Inaction as a Tool for Governing
It is often said that almost any action is better than inaction. “An officer's job is to make decisions, if they are correct so much the better" is one formulation of this point of view. This makes sense because officers are trained to make decisions in the middle of firefights. But in normal life we have time to think before we act and we should be wary of those who try to scare us into immediate action.
Law making is not a process that is helped when lawmakers are pressured towards immediate action. Sometimes the pressure comes because “we have the votes now”. So the vote is taken and a significant minority vows to undo it as soon as possible.
Most legislative bodies have a deliberative process that is meant to avoid ill-conceived laws. But in practice these processes devolve into horse trading: “I’ll support your self-serving proposal if you will support mine.” A better way is needed.
A bias toward action always encourages decisions that are ill thought out. This is true regardless of whether the decision is made by majority vote or dictatorial decree.
One possibility for a better deliberative process is to raise the bar for approval: nothing gets written into law that a significant minority opposes. We can call this the “Inaction Principle.”
Of course there is no perfect definition of “significant minority.” I am thinking of this definition: a minority opinion is significant if it has been consistently advocated by at least 15% of the citizenry or by 60% of relevant scientists. Feel free to suggest a better definition in the comments.
The Inaction Principle is rather like a line item veto that minorities could enforce. Probably it cannot be forced on a legislature. It has to be part of a legislator’s mindset and so it has to be accepted by the culture as a whole. Doing so would have these advantages:
A resentful minority would not be plotting to alter or revoke a law that was passed against their wishes.
There would be greater compliance to existing laws because there would be less vocal opposition.
The current proliferation of laws and government programs would be halted.
Creative solutions allowing diverse subcultures would be encouraged.
Under the Inaction Principle if you want a law that others don't you must look for some kind of synergy; the goal gets pared down to something that is widely agreed on.
The Inaction principle offers a bargain. You do not get to impose on others and they do not get to impose on you. For example education is an area such a bargain is necessary because of emotional disagreements. Here the Inaction Principle would likely cause core curriculum to be pared down to reading, writing, and numeracy. There would be little opposition to curriculum that merely provided the mental tools to evaluate, work with, and communicate ideas.
Keeping this goal for the core curriculum in mind, the process of scientific investigation could probably be taught as well. This could be done without getting into controversial topics such as evolution. This goal for the core curriculum could also be used to include something new, namely in class demonstrations that show we all have to be careful of cognitive biases.
There could be wide agreement on such a core curriculum because we all would harbor an unspoken belief that students educated to use their brains would naturally accept our view of the world. Therefore we could accept electives that promoted other points of view. This opens the door for such controversial subjects as literature, art, and history. The reason for not including these in the core is that experience has shown these things cannot be taught without educational planners imposing their world view on other people.
Would crazy world views be included in the electives? Sure, but we are all exposed to such views anyway. This way we would accept that they exist without giving them the backing of the educational system. Only the core curriculum would be backed by the educational system and that would be enforced every place including among home schoolers.
The most likely objection to treating literature, art, and history as electives is that there are certain things we all should be exposed to. That objection always comes from someone with an agenda for educating other people. In a diverse society we cannot permit such agendas to be imposed. They can be offered. They can be offered in attractive ways. The core curriculum can give students the mental tools to make their own evaluations.
Short said we need our governments to work for all of us and the Inaction Principle has the potential to encourage that.
Consensus should not be underrated. When there is consensus impressive things can happen. The Allies won World War II. China conquered Covid-19 and did so even though it was the only country to contract the disease without prior warning. One can criticize the way China got its consensus. Be that as it may, it remains true that consensus was both necessary and achieved.
When consensus is lacking and governments go forward anyway, things tend to go badly. The U.S. lost the Vietnam war. Hong Kong is losing its financial strength.
Let’s look at how the Inaction Principle might have been applied to laws concerning climate change. Knowledge of climate change and humanity’s role in it came slowly. First global warming had to be recognized. Then causes had to be identified. I am estimating that there was a significant consensus on these things by 1995. By then at least 60% of scientists who studied such things were consistently saying that we homo sapiens were causing global warming. Also that a warming of even a few degrees would be devastating for us.
So in 1995 the Inaction Principle would have mandated that the U.S. stop supporting activities that were causing global warming. All the many subsidies for a petroleum-based economy would have ended. The U.S. contribution to global warming over the past generation would have been much less than it in fact was.
The open discussions encouraged by the Inaction Principle might have hastened the appearance of a wide consensus on climate change; thus enabling government support for green technology. But even if not it is certain that higher prices for petroleum and coal would have forced the auto industry toward more fuel efficient vehicles. Also the nascent green energy industry would have been more competitive.
Libertarianism is the philosophy of government that is most supportive of inaction. The libertarian party states that the sole goals of government should be to prevent force and fraud. Neither of the examples I talked about above fits within this purview. The Inaction Principle can be viewed as a way of opening libertarianism up to services that we all would like to help each other with.
The Inaction Principle is not to be dismissed lightly. Join a discussion about it.
References
https://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/ethics/dont-be-too-quick-to-judge-swedens-covid19-policy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climate_change
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686
https://www.lp.org/about/
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