make the health insurance industry more competitive and more like the property insurance industry, or would it be better to make it less competitive and more like the Veteran’s Administration?

If government was inherently more helpful, then everybody would have loved living in the Communist countries where government did everything.  The Berlin wall would have been built to keep the West Berliners from heading east.

Businesses have people.  Governments have people.  With people you get more of what you reward and less of what you punish.  This applies to helpfulness.  It applies to everything.

Top Ten Bad Assumptions: 3 – America should not favor Americans.

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Alternate Assumption:  America should favor American citizens.

I had been planning to discuss this assumption later in the process but this assumption so underpins Obama’s recent executive action on immigration and the entire immigration debate I have moved it up a bit.

First it is important to note that this is strictly a values assumption.  There are no facts to argue here.

The basic assumption is that we are citizens of the world.  Americans are not inherently better than other people in the world.  If our policies favor Americans over other people, we are implying that Americans are more worthy than anybody else.  The moral approach is to treat everybody equally.  Immigration restrictions are immoral because they state that existing Americans have more of a right to be in America than other people in the world.  Moreover, unless you are a native American, you are an immigrant or a descendant of immigrants so it is hypocritical for you to try to restrict immigration.

As Barack Obama said just a few days ago on November 24, 2014 in his immigration speech in Chicago:

If you look at the history of immigration in this country, each successive wave, there have been periods where the folks who were already here suddenly say, well, I don’t want those folks.  Even though the only people who have the right to say that are some Native Americans.

It is clear that the belief that America should not favor Americans is a core value behind President Obama’s immigration approach.    The purpose of this post is not to debate immigration.  I want to look at the core value itself.

This assumption has a further assumption below it.  It states that whenever someone favors one person over another, that person is stating that the more favored person is somehow superior to the less favored person.  I believe that this is a false assumption.  When a parent cares for his or her child, the parent is not saying that this child is more worthy than all other children.  The parent cares for the child because of an emotional attachment and because the parent has assumed a fiduciary duty to act in the interests of the child.

Now let’s move up from the individual to local levels of government.  At the governmental level, we no longer have the emotional attachment, but the fiduciary duty still holds.  A fire department, for example, has the fiduciary duty to protect the homes and businesses within the district from fire.  It does not have the same fiduciary duty to protect the homes in neighboring districts.  This doesn’t mean that if a neighboring district has a fire and there is not currently a fire in the district, that the local fire department shouldn’t assist the neighboring fire department.  If there are simultaneous fires in both districts, however, the local fire department needs to take care of its own residents first.

At the state level, the Missouri government has a duty to protect the citizens of Missouri.  The Illinois government has a duty to protect the citizens of Illinois.  In doing this, neither state is saying that the citizens of its state are better or more worthy people than citizens of the other state.

It is the same at the federal level.  The United States government has a duty to the citizens of the United States.  The Mexican government has a duty to the citizens of Mexico, and the Nigerian government has a duty to the citizens of Nigeria.  This is not racism or any other form of discrimination.  It is a government fulfilling the duty that the government was created for.

Therefore America should favor Americans.  This does not mean that America has the right to attack other countries or expect countries to favor Americans over its own citizens.  America has not only the right but the moral obligation to put the interests of its own citizens first while respecting the obligation of every other country to put its citizens first as well.  Greece should favor Greeks.  Mexico should favor Mexicans.  America should favor Americans.

Top Ten Bad Assumptions: 2 – The intended effect is the only effect.

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Alternate Assumption:  The impact of unintended effects is frequently greater than the impact of the intended effect.

Let’s say we run a store.  For simplicity’s sake, let’s say we have ten customers who each spend $1,000 per month for total sales of $10,000 per month.  We set a goal of increasing sales by 10%.  To do this, we raise prices by 10%.  We expect that we will now have $11,000 in sales each month.

After we increase our prices nine out of the ten customers decides to shop with us as always, but one customer balks at our price increase and chooses to shop at a different store.  Now nine customers spend $1,100 per month for total sales of $9,900/month.  Instead of increasing our sales, we have decreased them.

The unintended effect exceeded the intended effect.  Most people intuitively understand that you can’t just raise prices without losing customers.  Typically, however, the unintended effects aren’t immediately obvious.

