I have written a lot about federalism, the free market, and a number of other systems which require individual freedom and widely distributed power and decision making. ( "My Vision of Government", "My Vision of Government Part II", "Why I Am Not A Libertarian", "The Benefits of Federalism", "An Analogy For Government", "A Simple Proposal", "Consolidation and Diffusion",  "Man's Nature and Government", "Prelude", "Culture and Government", "Symmetry and Asymmetry in Government", "Bureaucratic Management and Self-Policing", "The Inherent Disappointment of Authoritarianism", "Zero Tolerance and Big Government") In every post I have written I have discussed the need for such systems precisely because they allow for multiple solutions ("Redundancy as a Protective Measure"), permitting the society as a whole to find the best possible solutions, recover form mistakes, and not suffer system-wide collapse. ("Adaptability and Government", "Inflexibility and Bureaucracy") However, in writing these arguments, I feel I have sometimes ignored one half of the argument.

You see, I have often argued that we conservatives too often play into the stereotype of being the "party of no", ("Conservatives and the "Big Picture"", "The Party of 'No'?", "Activism As The Only Acceptable Position? ") It is an unfair caricature, as being opposed to government doing things is not negativity, any more than being opposed to child rapists is being "against sex". ("What We Deserve") However, when we spend all our time arguing why this government plan or that won't work, often the public does not hear our message that freedom will work, or, even if they do, they still remember only that we "tore down" all other proposals without "offering our own solution." In fact, with both left and right having embraced some degree of big government ("The Political Spectrum", "Inescapable Logic", "Defending Freedom?", "Why We Lose", "Giving Away the Game", "The Single Greatest Weakness",  "What We Deserve", "What is Wrong with Us", "Pyrrhic Victories", "Who Is To Blame?", "Don't Blame the Politicians", "The Difficulty of Principle", "Damn the Torpedoes!", "You Lose When You Think You Win"), the public seems to think of "solutions" only in terms of government action ( "Doing Something", ""Doing Something" Revisited", "Recipe For Disaster", "The Endless Cycle of Intervention", "The Cycle of Compassion", "When Help Hurts", "The Irrationality of Government Redistribution"), and so, if we attack without proposing our own big government answer, we are seen as pessimistic naysayers.

And so I have tried when I can to not approach these topics in the traditional manner, but instead to adopt the Reagan method. Instead of constantly attacking the left, I have tried to explain the benefits of freedom. I have tried my hardest to not be "against big government", but instead "for people", "for freedom" and "for empowering individuals." Which means my writing, for the most part, has tried to emphasize the benefits of freedom, and not the harms of big government. Obviously, it is impossible to present an argument entirely in terms of one side or the other. And my older posts are clearly much more concerned with tearing down big government beliefs, while more recently I have tried to emphasize the benefits. But even then, it is hard to emphasize the benefits without pointing out the harm done by the alternative, and so I have argued both sides.

Still, because I have tried to take what I see as the high road, and the more appealing argument, at least from the perspective of the general public, I think I have overlooked one important issue. In describing how freedom and distributed power allow us to correct errors, give us resilience, provide an environment which favors gradual improvement, and every other claim I have made, I have often overlooked the other side, and have not explained why these benefits matter. That is, I have not pointed out strongly enough that these benefits are exclusive to the free systems, while government run systems produce the opposite results. Admittedly, in "Adaptability and Government" and "Inflexibility and Bureaucracy", I did point out how big government and strong regulation lead to a dangerously inflexible economic environment, but that is the most I have said in a recent post, and that is hardly the most damning argument possible. And, weak as that argument is, it is unusually strong for my recent writing.

This all came to me when I was reading an old post today, specifically "An Immature Society". In this post, I came upon an interesting quote:

But, much as I dislike the fact, my life has been spent in an age when we have been ruled by adults who idolize children, where immature youth set the trends and adults who should know better chase after them. An age of infinitely prolonged adolescence. And, being of my age, I played along for most of my life, embracing one form of immaturity or another. But that is the price of such an age, by the time you realize how wrong it is, you have incorporated far too many of its assumptions, and it takes a lifetime to free yourself of its influence. It is why history moves so slowly, at least in terms of improvement. Societies collapse quickly, as it is easy to break things apart, but reform, being opposed by all the learned behaviors of the age, tends to take decades, centuries. And, unfortunately, many lack the will for that glacial pace of change. Which is why it is so much easier to gather a mob, start a riot, even organize a protest, rather than put together a few dozen people dedicated to making quiet, gradual reforms.

