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Freedom's Labaratory “We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.” Samuel Smiles, Self-Help.
We all benefit from progress. Our ability to enjoy life is greatly improved as man’s knowledge expands and our material wealth increases. Therefore, we all have to determine what conditions are necessary for society to maximize its rate of acquiring knowledge and its rate of putting that knowledge to work. How do we do this? Some hints may be found by looking at how non-governmental systems evolve. Let’s look at examples ranging from natural evolution, to individual learning, to the evolution of the arts, and to science. Political history can then be viewed in this light to see if it exhibits similar behavior. What we will find is profound. Many readers will say, “That was obvious.” Of course, most profound observations are obvious in retrospect. The question is: why don’t we apply these “obvious” insights when we make political choices? Many (if not all) of us view the natural world with awe. The complexity and beauty of nature is almost unimaginable. How did today’s life forms evolve from the lifeless planet that long ago condensed from an intergalactic dust cloud? At the risk of losing those with a religious explanation, I will point to the power of experiments (this may, of course, have been God’s design). What experiments? Over millions of years our earth has (at each instant in time) had millions of different combinations of environmental conditions (temperature, pressure, moisture, …). At each location where these different conditions prevailed and at each point in time, there were billions of different chemical interactions occurring … each with a vanishingly small chance of producing life. It was this huge number of “experiments” (billion of tries for each time and at each location) that eventually led to a miracle. The impossible, given an overall environment that was consistent with life, was inevitable. Nature tried too many times to fail. It was failure that was impossible. Without pretending to rediscover Darwin’s theory of evolution, the progress from the first instance of life to the present rests on the same foundation with the added notion of “natural selection.” Trillions of DNA variations/imperfections (each a new experiment) sorted through the filter of competition (keeping what works best and discarding what is less successful) are what led us to the present state of nature. When people say “Isn’t it amazing that all the life forms we see around us have all these wonderful characteristics that support their survival?”, we need to understand it is no accident (more precisely, it was an accident but all the other accidents were “failed experiments” and were discarded by history. History is, of course, still discarding “ok” designs as they are surpassed by even better designs). How does a child learn to walk? This is an example of experimentation also. Every attempted step leads to a pattern of muscular responses … some temporarily sustain the walking process while others lead to failure. This process is different from evolution in that adults provide some guidance, but nonetheless, the patterning of neural responses are the result of hundreds of random attempts at balance/control with the final design selected based on the success and failure of experimentation. Various societies have developed rich and beautiful musical traditions that evolved slowly over centuries. The evolution was relatively slow because of the narrow base of participation in the arts (the monarchs, the aristocracy surrounding the rulers, and those they funded) and the expense of the performances (probably not true of folk music, but most of that is lost to history). What happened when technology (e.g., records, radio, stereos, TV, CDs, DVDs) permitted low-cost participation and communication of music? Over roughly 100 years, we have had an explosion of musical innovation: Ragtime, Jazz, Big Band, Rock, Gospel, Dixieland, Reggae, Folk, Country, New Age, Rap, …, etc. While you may dislike many of these, almost everyone has at least one musical form that they love and they can enjoy. Each art form evolved via many thousands of experiments. Most had outcomes that were awful and they never progressed. But a very few caught someone’s attention and the word spread. Others experimented and, while most were failures, the best drove the genre. Experimentation, filtered by testing/evaluation, was how we learned and evolved. Science and engineering follow the same path. Scientists devise experiments to test various hypotheses. Across the world’s scientists, the test hypotheses represent “intelligent guesses” that cover the range of uncertainty in our knowledge. The result of each experiment informs the choice of the next experiment. Engineers follow the same process whether it is in the design of automobiles, spacecraft, or dishware. Drug companies and their researchers do the same. Hypothesize, experiment, learn, and then repeat the process. So what does this have to do with social policy? It is simple. The more freedom we permit, the more experiments we allow to be conducted, and the faster we learn and respond to those experiments. The greater diversity we permit and the faster we allow ourselves