New York City had a problem.  Rents were rising and elderly people could no longer afford to stay in their apartments. People were moved by the plight of elderly people being forced to leave their homes, and so they instituted rent control which limited how much landlords could increase rent on their tenants.  This solved the problem of high rent increases forcing out the elderly, but what were the unintended effects?  These included:

  • There was a major housing shortage in New York City causing rents for new residents to skyrocket.
  • As people age and their children move out, they need less room.  Typically people would move to a smaller apartment to save money.  After rent control, renting a new smaller apartment costed more than staying in the rent controlled apartment, so people stayed in apartments that were bigger than they needed.  The unavailability of the large apartments forced young families into higher priced, smaller apartments.
  • Landlords would often not perform proper maintenance on their apartments.  The normal incentive is to keep your existing tenants happy as it is more costly to find a new tenant than to keep collecting checks from the old tenant.  Under rent control, however, if the old tenant moved out the landlord could rent the apartment for much more to a new tenant so landlords were rewarded for performing shoddy maintenance,

Rent control had an intended effect that was good but it also had unintended effects that were bad.  With some thought, the negative affects were fairly predictable.  One just needs to look at what behaviors are being rewarded and what behaviors are being punished.  You will get more of what you reward and less of what you punish.  The people who pushed rent control didn’t do that, however.  They wanted to stop elderly people from being evicted.  If you opposed rent control, that meant you wanted elderly people to be evicted.

Right now there is a current push to substantially increase the minimum wage.  There are proposals before Congress to raise the federal minimum wage from $8.25 to $10.10.  Fast food workers have been protesting demanding a $15 minimum wage. The argument is that if people work full-time, they should be able to earn a “living wage”, enough to pay rent and food and other basic necessary expenses.  This certainly appears to be a reasonable argument.  If the minimum wage increases, it will certainly achieve the intended effect where people who work for the minimum wage will get paid more.

What, however, are the unintended effects of increasing minimum wage?  Employers now have an increased cost and they need to do something about it.  What are their choices?

  • They can absorb all of the costs and reduce profits.  Some employers can and would do this.  This is certainly what many who are pushing for the minimum wage increase are expecting.  In some cases the profits aren’t large enough to cover this cost and the employer would be forced out of business.  Also, if the profitability of a business decreases, it decreases the incentive for people to open new businesses and stops new jobs from being created.  We will never know how many businesses aren’t even started because they are no longer perceived to be profitable.
  • They can pass on the increased costs to consumers.  This will cause everybody’s prices to rise.  This is not a good thing.  Some consumers will reject the price increases and shop elsewhere causing a loss of sales, profits, and eventually jobs.
  • They can hire less people, reducing jobs.  There might be one less person behind the counter and you will wait a little longer for your fast food.
  • They can replace people with machines.  The burger flipping machine might seem to expensive at an $8.25 minimum wage but attractive at a $10.10 minimum wage.

As a result, raising the minimum wage would cause a drop in minimum wage jobs.  One can debate over how large that would be, but there would definitely be a drop.  Also, many people who make minimum wage are teenagers who live at home.  These teenagers do not need a living wage.  They want to help their families or earn extra pocket money.  Most importantly, the minimum wage job is the first rung on the ladder of a career.  The minimum wage job for most is where you get initial experience, prove yourself, and work your way to a higher paying job.  If the minimum wage job isn’t there, the teenager never gets to step on that first rung of the ladder and may never go any higher.

One could conceivably account for that by passing a higher minimum wage for adults than for teenagers.  In this case, you are now favoring the hiring of teenagers over adults, so you are hurting the adults who need the job to survive and helping teenagers gain extra pocket money.

In short, we have a trade off.  The intended effect is that minimum wage workers make more money.  The unintended effect is that some businesses go out of business, other businesses never open, inflation rises, unemployment rises, and some young people never get their career started.

I personally think that the unintended negative effect is greater than the intended positive effect,  This is debatable.  The big problem though is that there is often no debate.  This is because of Bad Assumption #2:  The intended effect is the only affect.  If you oppose the minimum wage increase, you don’t want people to earn a living wage.   You must be mean.  (See Bad Assumption #1.)

While I focused here on my examples of rent control and the minimum wage, this bad assumption is pernicious and can be seen in an endless number of policies that on the surface do good but below the surface do a lot of harm.  It is easy to make this awful assumption.  We need to recognize it and fight against it.

Top Ten Bad Assumptions: 1 – If we disagree, you are either mean or stupid.

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Alternate Assumption:  If we disagree, we may have differing assumptions.

This is the first in a top ten list on bad assumptions.  I am interested in why people disagree.  In particular, I am interested why people who I know are intelligent, caring people often strongly disagree with me when it comes to politics.  If I know them to be intelligent and caring, does that mean I am stupid or uncaring?

I am a computer programmer.  I know that any process has three components:  input, process, and output.  If we disagree, we must differ in one or more of these.

