Dear John Letters -- Introduction

I will upon occasion sprinkle in "Dear John letters" on this blog.

John is my long time college buddy.  He is one of the funniest guys alive and smart as a whip.  I love him.  but he also drive me crazy sometimes and I'm sure I do the same to him.

That is because John is a died in the wool liberal / progressive.  and a very outspoken one at that.  For that reason John provides me with the perfect foil for the ideas I am promoting in this blog.

Dear John letters will be a standard part of the blog -- until and as long as John continues to engage in political dialogue.  At some point he might just say no mas.... we'll see...

John sees problems in the world and he wants to fix them.  I say wait a minute.  Before you solve the problem, you better figure out or at least try to figure out whether there is an underlying cause of the problem.  John doesn't want to look for underlying causes of economic or social problems.

i believe john epitomises the hubris embedded in the progressive world view that assumes every problem is fixable as long as we put our minds to it and come to some logical conclusion about the way to fix it.

the way i see it the "modern" world is obsessed with technological quick fixes, whether it be in medicine or public policy.  we generally don't think in terms of underlying causes of bad health; that would be too difficult.  we look to treat symptoms so we can avoid painful trade offs that life throws our way.  high cholesterol -- take a pill.  over weight.  take another pill.  pills, surgery, public policy.  fix the symptoms. 

John wants to fix problems now.  And in almost every argument we have he proposes a solution that requires a Federal government program. 

I argue that many of the problems he wants to fix were caused in the first place by a previous well intended Federal government fix. Or I argue that the problem has no fix and we must learn to deal with it rather than use the government to fix it given the fact that the government fix will lead to cycle of unintended consequences and worse results than problem the policy was aimed at fixing in the first place. 

One perfect example of this way of thinking is epitomized by the Federal Reserve.  it was established to prevent business cycles, protect the poor from boom/ bust. what happened?  we didn't have a Great Depression until AFTER the Fed was established in 1913!  we got rid of business cycles for almost 20 years leading up to 1929; in fact the Fed engineered an unprecedented economic boom in the roaring 1920s, but this was followed by an unprecedented bust.  That is the law of unintended consequences at work.  We solve one problem with a government solution only to cause a bigger one.

John is incredibly well read and informed about the finer points of policy issues whether it be about health care reform or green energy or high speed trains.  you name it, John has all of the lingo down and he has a plan that sounds reasonable.  I say to John, you can't just going around trying to fix problems without first identifying the underlying cause of the problem (which is either a problem that can't be fixed by government in the first place e.g. income inequality or pollution) or is a problem caused  by some previous government fix the symptom intervention.

John consistently ignores what he considers my theoretical musings.  he wants to debate the fine points of the problem and the proposed solutions.  i claim that it is a waste of time to get bogged down in the fine points of policy that ignores not only the underlying causes of the problem that he wants to fix with government interventions, but also ignores the unintended consequences of proposed solutions that must be implemented by a benevolent government.  

i say the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  John systematically avoids engaging in debates about whether the road to hell really is paved with good intentions or not.  he always brings the argument back to the details of each individual debate we have about specific policy. 

i say to john:  you and your fellow progressives fundamentally and systematically miss the forest for the trees.  you fix symptoms and miss underlying disease.  you are stuck in a mode where more technology is always the answer. 

and so we go round and round.  i try to bring the debate up to the level of a debate about fundamental implications about our competing world views, and John brings the debate back to the details of each issue.

John epitomises the progressive world view; for that i am thankful because he forces me to think and to test my ideas.  as long as he is willing to engage with me in debate, i will continue to post Dear John letters on this blog.