The government can't fix society for the same reason that you can't remove your own appendix.
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Epigram of the day
15 Nov 2007 02:07 am
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Not necessarily, brooksfoe; you just have to think of the government as the scalpel rather than the patient.
But it's not true.:-(
I'm not even sure it is a useful reminder of a relevant truth, like the line that medicine is harder than because mechanics don't need to work on the engine while it's running.
Organizations do sometimes fix themselves in various ways. It happens often enough that I think people would be nonplussed if you tried to say something like "the reason an organization can't fix/reform/redefine itself is the same reason you can't remove your own appendix." So if for governments, someone isn't nonplussed but nods at this supposed principle and thinks it's clever, it looks to me like a partisan attitude toward controversies around government policy overriding logic circuits.
Interesting point, but I think this might be more apt:
"Government cannot fix society for the same reason that your appendix cannot remove itself."
Hey, give me a bowie knife, sewing kit, mirror, and a bottle of whiskey and I'll give it a whack...
The government can't fix society for the same reason that you can't remove your own appendix.
What a pointless analogy. Society doesn't need to be "fixed" it needs a rule set for citizens and businesses that balances the interests of both. What's a football game without rules and referees?
Bush is in the process of rigging the game for one side at the expense of the other, presumably until the money runs out.
William and Tim, you both seem to have missed the point.
Government and society are not the same thing. We're not talking about "government fixing itself" or "society fixing itself", we're talking about government fixing society.
As brooksfoe puts it, they are inextricably fused, though I'm not sure that's necessarily a horrible anti-libertarian thing. A libertarian response might go something like "yes, I realize that I need this parasite/symbiote hanging off my back in order to live, but I'd rather it be an inch long and silent, rather than a sci-fi movie monster as big as I am, which attacks my dog and scares my family."
Or, you know, something like that. That crazy metaphor is to say that libertarians don't claim that society needs no government - that would be anarchists. Libertarians just want to restrict government to its minimum necessary scope.
Anyway, we're probably wandering too far into that dangerous territory of taking a metaphor too literally and analyzing it to death, but I believe an apt example would be speeding or marijuana:
A vast percentage of society engages in behavior that the government tries to prohibit. This has resulted in a lot of fines and jail time, but hasn't actually "fixed society" as desired. Everyone still speeds, and a ton of people still smoke pot. The only way that government will have the kind of support it would really take to "fix" these problems is if the majority of the people really wanted them fixed. And if that was actually the case, then they would already be fixed, 'cause people wouldn't be doing those things.
Government can't fix society... society must fix itself. Government is part of society and so will be part of the fix. But the government is not an outside, independent agent that can come in and fix society.
Yeah, Tim, you're right... once Bush is out of office, government can go back to being altruistic and self-sacrificing and all of our senators will stop selling their votes and trading earmarks for campaign donations and they'll go back to listening to the little guy and ignoring the big money interests. The only reason the Democratic Congress hasn't been able to complete ethics reform is because of the nefarious influence of Bush and his mind control rays!
EI
You might want to google "removed his own appendix". It's been done quite often.
Njorl,
I'm sure it has been done (people get up to all sorts of craziness), but it's pretty close to the point where the cure is worse than the disease.
Maybe a substitute epigram:
"The government shouldn't try to fix society for the same reason you shouldn't give yourself plastic surgery."
I prefer "The government can't fix society because society is full of douchebags."
Re: speeding. I think speeding laws are one of the most illuminating phenomena of governmental rot out there. I'm sure most people agree that a great majority of speeding laws per se are reasonable: i.e. most roads, perhaps all roads other than limited access highways, SHOULD have speed limits. People just disagree what those limits ought to be. You'd think that the democratic process would set the limit at the level comfortable for most people, which is probably somewhere above the median speed people choose to drive with (automotive journalists like to refer to the 85th-percentile formula which sounds reasonable on its face). But in reality the primary factor behind the actual limit is rent seeking by local authorities who want more traffic fines. And it handily overrides whatever "democratic" considerations one might come up with. Consequently, I observe the 85-th percentile being somewhere 10-15 mph above the posted limits on the major streets of my city [space for Mike Valentine's advertisement is reserved here].