The output is our goal, our desired outcome.   We may have differing goals.  If my goals are noble and pure then you must be mean, racist, selfish, unpatriotic or have some other horrible motivation.

The process is our logic.  If I think you might not be a horrible person, then the alternative is that your logic is flawed.  You are stupid.  You are incapable of thinking rationally.  If you weren’t stupid, clearly you would agree with me.

The input is the facts.  Maybe you aren’t mean or stupid.  Maybe you just don’t know the facts.  We disagree because you don’t know the facts.  I present the facts to you and we still disagree.  This means that you are either mean or stupid after all.

I see this thought process all the time.  It seems so obvious, so logical, so true.  There is one missing piece.  The missing piece is assumptions.  Input is more than just facts.  Input is facts and assumptions.  The assumptions are what we believe to be self-evidently true.  For example, one assumption can be that the United States is a great country.  An alternate assumption is that the United States is a terrible country.  There are countless facts that can be used to support or attack the United States.  We don’t go through these facts every time we make a decision though.  We start with are underlying assumption as an input and we go from there.

There are some assumptions that can’t be supported or attacked by facts.  For example, the key assumption in the abortion debate is whether the fetus is a human life.  If you believe that the fetus is a human life, then abortion is simply murder and there is nothing else to talk about.  If you support abortion rights, you support murder.  Alternatively, if you believe that the fetus is not a human life, then abortion is simply a matter of a woman’s right to control her own body and there is nothing else to talk about.  If you don’t support abortion rights, you are either a nut or you hate women.  In actuality, science can not prove or disprove whether a fetus is a human life.  It is a value judgment.

I think that assumptions are very important, and nobody ever talks about them.  If we don’t share the same assumptions, we can’t converse.   If a person’s assumption is that 2+2=5, that person can prove to you with brilliant logic that 4+4=10.  If you don’t share this assumption, however, their logic from that point is meaningless.  As we say in the computer world:  garbage in, garbage out.

The only point where we can hold a meaningful conversation is at the point where we hold common assumptions and our opinions at this point differ.  For example, two priests can have a meaningful conversation about moral values using the New Testament as a starting point and citing scripture to prove their points.  A priest cannot have this same conversation with an Atheist who does not share this same assumption that the New Testament is the authoritative source for moral decisions.

I think that everybody has some bad assumptions that can and should be re-examined.  I am sure that I have bad assumptions.  True discourse comes from reaching that level where we first disagree and then examining our beliefs from there.  This was Socrates’ contribution to the world.  Socrates would start where he and his opponent first agreed and get this opponent to say yes.  He would then build on that with a series of questions to which his opponent had to continue to say yes.  By the end, his opponent had agreed himself into a position that was totally opposed to his original position.

If we say, however, that our opponents are mean or stupid, then we don’t have to listen to their arguments.  Why should we listen to the arguments of stupid and mean people?  Yes there are mean people and the world and there are stupid people in the world.  Rather than initially assuming that our opponents are mean or stupid, I think it important that we assume that they are intelligent people and that we all want the same things.  Most of us all want peace and prosperity and a bright future for our children.  We all would prefer a world where everyone can be happy than a world where everybody is miserable.  Yes there are mean people in the world and there are stupid people in the world.  After we fairly evaluate their arguments, we might conclude they are mean or stupid, but this should not be the starting point.

This is why the first bad assumption in my top ten list of bad assumptions is the belief that if we disagree, you must be mean or stupid.  If we make this assumption, we will never be able to learn from anybody else.  We will never be able to correct our own bad assumptions.

In this series I will be listing what I believe to be bad assumptions along with what I believe to be more valid assumptions, and I will be arguing for my assumptions.  I will state here that my assumptions might be wrong as well.  If anybody reading this finds a flaw in my assumptions, please feel free to point them out.  Unlikely as it may seem, maybe I am the one with the bad assumptions.

Let’s find out.

Helping People Who Cannot Help Themselves: What is Government’s Role?

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In the previous segment, I talked about the role of government.  Helping people who cannot help themselves, is typically considered a key role of government.  First, let me state that I think helping people who truly need help is generally a good thing.  Most people are good people and we want to help the needy.  We all know people, good people, who depend on government assistance.  Without this assistance, they might not have the basic necessities of life.  On the surface, it seems that only a cruel, selfish person would question if government should be providing this assistance.

We all see the positive benefits of government aid.  What, however, are the negative effects?

