Stress Fracture

Let me start with an example of what I mean. My point is not to pick on the people in question, as this fallacy is, sadly, pervasive amongst all political parties and walks of life.

Listening to NPR on the way back from lunch, I heard a discussion of the new Congress working to pass SCHIP’s extension, now that it won’t be vetoed straightaway despite having sweeping bipartisan support. This new opportunity came with, well, more opportunities, in this case for change to the bill by Congressional Democrats who no longer need any help passing this thing, since the incoming President will, as I say, sign it. This has Congressional Republicans miffed, partly, I’m sure, because they’re feeling a little irrelevant, but that’s not what interested me so much as one specific complaint.

Apparently the temporary extension included some rules essentially requiring applicants for the Medicare arm of things (for their kids, that being what the bill’s about) to present a bunch of original documentation establishing their citizenship, obviously to make sure illegal immigrants don’t get in on the deal. Whether or not you think that’s a priority, you might be willing to accept that a logical thing to do about it would, in fact, be to require such documentation.

But you would be wrong.

It turns out that independent studies have observed that these rules haven’t done a whole lot about illegal immigrants coming out to get some health coverage (however much there ever may have been in the first place), but it’s done a heck of a lot about legitimate applicants. Specifically, it’s caused them to not get the benefits, for one reason or another. So instead of presumably helping legal citizens by keeping the illegals out of their pie, it’s, well, No Pie For You.

This is how things can work in the real world. Just because something is simple and obvious doesn’t mean it actually works, and worse, it doesn’t mean that the Law of Unintended Consequences won’t bite you hard. Has DRM prevented music piracy? Not a whit, but it HAS inconvenienced a bunch of actual paying customers. Same story for any copy protection ever, really. There are plenty of independent studies that show abstinence-only education areas have an increased incidence of teen pregnancy, as it appears to not only fail to convince a significant fraction of teenagers to save it for marriage but also has the side effect of making sure that when they do fail to save it, they don’t know what to do to be safe about it.

This effect is something we should take seriously, and should insist our representatives in government (leaders, feh) should take seriously. Does drug prohibition actually work? (Alcohol prohibition sure didn’t.) Would firearm bans? Would banning abortion? What are, or might be, the unintended side effects of such policies? Have I given you enough examples on either side of the aisle to convince you this isn’t a partisan matter, but a greater one of being rational regardless of your purpose?

You may hear a lot about how you should trust your gut, but for crying out loud, go with what Ronald Reagan once said: Trust, but verify. Your gut tends to go with the obvious solution. And that just might be the totally wrong one.

Yours rationally,
R