to learn from that diversity, the faster our standard of living will grow, and the more prosperous we will become. It is no coincidence that if you rank the countries of the world in order of their level of freedom, you also come close to ordering them according to their standard of living. The principle is extremely powerful: You learn and progress in direct proportion to the volume and diversity of experimentation. Freedom to try different things is central to discovery and progress. Let’s just touch on examples of how this applies to questions of social policy: Should we have freedom of speech? Of course we should. A greater diversity of opinions expressed is equivalent to more “thought experiments” and more opportunity to find good ideas and discard bad ones. Should we have just one central government or also 50 state governments? The 50 state governments are laboratories for experimenting with laws and policies. Social scientists often study the outcome of different state policies (laws, taxes, …) to discover what is best. Relegating all powers not given to our federal government to the states (the 10th Amendment) was a good idea that should be reinforced. How about town governments? Same answer. How about socialism? Should we nationalize industry? Even disregarding the moral issues surrounding theft, this is a really dumb idea! Socialism replaces companies that continually experiment with different approaches as they compete for business (and in the process weed out the bad approaches and those companies that, too often, invest in bad ideas) with a single, state-mandated approach. Experimentation is discouraged or eliminated, diversity is non-existent, learning cannot result, and economic failure is inevitable. History proves this beyond any doubt. The little progress socialist countries do make is largely a result of their ability to observe the outcome of experiments conducted by freer societies. Without being able to copy the technologies, methods, and products of societies that are free, socialist countries can only progress at a glacial pace. More government regulations? Putting aside regulations/laws that relate to avoidance of fraud, regulations limit diversity and therefore limit the learning process and retard economic progress. Regulation should be strictly limited to avoidance of fraud. Fraud can be viewed as dishonesty that distorts the results of experiments and the rational choices people would make in response to those experiments. Discouraging fraud speeds up the process of learning from experiments and rationally responding to experimental outcomes. Professional licensing? Licensing limits market participation and limits both the approaches to problems that are attempted and the learning that would naturally occur if such participation were allowed. Do-gooder explanations of the benefits of licensing aside, the real motivation for licensing is typically a self-serving desire to avoid competition by those already established in the profession. Government subsidies? Think of these as fudging the results of economic experiments. What if, historically, God (or mother nature) extracted a little strength from all living beings and, behind the scenes, used it to strengthen some life forms that were really not very well suited to survival? The overall viability of the world’s life forms would be weakened. The species that got the “godly subsidies” would, of course, be enthusiastic that the subsidies continue. Why do we want to tilt reality and fudge the results of free-market outcomes? If the market doesn’t support a company’s or an industry’s survival, sayonara. Tax incentives? These are
really just subsidies in disguise. They tilt the
experimental table and give us false results. False
results mean false conclusions and reinforcement for bad
ideas and inefficient methods. Our standard of living can
only suffer. The list of examples is endless. But remember the basic principle outlined here when public policy issues arise. Which alternative permits the greatest diversity of intelligent experimentation AND the most rapid, accurate, and decisive evaluation of experimental results? This is how society learns and puts its lessons into practice. The best solution is inevitably the one that leaves people free to exercise their own judgment and experiment with new ideas; not the one that imposes a single, inflexible government prescription. Support solutions that invoke the power of Adam Smith’s invisible hand to propel progress [free people acting to advance their own self-interest who, in the process and unintentionally, benefit us all], not reactionary government compulsion that leads us to failure after failure with no means of correction. Oh, one final observation:
Isn’t it wonderful that both morality and
practicality dictate that we choose freedom. Now that is
truly a magnificent result! Send your questions
comments to ValleyPatriot@aol.com |
Previous
articles in this series have dealt with the moral
foundations of political institutions. What was
“morally right” was the focus, not
practicality. Could it be that what is “right”
conflicts with what works in practice? If so, that would
require us to make a terribly difficult decision: Do we
do what is right or what works? Let’s see if we are
faced with this dilemma.