“Yes, tolerance is good… but prescription sure feels right!”
One of the constant tug-of-wars within a community is between tolerance and prescription. Tolerance is the concept that “live and let live” is a good idea. It is the idea that there are many right ways to do things and that the community government and legal systems should recognize this. Belief in tolerance becomes more important as a community becomes more civilized because, with prosperity, there come so many more right ways to do things.
The converse to tolerance is prescriptionism. A simple example is when one person sees another person doing something they don't think is right, and mutters, “There ought to be a law against that.” If that muttering person convinces the community to actually produce such a law, then prescriptionism is taking hold. Prescriptionism is when the community produces lots of micromanaging laws and regulations to enforce the from-the-heart feeling that there is a limited number of right ways of doing things.
The bright side of prescriptionism is when it organizes the community for the common good and is even-handed and fair to all community members. Think of Mary Poppins as the governor, making choices that produce a satisfied community. Prescriptionism works well when the environment and circumstances of a community change very little. Things get figured out, and once they are figured out there is little to be gained by doing things in different ways, ways that look odd or objectionable to some community members.
The dark side, however, takes the form of an overpowering system of rules with lots of capriciousness and little logic. The short-term dark side is the government looking silly, as in, “You made a law about what!” An example is New York City's regulation about the size of soft drinks which was passed in 2013. The mid-term dark side is a disturbing feeling of uncertainty among community members about what the government will do next. When the entrepreneurial community members worry about this, they intentionally slow down their ambitious projects, and the cynical community members start gaming the new system. When the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010 a lot of US businesses worried about its implications to their operations. This uncertainty was a contributor to the slow recovery from the 2008 recession.
In its advanced form, prescriptionism becomes what is sometimes called the Nanny State, a term that originated in Britain in the 1960's. Think of the governor as orphanage director Miss Hannigan in the musical Annie. Not unlike the desperate orphans under her charge, community members can experience disenfranchisement, hypocrisy, apathy, and corruption. One visible symptom of disenfranchised feelings is when the “best and brightest” people “vote with their feet” and leave the community for someplace where they can feel more enfranchised and productive.
Ultimately, prescriptionism is goat sacrificing - both tolerance and circumstance are being ignored by those asking for all the micromanaging regulations. Although in the short-term prescriptionism looks like things are finally “being done the right way” and the community can rest easy when faced with a scary or unknown experience, it may not directly solve problems well. Consider Fabius; he was stroking the prescriptive instinct with his goat sacrificing proclamation in ancient Rome. The Romans were deeply scared that Hannibal would soon be at the city gates. This sacrifice let them stay unified and sleep better, and staying unified kept Hannibal away.
Giving advice is instinctive. In the animal world, a bird squawking “Danger!” is giving advice to the rest of the flock. In the human community, giving advice dates back to the beginning of language. The eternal questions about giving advice center around when to give it and when to accept it. Another nearly-as-eternal question is how much “teeth” to put behind the advice-giving. In earlier times when parents spanked children for not cleaning their rooms after being reminded a couple times, they were putting some serious teeth behind their advice. Likewise, laws and regulations are how a community puts serious teeth behind its advice-giving to its members.
As with the bird squawking “Danger!”, prescriptionism is often mixed with trying to make things safer. This 27 Jul 14 WSJ article, “Safety Cops Patrol the Office For High Heels: Companies Move Mandates Indoors; 'Avoid Bread'” by Rachel Feintzeig and Alexandra Berzon, talks about how safety trends are moving from factory floors, mines and construction sites into the offices behind them. This is not unusual since prescriptionism and safety efforts often mix. The article also inadvertently reveals how prescriptionism is moving in to other parts of office activities. The good-intentioned, safety-oriented prescriptionism also feels good when applied to other activities - such as putting teeth behind diet advice.
