Insofar as this Blogoir has a Theme and Point, it is that we keep reminding ourselves that Decisions have Consequences.
Some consequences are planned and desirable.
Others are unplanned/unexpected/undesirable, not least because the consequences of various decisions taken independently in practice get tangled up together and make an even worse mess.
This is made worse by a chronic sickness in modern governance: to focus incessantly on the benefits of change, without looking also at the disadvantages of change and the benefits of staying where we actually are now.
This in turn stems from a deeper problem with collectivists and bureaucrats of all shapes and sizes, namely that they somehow assume (if indeed they ever think about it at all) that wealth and creativity are just ‘there’, waiting to be cleverly organised and reorganised for whatever the latest good reason may happen to be.
It of course is not like that.
The wealth-creating systems we have of course can withstand all sorts of indignities and inefficiencies.
Yet each small indignity and inefficiency is a cost. And slowly but surely the costs grow and grow, interacting with each other and compounding up.
And up.
Take doctors.
Doctors are not like oil or stone – stuff which is out there naturally and can be extracted more or less steadily for a very long time to come, largely at the rate we choose.
Doctors are people who decide to go through years of intensive, draining training because they see a role for themselves in helping thousands of people have a better life.
So if we keep ungratefully piling more and more costs, bureaucracy and hassle on doctors, the tendency for people to want to become doctors will diminish. And we’ll get fewer doctors.
And then (probably) we’ll sit their in a sickly state whining that doctors are ‘greedy’.
Or take modern administration. The numbers of people claiming to be sick and taking time off work are rising. Managers find it hard to tackle this problem, for fear of being denounced as ‘macho’ and ‘unsympathetic’.
The costs of this behaviour (which stems from accumulating prissiness and a declining ethic of responsibility) edge inexorably upwards, leaving less to be spent on basic public services such as keeping the roads and streets clean. Just drive round Oxford which prides itself on its progressive environmental approach, and be appalled at the squalor.
So, slowly …
Rather did they yield to some invincible pressure, which came no one knew whither, and which, when gratified, was succeeded by some new pressure equally invincible. To such a state of affairs it is convenient to give the name of progress.
No one confessed the Machine was out of hand. Year by year it was served with increased efficiency and decreased intelligence.
The better a man knew his own duties upon it, the less he understood the duties of his neighbour, and in all the world there was not one who understood the monster as a whole…
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