In the wake of Armed Liberal's deserved kicking of that academic ass Brian Leiter (and Grim adds a number of fine points, as does Chapomatic), I thought I'd post a useful thought on easy, hard, and wicked problems from someone smarter than Leiter. It's from a little-known book called David's Sling by Marc Steigler (if you don't have a big used bookstore nearby like I do, try Amazon.com zShops), and concerns the core philosophy of the Zetetic Institute:
"The Institute recognized three broad classes of decisions, and three broad methods of decision-making: engineering decisions, political decisions, and unresolvable decisions....
"Engineering decisions were made by finding the correct, or best, answer. This was the best decision-making methodology whenever possible, but often human affairs proved too ambiguous for this wholly rational analysis.
Political decisions were made by building an answer of consensus. In difficult cases, the consensus decision might be to let one particular man make a decision, but that was a form of consensus nonetheless. Because political decision systems could generate decisions in more situations than engineering decision systems, political systems typically gained pre-eminence over engineering. For the most part, this arrangement worked well - except that too often, the politicans made political decisions in situation where engineering applied, usually with tragic consequences. The key question was, how do you decide whether to use politics or engineering to decide? Politicians had all too often decided to use politics.Zeteticism had recognized an important truth: the choice between politics and engineering is always an engineering decision. The decision duel technique made its most important contributions on issues that looked and tasted political, but were actually engineering decisions at heart.
Even politics, weak as it was, could fail as a decision-making system. In cases where bitter opponents could not achieve consensus, unresolvable decisions went to the last, least accurate, decision-making method: selection by force. Ultimately, any problem could be addressed by warfare. It was inefficient, but it was also effective. All one had to do was pursue the combat fiercely enough. Too often in human history, however, military leaders had forgotten that the decision to use force must be made politically, just as politicians had forgotten that the decision to use politics must be made through engineering."
Note, that "politically" doesn't mean "with 100% consensus." It means "with sufficient consensus in the decision-making body," howsoever that is defined. The Congressional vote on the Iraq War, for instance. Or an executive decision in an organization. As the Arabs say, "the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."
It is possible to attempt to reverse a political consensus. It is also possible to reject or undermine the legitimacy of that consensus entirely - but without an overarching political agreeement (a constitution, corporate policy, etc.) to appeal to, that means questioning the legitimacy of political decisions in that environment. This always has greater or lesser implications toward selection by force, and must be viewed with appropriate caution.
Thanks very much for the link!
I think it's hard for some folks to remember that armed conflict is part of the political spectrum--both in understanding the whys of war, but also why things don't necessarily change the way you want them to even when you win a war.
That "atempt to reverse a political consensus" is exactly the attack on the center of gravity of political will that lost Vietnam. Today's opponents, and those who remember the Glory Days of the American Left, know this and want to use this tool again.
Some of us are more worried by the rumbles that seem to be more about undermining the legitimacy of that consensus entirely, and wonder where it will lead before all this is over.
Good point. It'll be a wild ride...
Losing or abandoning a broadly accepted absolute standard of right and wrong creates a significant problem in its own right--the loss of a basis for justice. Without that basis for justice, one is generally left with a power struggle, pure and simple.
The influx of Marxoids into academia, media, and entertainment beginning nearly 50 years ago had as one (probably intentional) result the forced loss of the "America is an exceptional nation and generally a force for the good" standard. Little surprise then that opposition to the VietNam war took on the form of a power struggle, and that the _LEFT_overs of that era continue to work out of the very same, very tattered and mouldy playbook.
As a businessman I'm also wondering where economic decisions fit into this framework. They seem to me to be almost their own category, roughly between the engineering and the political, but I'm quite curious as to how others see it.
I'm not sure that the blame for the undermining of our existing basis of justice lies entirely with Marxists, although they are guilty of an error. The main problem with Marxism in America is that people tend to stop with it, instead of moving on to Schumpeter's reasoned (and excellent) rejection of Marxist economics; or they tend to ignore Schumpeter and jump from Marxism to Keynes, which is allied to Marxist thought in some respects. That is why there is so much bad economic thinking, and bad "social justice" thinking going along with it.
The real guilt here, though, belongs to the government itself. It belongs, in particular, to the Supreme Court; and to a lesser degree, to Congress.
Much has been made of the decision by the Left to use the Courts as a means of legislating unpopular laws, indeed of amending the Constitution through the Courts. No one, Left or Right, could have adopted such a strategy if the courts were not so eager to play along with it. If the Court and the lesser courts had adhered to their proper function, rather than readily agreeing to the arrogation of legislative powers, we would not be where we are. If they had kept their oaths, we would not be here.
The Supreme Court has for some time been in the business of creating new law, and even Constitutional law, out of whole cloth. It creates rights out of penumbras, and destroys rights and protections that are plainly stated. Their ability to do so is why the upcoming Court nomination will be such a titanic fight; it is why every Federal appointee is a fight; it is why our Federal court systems are forever understaffed, under Clinton as well as Bush.
The institution of the courts was not meant to bear this much weight. It will break under it, and yet the black-robed gentlemen keep stacking more weight on the creaking decks. Nowhere is that clearer than in the recent Kelo decision, unless it is in the commentary on O'Connor's resignation. Everyone is very keenly aware that the replacement of a swing voter means, literally, that the Constitution of the United States will not mean the same thing in a few years' time.
That, more than anything, is what is undermining our basis of justice. It is the fault of the government itself: the courts for taking on these powers to which they are not Constitutionally entitled, and the Congress for letting them get away with it. There is blame also for the people who have chosen to enable and exploit this fundamental flaw, but they are not the primary villains.
Bart, I think you'll find that the engineering/political decision model holds up as a useful thought process within economic decisions. Even in those situations there is resolution by force, i.e. via takeover battles etc.