From the article, “Safety awareness is serious business at workplaces such as construction sites, food manufacturing plants, mines and oil rigs, where equipment failures or other lapses can result in tragic accidents. For an employee in Rio Tinto's Utah copper mine, the mandate to document safety concerns might mean jotting down the least dangerous way of moving 1,700-ton electric shovels. But now field-inspired safety protocols are migrating to the office, where hazards include dripping umbrellas, the height of high heels and hot cups of coffee.”
When things are changing, particularly when they are changing in new and strange ways, doing things the traditional way is going to become wasteful. When things are changing, it is time to be experimenting. This is recognized on an analytical level by most people, but instinctive-level thinking is likely to keep some people skeptical. An example is the new ability to ride-share created by smart phones and ride-sharing apps. This is seen as progress by many people, but not taxi drivers and taxi driver unions because they feel economically threatened. They are scared. They want the old ways to continue.
Modern times are change incarnate. This is why ever since the Industrial Revolution started making deep changes in how people lived in the 19th Century, analytical thinking has become more and more of a virtue. Analytical thinking supports experimenting, and a key component that supports analytic thinking and experimenting is tolerance. One of the virtues of tolerance is that it allows for new ways of cooperating. As new tools, new techniques, and new knowledge emerge, new ways of cooperating are needed to take advantage of the opportunities these present. Accepting that there will be new ways of cooperating is part of tolerance.
But changing times are scary times. So this can often become a “Yes, but…” situation, and prescriptionism emerges as the community forgets how important widespread cooperation is. Instead, it becomes distracted by small issues. This happens most commonly when the community feels like it has reached its Big Goal (my term), and the next Big Goal has not been agreed upon. In such times there is competition for community attention; special interests and activist causes gain more government ear. Some of these are Big Goal ideas, but many are small idea distractions, and in the heat of the moment it can be hard to tell the difference.
In the US an example of getting distracted occurred during the Great Depression. When the economic crash started it was unexpected, and it became scary when it deepened rather than quickly ending in another economic boom. In response to the scariness and the deepening mystery of why this crash wasn't ending, many economists, business people, politicians and religious leaders of the US came up with a whole lot of competing ideas as to what had caused the crash and how to solve the economic problem. They couldn't agree on the best option. What followed was a decade of acrimony rather than a decade of cooperation - for a decade Americans couldn't agree on a next Big Goal. That decade of distraction, of not finding and cooperating on the next Big Goal, was the Great Depression. Then, finally, agreement. The Big Goal that ended the Great Depression acrimony was preparing the nation for fighting World War II. That Big Goal allowed a lot of cooperating to take place, and as Americans learned how to cooperate again, the nation thrived. Winning World War II was followed by the Big Goal of winning the Cold War, which also kept Americans cooperating and thriving.
But wars are far from automatically successful at creating cooperation - most do not. The wars on Vietnam, Drugs, and Terror are examples of wars that didn't build cooperation. (This, by the way, is another bright side of prescription. Declining cooperation can lead to acrimony, and prescriptionism follows as a way of reducing this kind of acrimony.)
Promoting tolerance and cooperation, not prescriptionism, is the key to meeting new challenges and creating the next Big Goal. A smaller scale 2010's example of getting behind a Big Goal is the recent flowering of New Orleans. This 25 Jul 14 WSJ article, “New Orleans Citizens Reform a Corrupt, Fallen City: A fighting grass-roots spirit has sparked most of the positive changes in the nine years since Katrina.” by Scott S. Cowen, describes how grass-roots activism has improved New Orleans since the catastrophe of hurricane Katrina.
From the article, “[disgraced Mayor Ray Nagin's] crimes were committed before and after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and they no doubt set back the city's recovery. Yet since he left office in 2010, New Orleans has embarked on a remarkable transformation, becoming a mecca for startups, a seedbed of social innovation, a model of school reform and a magnet for young people and families.