This quote, though not precisely intended to address the present topic, reminded me of a simple truth we often forget, but one which is essential for those who would argue for freedom. And that is: there are very few ways to succeed, and a multitude of ways to fail. And more important, there is but one truth, and an army of falsehoods.

Before I go on, let me point out I am not contradicting myself, especially in terms of my belief expressed in "The Right Way". When I say there is one truth, or one right way, I am speaking in shorthand. In some cases there is a single right answer. For example, how fast with an object fall after 3 seconds if gravity is assumed to accelerate it at 9.8 meters per second? But in many other cases, there is no "right" answer, just better or worse. And in many cases, each is evaluated in terms of individual preference. And I am aware of this. But it is clumsy to say so, and so I find it more practical to simply say there is a "right" or "better" answer, as saying there are answers found more highly placed in the hierarchy of possible responses is a confusing way to word things.

And it really makes no difference. When there is one right answer, clearly there are more wrong than right responses. But even when dealing with hierarchy of preferences, the number of solutions which produce superior outcomes always gets smaller as the satisfaction grows greater*. And so, while there may not be one or a few "right" answers, the same general principle holds. There are more answers which will make things worse than there are which will make things better.

The reason I mention this is that it means any answer chosen at random is more likely to make us worse rather than better. And, even after we have made such a decision, were we to then try to improve again, it is still more likely things will get worse, rather than better. I suppose, theoretically, at some absolutely abysmal level it would be so difficult to make things worse this rule would no longer hold, but having reached such a point, I don't know if we would have the capacity to make changes.

This is why the monolithic solutions brought about by government or regulation are so dangerous. By committing us to a single answer, odds are very good it is not optimal. In fact, odds are good it is worse than doing nothing. And,  should we recognize the weakness of that position, there is still little to do, as making a change is likely to make things worse, not better, as there is no easy way to evaluate the possible choices.

Under a distributed system, this no longer holds. With each individual choosing an answer, it is possible to compare outcomes. Of course, some may misunderstand those outcomes, and think the success of an individual is due to one cause when it is truly due to another. But over time, with more information and experience, such mistakes tend to become clear, as people adopt the practice they think resulted in success and then fail, showing what was not the cause, and, eventually, leaving only the real cause as an option.

Better still, should the current condition be subpar, should most people be dissatisfied with their lot, and the general practices adopted by the majority be inferior, we need only look at others to see if there is a better solution. Even if there is no one presently doing better, we have the option of trying alternatives. But, unlike the government doing the same, we can make such a change on a small scale, and we can have fellows trying other solutions, giving us a multitude of possible solutions, and allowing us to test them out before we commit everyone to them.

But, as I said, I always point out the benefits, and I do want to point out the harms of the government side this time. Fortunately it is quite easy in this case. With more ways to err than to find the correct answer, any government solution is likely to make things worse, and, being a government solution, it will be forced on everyone, applied universally. And so there is no possibility of even a small fraction avoiding the harm of a wrong decision. Worse, when the government tries to correct a mistake, or even improve a good decision, odds are good the chosen response will be worse. Without a way to test, or gather comparative data, they can rely only upon abstract theories without sufficient concrete comparative data, and so they are effectively guessing. And, as we have shown, guessing is more likely to hurt than help.

It seems I have been saying this a lot recently, but this post does deserve a more in depth treatment. I am happy with what I said here, but I feel I really should offer more technical arguments proving that there will always be more opportunities to make things worse rather than better, as well as showing that even with a completely valid theoretical framework, without the ability for real world comparison it is impossible to apply those theories in a meaningful way. And so, I would ask that you check back in a few days, as I hope to have a more detailed version of this essay for those who are interested in such things.

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* Proving this would take far too much space, but I can offer a quick explanation of how such a proof would work. If any reader is familiar with the optimization problems in quantitative economics or business management schools, the principle here is the same. We have a number of possible goods, each giving so much satisfaction. To get more of one, we must give up some of one or more of the others. And so, the amount of each that we receive is expressed as an inequality. Anything falling below the line marking the outer limit of solutions for the inequality produces less than optimum satisfaction. So, optimal answers fall only along those borders, clearly giving us fewer optimal solutions than suboptimal. And that is optimal only for one good. For two or more, it is where each of those lines meet. Points where two lines meet are more than where three lines meet. And three is more numerous than four. And so on. Which means, to cut this short, as we optimize our satisfaction from more and more goods, and thus improve our overall satisfaction, there are fewer and fewer situations which will do so. And thus, at any point, there are going to be more solutions which make our overall condition worse than those which make it better.