mind over blather

I am an equal opportunity offender – as happy to take aim at the deficiencies of the left as I am at the excesses of the right – and vice versa.  Each often warrants a full compliment of cynicism and an extra helping of disdain.  Fortunately, both ends of the political spectrum are target rich environments.  Here’s what I mean . . .

Progressives are often quick to recognize important inconsistencies and inequities in the world.  They are, more often than not, the driving force behind measures aimed at moral issues like discrimination and inequality, public policy issues like health care and climate heating, and personal economic issues like minimum wage and retirement.  But they are also apt to identify an issue and then completely misidentify its cause – which, more often than not, results in solutions that camouflage the underlying problems – and never fully resolves them.

Traditionalists (I hesitate identifying them as conservatives because most of them are simply articulating variations on a theme premised on a large, intrusive, and costly bureaucracy – funded by deficits, and debt, and inflation) are the canaries in the national security coal mine and masters of the status quo.  They’ve never met a conspiracy that isn’t plausible (especially if it involves a threat that can be, even tentatively, linked to a foreign source), never met a criminal not deserving of life (with the possibility of execution for good behavior), and never read a passage in the bible that isn’t literally true.  Their world does not allow for uncertainty or doubt because an invisible, all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful cosmic wizard (with whom they have an intimate personal relationship and who intercedes in the minutiae of their daily lives) is on their side.  They are always right . . . regardless of the facts.

A couple of applied examples of these observations:

Climate Change.  Those who (rightly) see climate heating as the most significant existential threat facing the world in the history of the human species are baffled that anyone has a different opinion.  This generally prompts a lot of mea culpa naval gazing aimed at identifying the cause of this otherwise inexplicable disconnect, and its political implications and consequences.

It’s the media’s fault – they are pandering to their fossil industry advertisers and/or inflating the (false) validity of deniers and delayers by giving them equal ink and air time.  It’s human nature – we are genetically and/or culturally programmed to avoid the unpleasant implications of the future and, instead, see only a fantasized destination filled with endless pleasures.  Or my favorite, it’s the result of an aversion to science – a fundamental ignorance that belies an inability to grasp basic principles of chemistry and physics.

It is hard to make heads or tails out of a world constructed of such infinite complexity.  Where to start?  Nationalize the media and force the public to accept a daily diet of science facts?  Go on a crash course to reprogram the human race culturally and genetically?  Fix education?  Ban religion and other iterations of mystical fantasy?  May as well just cut the soles off your shoes, climb a tree, and learn to play the flute!

Like most other issues, this is just not that hard.  We’ve known for decades that pumping bad stuff into the air changes atmospheric chemistry and results in a variety of negative outcomes.  Many of these effects are well-documented – like acid rain, increases in asthma, and increases in cancer and other diseases.  But, regardless of political orientation, most policy wonks come to the most inane conclusions.  Carbon sequestration for “clean coal”, for example.  If ever there was a Rube Goldberg solution, this one has to take first prize.

Let’s apply Occam’s Law of Parsimony: stop using fossil fuels.  Phase them out over, say, ten years.  Make them illegal – all of them.  Force the economy to switch to alternative energy.  It will – simply because it won’t have a choice.  If you insist on adding a government catalyst, increase the patent protection period on new energy technologies to 100 years – and watch the mutants who brought us hedge funds and derivatives stampede down Wall Street to place their bets in the new Patent Futures market.

In other words, don’t try to change human nature – take advantage of it.  Harness the power of shameless greed to the benefit of the planet’s future.  Give the robber barons a new and better opportunity to loot and pillage.  They’ll abandon their carbon addictions in a New York minute for a shot at the new high.  It’s in their nature.  They won’t be able to resist.

Education.  If public education was a product like an automobile or a microwave oven, we’d have to increase the size of the Court system by an exponential factor just to handle the consumer fraud and liability claims.

The progressive response to a public education system that is beyond redemption is, generally, twofold.  First, they send their kids to private schools.  Second, they pump more money into a system that is inherently irrational and dysfunctional.  It’s the traditional way the government works – if a program doesn’t work, spend more money on it.

The traditionalist response is not much different.  They have a personal interest in maintaining the status quo because (a) they send their kids to private schools and don’t want them to have to compete (or associate) with the progeny of common folks (which would inevitably occur if the entire education market was privatized and school admissions were based on academic merit), or (b) they are the plumber or beautician sitting on the local school board and are addicted to the sense of power and self-esteem that comes with being an indispensable watchdog of the community’s interest.

The recent flap over Obama’s “stay in school” pep talk is illustrative. Some of  the stupendously vapid plumbers and beauticians who sit on local school boards from coast-to-coast – egged on by the so-called conservatives on the right wing lunatic fringe of the media – rallied to protect America’s youth from the potential despair that would inevitably result from listening to the words of a freed slave who managed to make something of himself.

This is all bulltinky.  It makes no more sense for the gummint to own education as it does for the gummint to own General Motors (ooops!).  There’s a difference between providing access to education and providing the education itself.  The first is what the government should do – provide equal access to affordable education.  The second is what is at the heart of the massive ignorance about basic science (and history, and math, and geography . . .) in this country.

Why?  Also very simple.  Any time the government creates a program it also invests one or more constituencies with one or more special interests.  The constituencies that dominate the content and direction of education in the US are not the consumers of educational services – rather, the government serves the institutional interests of teachers and schools and publishers and the rest.  Several decades ago, Milton Friedman argued eloquently for the replacement of the current public school miasma with a voucher-funded, student-centric, totally privatized system.  It’s long overdue.

The take away: government never solves problems – it only manages them.  If you want to imbue a problem with immortality, aim a government program at it.  If you want to solve a problem, turn it into a opportunity in which quality results become the distinguishing factors in the eyes of the consumer – and in which the consumer holds the important cards.