“Forbes just ranked New Orleans the No. 1 Brainpower City in the U.S.; the metro area's number of college graduates increased by 20.3% between 2007 and 2012; and major companies including GE, Gameloft GFT.FR -2.25% and Globalstar have established operations in the city. The public school system has also seen a remarkable improvement: Only 5.7% of New Orleans children now attend a failing school, down from 65% in 2005.
“Credit for the sea change post-Katrina belongs to the people—the opinionated, blogging, vociferous, committee-forming citizens of New Orleans.”
This is a remarkable and noteworthy example of a natural disaster spawning widespread community cooperation.
The first big expense of prescriptionism is distraction. The government is sucked into micromanaging. It is left without the time or attention span to work on building the platform for big cooperation - the Big Goal. In the 2010's the long discussions over the actual content of the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank bill are examples. These laws are thousands of pages long. They are micromanaging incarnate. Sorting out how to implement what they actually say is taking years of effort by tens of thousands of lawyers, regulators, bankers and health care workers. This is distraction. These people could be working on more productive activities, productive meaning helping the US community by experimenting with new techniques and technologies and producing services that are directly related to pursuing Big Goals and material prosperity. To put this in an oratorical fashion, “Do we want to boom The Beltway (around Washington, DC) or do we want to boom Main Street? Should these people be working on interpreting regulations, or working on building more businesses and hospitals?”
The second big expense is uncertainty, loss of creativity, and diminished cooperation. When the government is enacting micromanaging measures, it's acting like it's crazy - like it's a crazy aunt having one of her “episodes”. This leads to uncertainty in the community. Those with innovative but disruptive technology ideas in mind, such as Uber, pause before they try to make them happen. They worry: “What I'm about to attempt is like a delicate flower. Can I trust a government that is this whacked out not to crush it underfoot?” or “I'm not sure how to deal with this situation now, so I'll wait and watch a while.” The amoral and cynical ones will think, “Rather than work on my uncertain new idea, I see a much more certain outcome if I exploit a new loophole that has been created.” None of these attitudes are helping big cooperation.
This 27 Jul 14 WSJ article, “Let Patients Decide How Much Risk They'll Take. Take a tip from Sergey Brin: The health-care regulatory burden stops entrepreneurs from getting into the game.” by Kevin J. Tracey, talks about how entrepreneurs shy away from starting businesses in health care because of the micromanaging regulations and regulators.
From the article, “[V]enture capitalist Vinod Khosla interviewed Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, asking them if the company might jump into health care. “It's just a painful business to be in,” Mr. Brin replied, later noting that “the regulatory burden in the U.S. is so high that I think it would dissuade a lot of entrepreneurs.” Mr. Brin is right. As a neurosurgeon-scientist and entrepreneur who co-founded a bioelectronic medicine company that deploys implantable technology to supplant drugs, I wish he were wrong. But rampant misalignment of incentives is hampering technology in the U.S. health industry.”
The third expense is disenfranchisement, which is serious poison to the community. Those people who don't think “This should be a law” get discouraged. The government is not working for them; their concerns are not being taken into consideration by the government. Disenfranchisement is the root of crime and corruption. The more the formal, powers-that-be government is out of touch with the harsh realities in the community, the more shadow governments, such as organized crime, will thrive. The War on Drugs is a multi-billion dollar, multi-decade example of organized crime shadow governments (gangs and drug lords) being sustained by a community that is overly prescriptive. The people discouraged in this case are recreational drug users and enforcement officials who don't see the dire hazards the law-abiding community members who support these prescriptions do.
Here are some ways to reduce the damage of the prescribing instinct.
The first step is to make people aware of prescriptive thinking and make them aware of its expense to the community. This can be accomplished by teaching about prescriptionism as well as teaching about practical tolerance and the difference that circumstances can make. Just because something seems wrong in one circumstance does not mean it is wrong in other circumstances. We need to teach that there are many right ways to live by exposing community members to the lives and ways of other people living in other circumstances. An important way to learn this valuable lesson (recognizing that not everyone has this opportunity) is traveling to and working in different countries and cultures. The working part of this exposure is vital. It reveals the logic behind why things are done differently. Being a tourist lets a person “see” the strangeness of different cultures, being a worker lets a person “experience” the practicality behind that strangeness. This first lesson is called becoming worldly. (This, by the way, is also why immigrants remain important to keeping America American. The immigrant experience of coming to America and working and living here teaches tolerance to the immigrants, and they then become Americans and help keep America tolerant.)