Say what??
The government can't fix society because society is the body??
Then who can fix society? Obviously not another government (not very libertarian, but very Bushie). The cells themselves? (kind of like individuals in this epigram).
This epigram seems only to instruct letting social problems run their course.
The reasons libertarianism isn't popular is pretty obvious. We tried to let Great Depression / Oil Trusts / WWII / Jim Crow / Slavery run their course, but they just got worse. Government intervention was needed, and worked.
tomtom,
Sigh...
The government most definitely did not let the Great Depression run it's course. From the very beginning, the government interfered mightily to prevent prices from adjusting to the new reality of the bust caused by imprudent investments. It is because the government interfered so much that the Depression lasted so long.
And, as far as I can tell, it is government that started the world wars, not the private sector.
In addition, Jim Crow and slavery were government protected/established institutions. I agree that it is correct to acknowledge the fact that the federal government (at the behest of the people) finally started to really enforce the civil rights of African Americans, but lets not minimize the federal government's prior involvement in both.
Freddie: try "Government cannot fix society because the main thing they have in common is they are full of douchebags." See also Hanlon's Razor.
Re: Speeding: IIRC, in California, surface street speed limits are actually SUPPOSED to be set by such a formula. Except for special zones (school areas, etc.) speed measurements are to be made, then the limit set at some % above the median. (I'm too lazy to look up the details.)
Challenges to speeding violations have been brought claiming that local governments have set limits too low (below the formula) with the implicit accusation that it's either for revenue, or to keep a powerful resident happy.
It is because the government interfered so much that the Depression lasted so long.
I know that this has long been a pleasant fantasy for the laissez faire crowd, but I'm afraid it just isn't true. It's exactly the kind of revisionism that plays well in conservative circles but doesn't have much traction when confronted with actual history. The point has been articulated much more intelligently than I could muster, and those arguments are available all over the web.
Freddie: try "Government cannot fix society because the main thing they have in common is they are full of douchebags." See also Hanlon's Razor.
That works too, I suppose. I do believe that you get the democracy that you deserve, and I think we are.
Regardless of individual feelings re society and government, this quote is just way too confusing to be considered pithy.
The analogy seems to be: Body cannot fix/remove organ that is contained within itself. Government cannont fix/remove society that is contained within itself?
I doubt Megan (or anybody else) is trying to say that society is an organ/entity within the government. In any case, this is not something that should be printed on t-shirts.
Wow, the grass in Vietnam must be pretty potent.
Let me rephrase: There is considerable dispute about whether the New Deal and other Depression era programs deepened or ameliorated the problems of the Depression. The evidence I've seen certainly suggest the latter. I have a very hard time seeing a program like the WPA as anything but a net positive.
Freddie,
I am laughing my ass off at you. Did you ever hear of Franklin Roosevelt? Herbert Hoover? Smoot-Hawley? The New Deal? The NRA? Price floors, etc.?
The real myth is that the New Deal ended the Great Depression. That is demonstrably false since the Depression continued for a decade after it's inception, and only really ended after most of the price controls and other interventions were discontinued at the end of WWII.
However, I realize this is an uncomfortable thing for government interventionists to acknowledge, which is why you see so many people try to rewrite history.
The government....needs anasthesia? The government is....not double jointed? The government....has its own health care? The government lacks a medical degree? The government can find another government who can do the job much more easily?
I don't get it.
Yancey,
first of all, you need to get a new definition of the meaning "demonstrably false." Also a new definition of cause and effect.
By 1937, real gross national product, IIP, and the money supply had been restored to 1929 figures. Unemployment was cut in half (having improved every year from 1933 until 1937), although still substantially above 1929 numbers - which is to be expected given the change in economy to a social welfare state.
