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Moving Beyond First-Stage Analysis

In reflecting on the general worldview or philosophy that’s gathered us together here, I’ve sought to better understand the sources of its guiding principles, and what it is that’s made me reach different conclusions than others. It’s occurred to me in the past year that a key piece of the puzzle is a willingness, and even a commitment, to move beyond what I call “first-stage analysis”. This is a manifestation of the broader commitment to testing one’s theories and seeing reality as it is that Bill has expressed with great skill on many occasions, starting with his magnificent 2003 essay, “Magic”. The world offers us many possible conclusions to explain the things we observe, and it is easy to be tempted into accepting an intuitive, satisfying, expedient conclusion in preference to taking the time to look deeper. Favoring simple explanations over overwrought theories (the gist of Occam’s Razor) has often been a fruitful guiding principle to follow in scientific investigations, but when it comes to the world of human affairs very little is what it first appears to be. As H.L. Mencken famously observed, “For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” As a corollary: For every action, there are unintended consequences. It has seemed to me that although Progressivism insistently reminds us that it is concerned with many nuanced shades of meaning and that the world is not simple black and white, the conclusions it reaches very often suffer from stopping at first-stage analysis where deeper study and reflection would have produced a different, and often counterintuitive conclusion.

I’ve gathered some examples of first-stage analyses — followed, parenthetically, by a brief summary of the deeper but too often overlooked truths that I see. I am sure you can all think of some other key examples I’ve overlooked. Please do add them in the comments, if you like. I’ll be very interested to see what the aggregate brain trust at BW.com thinks about this.

Some examples, starting with economic ones since those come readily to mind:

Capitalism is selfish and immoral — a system of greedy people just looking out for themselves and trying to get rich.

(A business or entrepreneur can only succeed by fulfilling the wants and needs of others, with whom they trade value for value in voluntary exchange. It is coercion that’s truly immoral. You can be the most despicable and selfish person in the world, and still you will improve the lives of others by spending that life in service to them.)

Socialism is morally better because it seeks the collective good.

(Provable counterintuitive result: People who are left free to do whatever they want produce vastly more collective good than people ruled by the centralized totailtarian systems that end up being needed to enforce socialism’s designs. Also: If our goal is to become a more virtuous society, people need to have the ability to act freely and make their own choices. Without freedom of choice, there can be no virtue.)

We should tax corporations and The Rich more to pay for public goods.

(Taxpayers aren’t stationary targets. They are people and entities who get to respond and make choices. When you change the tax laws and rates, people will respond rationally and do less of what you’ve just disincentivized, or go elsewhere. Also, you could confiscate not only the income but the combined assets of the America’s richest individuals and corporations and still not have enough to close the deficit and fund the U.S. federal government for more than a year. What then, after you’ve destroyed America’s engines of wealth creation?)

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

(Actually, both have been getting richer, at different rates. As Bill pointed out beautifully in “Trinity”, narrowing the income curve is a false goal that produces stagnation. Our goal should be to move the curve to the right. It’s also vitally important to understand that wealth is not some static pie that just gets reallocated — it is created by people’s efforts and initiative. If this was not true, humanity would still be living in the stone age.)

If we gave people more things for free, it would make their lives better.

(Helping others is a noble goal, and everyone at some time may need and benefit from a little help. But when you do for others things that they can and should be doing for themselves, and continue to sustain this over long periods of time, you actually end up doing them harm. You undermine a person’s autonomy, resourcefulness, ability to grow, and self-worth, and rob the world of their potential contribution. The damage the Democrat party has done to black Americans by cultivating dependency and making fathers superfluous is a tragic prime example. Think also about the spiritual value that we get from striving and achieving. Does a good coach tell you to take it easy and not try too hard? No? Why not? Wouldn’t reducing the number of push-ups they’re demanding be kinder? Ah. Interesting insight. The same applies to other areas of endeavor and achievement. Also, as Ben Franklin aptly put it, “What we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly.” Giving things away can diminish their value to the recipient, and lead to their being used unwisely without valuable feedback mechanisms to incentivize good choices. Add to these factors that, if we’re talking public policy, what is given to one must be taken from another, and we start to see that there are opportunity costs to consider, of things that will not otherwise happen. Everything is tradeoffs. Nothing is “free”.)

Having a strong military provokes animosity in others and leads to war. If we trimmed our military spending and acted more peacefully, other countries wouldn’t resent us so much and war would be less likely.

(People raised in other cultures, and in particular the tyrants that sometimes come to rule over them, can’t be counted on to think about these things the same way we do. Much as when dealing with a playground bully, nothing invites aggression more than weakness; only a show of strength will bring respect and stay the enemy’s hand. Our demonstrated military might and willingness to go to war when necessary make war less likely. If anything has made war more likely in the decades since the 60s, it’s been the doctrine of appeasement and the weakness of resolve we’ve shown when it comes to seeing things through to decisive victory. Counterintuitive, but demonstrably true.)

I’ve run out of time for the moment, but this seems like a deep vein to mine. What examples stand out to you?

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