The second lesson comes by exposing people to opportunities to exploit (in its positive sense) and having them exploit them. This can be as simple as internships or students doing science projects. In order to gain experience through opportunities, the projects don't necessarily have to be about science - they just have to be about assembling materials and techniques to solve a problem, using sound logic and practical experience. This second kind of exposure, exposure to opportunity, was one of the reasons the North American colonies of the 1700's thrived mightily, and then became the United States. The wilderness setting the pioneers experienced provided a lot of opportunity for tolerance and cooperation, producing richly rewarding results. That setting was both challenging and scary for many of the people involved. When a similarly challenging environment is offered today, it frequently grates on both Protect the Child and Chosen People instincts. This means that developing good opportunity settings takes good leadership. It first takes skill and then takes vigilance – people in the community have to be watching that leaders do not return to supporting comfortable prescriptionism. Done right, the results are spectacular, as the American experience of the last two hundred fifty years shows.
One of government's principal jobs must be to identify and promote causes that are big enough that everyone feels they can get on the band wagon - all members of the community can join this cause, in spite of their differences in style and opinion. Once again, this is something that needs to be taught. Citizens need to learn what to expect of their government, and leaders need to learn how to produce good results. These concepts need to be taught in school courses, and then supplemented with additional learning as times and circumstances change. What needs to be taught is pursuing the Big Goal and avoiding prescriptionist micromanaging. That said, keep in mind that this is not an easy task. Doing this well is one of the hallmarks of great leadership and great citizenship. A 2010's example of a place it hasn't happened yet is Iraq. New Orleans, mentioned above, is a place where it is happening.
It is not just ole-time religion preachers who are exploiting this instinct, and it is not just ole-time religion followers who feel it. Any time you're thinking, “This is a great idea! ...Everyone should be doing it!” ...welcome to the club. This enthusiasm is fine to feel, just remember that making a law to support this fine feeling is not okay.
The most important feeling a community member can have is feeling enfranchised - feeling that the community cares about what he or she thinks, and that his or her actions have an effect on the community. This is important, but it is often not recognized as an issue when it comes to lawmaking. Once again, this needs to be part of what is taught about how government should work. I suggest that each newly proposed law require an enfranchisement impact statement (my term). These days we require environmental impact statements, which report the impact of a law or regulation on the environment; my suggestion would require a report on the potential impact of a law or regulation on the feeling of enfranchisement in the community.
Laws are enacted to solve problems, but a law can linger on after it is no longer necessary. A simple way to keep the law books simplified is to enact a sunset law provision which would automatically expire all laws after a certain amount of time, say, twenty years. This has been proposed before and partially implemented in some governments. Its implementation should be spread much wider.
Related to sunset provisioning is another new idea: a law page exchange. The goal here is to discourage micromanaging by limiting the total number of pages a law-making or regulating body can enact. Taking inspiration from the carbon credit exchange concept, if the lawmakers or regulators want to make a new regulation that is “x” pages long, they have to rescind existing legislation or regulation that is “x” pages long. The goal here is to keep laws and regulations simple by keeping them short.
Prescriptionism flows from instinctive thinking. It comes from the feeling that if we see something happening that looks wrong there should be a law in place to prevent it. This instinct by itself does not serve us well in the civilized community; we need to apply some good head- thinking along with it. The head-thinking says there are many right ways to do things in the civilized environment.
Finally, instead of working on micromanaging, we should be asking our governments to work on promoting Big Goals so we have more reasons to cooperate. Cooperation brings prosperity, prescriptionism does not.