As Freddie said, there are serious enough people who disagree with the majority-held (even amongst economists) view that the New Deal helped solve the great depression. But to call that position "demonstrably false" is absurd.
Freddie - The WPA certainly helped some people, but I suspect its net effect on the economy, and thus on people in general was not nearly so positive as you think it was. Paying people do do work that is minimally productive, isn't exactly a good idea when the country needs the goods and services that they could have otherwise produced. But fine, I'll follow your lead here, and we'll assume for the moment that the WPA was beneficial. The WPA was far from the only program put in place by the government.
Higher tariffs, higher taxes, price controls and prosecutions for discounting, restrictions on how and when things are sold, deliberate destruction of farm animals and crops, encouraging an increase in strikes and work stoppages in an already disrupted economy...
How are these things beneficial? Answer they are not.
here's another epigram, usually attributed to H.L. Mencken, which is possibly a better fit:
Democracy is based on the idea that the people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
You're welcome.
The government can't fix society for the same reason your appendix can't stop you from acting like an idiot.
Okay, maybe it can over the short term, by threatening to rupture and landing you in the hospital under heavy sedation. But, under ordinary conditions, a government doesn't have the wherewithal to take over the whole society and control all the variables. And we don't want it to.
Megan, unless you're actually intending a meaning along the lines of Brooksfoe's comment, this is easily one of the most asinine "epigrams" ever coined.
Also, Justin is essentially right, but it must be pointed out that the US economy collapsed for a second time in 1937 after four years of recovery. It's therefore possible for anyone with any agenda whatsoever to cherry-pick data from that era to "prove" whatever theory they're promoting. It's far more fun to force libertarians to discuss the post-war era, when the economy performed extraordinarily well with most of the New Deal reforms still in place, strong unions, and a highly progressive income tax.
It's generally a bad idea to draw narrow ideological conclusions from the behavior of the US economy during an era of massive worldwide political and economic instability. But the "Smoot-Hawley caused the Great Depression" canard is apparently one of the central axioms of libertarianism, and therefore there's nothing to be gained from arguing the point except a headache.
brooksfoe wrote: And society can't do without government for the same reason that your appendix can't do without you?
Works for me.
The collection of elements that form a society cannot work cooperatively unless they have an authority-of-last-resort to coordinate what happens when those elements have determined to work at cross-purposes. Which is why there will never be a successful anarcho-capitalist socity on any significant scale.
The government can easily fix social security.
Just because they will not fix it the way you want it to be fixed does not mean that they can not fix it.
Yancey -- would you please tell me what price controls were in place from 1936 to 1941 that prevented the depression from ending.
I did not know of any.
Government does fix society. I'd say the greatest social ill the US has faced was slavery. The government fixed it. I'd say the epigram was right in comparing it to a surgeon cutting out their own appendix, but as I stated before, that has been done.
Okay:
Why in general, you can't operate on yourself:
You can't fully see what you are doing, therefore, you may cut the wrong thing.
If you don't use anesthesia, you cause yourself pain, perhaps causing yourself to twitch and cut the wrong thing, or not do the job right even if you do get to the right thing, or you may just give up entirely, and leave a open wound.
If you use a topical anesthetic, then, lacking feeling in the affected area, and not being able to see well, you may cut something vital because it was not able to signal back.
If you use a general anesthetic--removing yourself from all feeling from the body--you are no longer a surgeon, because you are unconscious. (To spell it out--a democratic government removed from all feeling of the body politic is no longer a democratic government.)
So, yes, you can remove your own appendix. And if you did so, the word to describe you would be that of the lawyer who was his own client.
No, change in society must come from the people who make up that society, via the "hearts and minds" approach, one person at a time. Goverment will then reflect that society, not the other way around.
Finally, though an economy is an important part of society, it is not society.
Timjbd asks:
"What's a football game without rules and referees?"
I assume you meant this as a rhetorical question...trouble is, I'm going to answer it anyways.
