[Prudence]

I was going to post this in the Sicko thread, but it’s got a broader reach so in here it goes.

Generally speaking, an organism that doesn’t adapt to changing conditions will die out. This is true whether you’re a large scaly reptile, a Fortune 500 corporation, or a superpower state. You can’t keep acting the way you always have when the conditions are no longer the way they were and expect to stay ahead. But the bigger, more established you are, the harder that change is.

Change is difficult because organizations – whether economic or political - that are accustomed to being successful begin to make the “best” the enemy of the “good”. There is no such thing as “better”. After all, why make a change if there will still be problems after the change?

And that is where we find ourselves all too often in politics now. Our systems may be held together with chewing gum and baling wire, but we can pretend that everything’s fine. If a proposed change has any defects, it’s shot down, dismissed, and nothing happens.

And any change will have some drawbacks. There is no perfect solution that will do only what we want and nothing that we don’t. (And that’s assuming we can even agree on what we want.) If we make it easier to send people to jail, fewer criminals might go free, but more innocent people might be imprisoned. If we make it harder to qualify for welfare, perhaps fewer people will defraud the government, but perhaps more people who just need a temporary assist will land in permanent poverty. If we keep healthcare private, we may be able to stave off tax increases and benefit from the innovation that comes with competition, but there may be a significant number of people for whom healthcare remains unattainable.

There is no magic solution. But we, as a nation, don’t bother seriously evaluating whether the flaws in the suggested change are better or worse than the flaws in the status quo. We gobble up sound bites suggesting that our sewers will be clogged with the dead bodies of starving orphans with skin cancer and asbestos poisoning, or that we’ll be taxed so heavily that we’ll all have to work 37 hours a day just to afford a cardboard box to sleep in.

And what happens to political candidates who suggest a change? There sure aren’t many who suggest any actual change that consists of details, not just a string of empty superlatives. And who can blame them? As soon as news breaks that Candidate Smith has proposed such-and-such a change, the airwaves are full of people denouncing that change as the worst idea ever in the history of all mankind, and what a stupid cow Candidate Smith must be for even suggesting it, and why would anyone vote for Stupid Cow Smith and his Worst Idea Ever?

Because if there’s anything at all wrong with the suggested change, it is bad and should be thrown away. Not pondered. Not compared honestly to the status quo to evaluate whether the overall effect would be a better outcome with fewer drawbacks. Not analyzed to see whether there are alterations that could be made to the suggested change to make it better. Not considered, but rebutted by a difference suggested change with perhaps fewer drawbacks.

None of this happens. If there are any flaws, the whole plan is bad, the person who thought it up is bad, the university they went to is bad, the part of the country they’re from is full of complete morons, and we wrap some more baling wire around the status quo.

So here we sit. Waiting for the perfect, the best solution. Who knows how many good ideas have washed by while we sit here waiting for the “best”?

There's my random thought of the day - worth every penny you paid for it, I'm sure.