The key phrase to keep in mind in analyzing this, or basically any, issue is “You Get What You Reward”.  (See my previous post https://ralphkoppel.com/2014/03/05/you-get-what-you-reward/).  Whenever we say we will help people who are helpless, we are rewarding helplessness.  As a consequence, we get more helplessness.  For purposes of discussion, lets not talk about people who may or may not be able to help themselves such as an unemployed worker who might or might not be able to get a job.  Let’s talk about a very young child whose parents c,annot or will not provide basic necessities such as food and shelter.

If the government takes care of the child of a neglectful parent, the problem isn’t that we are rewarding the child.  The problem is that we are rewarding the neglectful parent.  For example, we have two single mothers with very limited money.  Mother A uses her money for food and clothing for Child A.  Mother B uses her money to party and have fun.  Without intervention, Child B will starve.  If the government takes over and feeds Child B, then both Child A and Child B are fed.  Mother A though has no fun and Mother B has fun.  We are rewarding Mother B’s neglectful behavior.

When we look at an entire population, people don’t easily divide into two groups.  Rather, we have a spectrum.  In this case, at one end of the spectrum are mothers who will take care of their child on their own, no matter what, and would not accept any aid.  At the other end are mothers who won’t care for their child, no matter what, and will party and have fun without regard to the child.  Most mothers fall somewhere in between.  The more aid government provides, the more likely the mother is to have fun and leave the care of the child to the government.

The same analysis can be used with any kind of government aid.  Whenever we provide more aid, due to the inherent rewards, we get more people who need the aid.  In short, society has in essence three options when it comes to people who can’t help themselves.

  • Society can provide no aid and let the truly helpless people starve.
  • Government can provide aid to helpless people and as a result, we will get more helpless people.
  • Charities, friends, and family can provide aid to helpless people.  This might seem to be the best solution, but what then if private individuals can’t provide enough aid?

In short, there isn’t a good option here.  So is it the proper role of government to help people who can’t help themselves?  I’m still torn on this one.  I know that government aid in the long run often does more harm than good.  On the other side, I am sickened when truly helpless people can’t get the basic necessities.  There really isn’t a good answer.  In the real world, however, none of the above isn’t one of the options we have to choose from.

I would say that whenever possible we should look to friends, families, and charities to provide aid.  This should be the first choice.  As a last step, I do think government does need to have a role in helping people who can’t help themselves.  Any government policies need to be fully aware of the negative consequences of government aid and should be designed to at least attempt to mitigate these consequences.

Is this a good approach?  No, it isn’t.  I do think though it is the least bad of all of the bad approaches available.

The Role of Government

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In my previous posts, I came to this conclusion:

We need government because it is in everybody’s best interest to have an institution that handles the situations where having everybody acting in their own best interest doesn’t work.

With this in mind I suggest that four areas are definitely in the role of government:

  • Public Safety – On the national level, this is national defense.  On the local level, this applies to police and fire departments.  On a broader level this would include building inspections and sanitation inspections.  It would be totally impractical before stepping into any building for each person to make an individual inspection to verify that it is safe.  We rely on government for this function to protect us all.
  • Infrastructure – We can’t individually build each road we travel on.  We rely on government to provide the core infrastructure that we all share.  This includes roads, public transportation, and utilities.  Government does not need to provide these services directly.  It can contract them out to private companies.  We all benefit from a good infrastructure, even from the parts we don’t use directly.  I may not ride a certain subway line, but I benefit when, for example, the person who cooks my meals in a restaurant can get to the restaurant because of the subway.
  • Public Investment and Amenities -I group these together as it is often difficult to separate them out.  A public park is an amenity but it also is an investment as it makes the community more attractive to others who may move to or invest in the community.  The chief form of public investment is education.  I benefit not just from the education of my own children but in the education of all children.  To qualify as a public amenity/investment is should be available to most people and it should be recognized as desirable through a majority vote.
  • Enabling a free market – Society benefits whenever there is a voluntary transaction, where both parties believe they will be better off from the transaction. Government does have a role in enabling this free market.  The government needs to provide a adjudication system to settle disputes.  The government can regulate that the transaction must be framed in a matter where both sides understand it and that there is no deception.  The truth in lending law is an example of how government can help make the transaction clearer.   The government can also protect us from involuntary transactions.   When a factory pollutes, the factory gets the reward and the neighborhood bears the cost.  This “externality” is an involuntary transaction.

The level of government for each of these services should be the level that affects most people using the service.  It is appropriate for the federal government to fund the interstate highway system.  If is not appropriate for the federal government to fund local roads.

There is one other role of government I have not yet discussed:  helping people who cannot help themselves.  That will be the topic of my next blog entry