If by football you mean "soccer," the answer to your question is "American football." In other words, the more you eliminate rules, the more innovation you allow, and the more you can improve the product. People can still choose to play by the eliminated rules (hence the reason soccer is still insanely popular all over the world), but they can also choose to play by the reduced set of rules (hence the reason American football and rugby are increasing in global popularity).
If you don't believe me, then study the history of the evolution of Rugby, American, and Aussie Rules football- it's rarely been about adding rules, but far more often about taking them away (until this ridiculous obsession with protecting the quarterbacks and eliminating end zone celebrations, which many think has made the game less enjoyable). As for the need for referees...libertarianism has no problem with having lots of referees; in actuality we have a bigger problem with limiting the number of people who can be referees in the first place.
If you don't believe me, then study the history of the evolution of Rugby, American, and Aussie Rules football- it's rarely been about adding rules, but far more often about taking them away
OK... there are an insane amount of rules in American football. The official rulebook is over 200 pages.
Only Republican fake "liberatarian" jackasses think that the point or government is "to fix society"
Only Republican fake "liberatarian" jackasses think that the point or government is "to fix society"
Posted by goethean | November 15, 2007 3:15 PM
This was a wee bit high on the rude-o-meter, but you're right, the whole fix society thing is a rightist conceit. Liberals are interesting in helping individuals. You help individuals and then society benefits as a whole.
Actually, I think a doc in a South Pole station removed his own appendix.
Liberals are interesting in helping individuals. You help individuals and then society benefits as a whole.
I must meet these liberals sometime. They sound like a decent sort of folk, the kind I would get along with. Unfortunately, most of the self-identifying liberals I've met so far were in favor of large, statist empires.
Of course, a trained doctor can remove her own appendix.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F03E0D9123CE533A25754C1A9649C946095D6CF
Most people can't remove their own appendix for the same reason libertarians can't make a coherent argument -- Because they're dumber than rocks and they're too dumb to know it.
Freddie:
You miss the point. Most of the rules in "the book" are minor, ticky tack things, or are exceptions to other rules, etc, etc. But those aren't the things I'm talking about. Soccer has fewer rules, for certain, but that's because the rules it does have are much more restrictive and sweeping to begin with.
I'm talking about the big stuff, the stuff that revolutionized the game, like:
Eliminating the prohibition on touching the ball with the hands
Easing the restriction that permitted scoring only by kicking the ball into the net and replacing it with a system that allowed scoring by crossing the goalline with the ball in possession or by kicking the ball over, rather than under, the goal posts.
Eliminating the rugby prohibition on the forward pass
Permitting blockers to use their hands.
...And so on.
The trend towards adding prohibitions in American football is a relatively recent phenomenon, which, as I pointed out, has made the game less entertaining to many people.
Anyways, the official NFL Rulebook isn't available online, but I was able to look quickly at the 2005 NCAA rulebook, which is about 225 pages. Thing is, only about half of it is the actual rules (the rest is mostly just interpretations of the existing rules- essentially football's "common law"). A good number of pages of rules are dedicated to essentially meaningless stuff (e.g., explaining how the yardage markers must be built, width of lines). I'd say it's a safe bet that they could eliminate those rules without any effect on the game whatsoever.
Another 20 pages are dedicated to giving definitions to words and phrases in the rest of the book. So that brings it down to about 75 pages or so- most of which are in a massive font.
Of the remaining 70 pages, a number are just clarifications of the rules. A lot of the other rules are intuitive and really don't need to be written down at all.
Spencer,
While it is true that the court shot down a lot of Roosevelt's more direct price control programs like the AAA and the NRA, this did not end subsidies to provide price floors for many agricultural and industrial goods, nor did the government end the make work programs that placed price floors under labor, and indirectly placed price floors under the goods and services these make work programs consumed. And, in any case, the direct price controls returned with the start of the war.
Justin,
The course of the Depression is exactly what one would expect to see given the New Deal. The initial crash is elongated and deepened by poor government policies of the Hoover Adminstration leading to the output nadir of 1932. The Roosevelt Administration begins to convert more and more of the economy to government driven and controlled, providing, initially, an increase in nominal output, but not much of a decline in unemployment (unemployment was still over 12% in 1938, even with 3 million people working for the various make work programs). However, because of the unprofitable nature of much of the output, it lead to net captital consumption, an effect that was starting to assert itself by 1937.
After due deliberation, I've decided that this isn't an epigram but a coded bleg: Megan is trapped in Vietnam and needs advice on removing her own appendix.
That makes sense. She should never have eaten that salad!
Assuming this isn't a cry for help, I think the better analogy is "The government can't fix society for the same reason that a pacemaker can't stop obesity."
I believe this captures the general mindset on this site that the government is an artificial appendage necessary only to correct a few narrow problems in a large modern society (such as its ability to defend against enemies, police itself and enforce contracts), and that it cannot fix the massive underlying cause of these and many more problems (a failure to cooperate well, make short-term sacrifices for long-term goals, not spoil the commons, etc.)
My analogy also hits upon an apparent misconception that people really do seem to have -- that cardiovascular medical procedures will add to your quality-of-life even if you do nothing to improve it yourself.
Yancy,
I award you zero points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
The government can't fix society for the same reason that you can't remove your own appendix.
The government can't parse this epigram for the same reason that you can't explain it yourself.
Dumb as rocks, McArdle. Dumber than a land war in southeast asia.
Mark, I think you're looking at "rules" in a different way, which makes for the disagreement.
If you consider (American football) merely a variant of Association Football, you're almost right. The no hands rule is gone, you don't have to kick the ball somewhere to score, you can throw the ball, etc.
However, they're not the same game, and while they have the same origins in the ur-ballgame, football is more a variant of rugby - with a lot of additional rules. The most important of these is the neutral zone, followed by the forward pass.
More importantly, there are rules about picking up the ball. How and when and who, and what you have to be doing before you pick it up. There are rules about kicking the ball and throwing the ball. They make for more regulation, not less.
The rules of football evolve over time, often with a relaxation - or refinement - of prior regulations. They're only intuitive if you know the game, and some of them only make sense if you understand the history behind it. Downs? Scrimmage? Safety? WTF? All of these are defined by rules.
And the flying wedge is still prohibited.
Now, for some discussion fodder...
Proposed: Soccer's popularity is a result of the requirements for a game. A ball, a flat place, and a bunch of people with nothing better to do.
Paying people do do work that is minimally productive, isn't exactly a good idea when the country needs the goods and services that they could have otherwise produced.
Just as an aside, and because I don't have anyplace better to post this, I realized while tooling around the Berkshires this past summer that a staggering proportion of the recreational infrastructure of the Berkshires was created by Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps between 1933 and 1938. All the ponds, campgrounds, hiking trails, etc. I'd been enjoying for many years now, from York Pond up to Mount Greylock, turned out to have been built by the CCC.
So on the "minimally productive" issue -- I strongly disagree. That nature-recreation infrastructure is exactly the kind of thing that never gets built by the private sector, and if you looked at the long-term returns in terms of the increased value of Berkshires B&B's, restaurants, and real estate, not to mention simply the unquantifiable benefit of free or near-free recreation for Massachussetts citizens, I think the men who built trails and dammed ponds for the CCC were very productive indeed.
brooksfoe - If you throw enough resources in to an effort you often get some positive end result. If you just look at this result and don't consider the costs, or any negative results things look great, but when you only look at specific positive results, and not the problems and costs you don't get an accurate picture.
Bastiat expressed the idea well. You have to look at both what is seen and what is unseen. What is unseen in this case is what else could and/or would have been done with all the money, manpower, and other resources that went in to the effort.
That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen
by Frederic Bastiat, 1850
http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html
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And society can't do without government for the same reason that your appendix can't do without you?
Interesting analogy. A couple of ways to play it, but none of them very libertarian, since they all imply that society and government are inextricably fused.
Posted by brooksfoe | November 15, 2007 2:55 AM