The Government-Designed Mouse

One of the other important things to realize is many students want their privacy. There are many, for example, females in our school that when they go through their menstrual cycle, they don’t want people to see their tampons and stuff. It’s unnecessary, it’s embarrassing for a lot of the students and it makes them feel isolated and separated from the rest of American school culture where they’re having essentially their First Amendment rights infringed upon because they can’t freely wear whatever backpack they want regardless of what it is.

-David Hogg

Q – What is an elephant?

A – A mouse built to government standards.

There has been a great deal of sniggering, in certain parts of the internet, over David Hogg’s reaction to the new rule requiring students at his school to wear transparent backpacks and carry ID cards. Wags have been gleefully pointing out that a person who is prepared to strip a sizable percentage of people of their (Second Amendment) rights is in no position to complain about someone else being willing to strip him of his (First Amendment) rights. I have no idea if David Hogg appreciates the irony or not – punishing vast numbers of people for the crimes of a few is hardly fair, after all – but it is a worthwhile demonstration of the folly of expecting government to do anything sensible about anything.

(A funny meme)

Governments, like all big organisations, are driven by four interconnecting rules:

First, a government simply cannot see the little details. It will try to apply a ‘one size fits all’ approach because it is rarely capable of seeing subtle differences. We all look alike to governments.

Second, a government (and/or the people running the bureaucracy) do not want to give up a single scrap of power. Heaven forbid! The public might discover they don’t need the government after all.

Third, to a very large extent, a government will either search for easy solutions that make it look as though they’re doing something, (regardless of whether or not the solutions will actually solve anything), or do nothing rather than let someone else (i.e. someone outside government) get the credit.

Fourth, a government (and a government department) will do everything it can to expand its power as much as possible. The idea of cutting back, even when budgets are low, is anthemia to the bureaucrats. Thus we see government responsibilities mushrooming even as the government’s ability to actually meet its responsibilities – both the original and new responsibilities – shrinks.

The simple fact regarding the Parkland Shooting is that there were plenty of warnings about the shooter, all of which were ignored through a mixture of dunderheaded attempts to reduce arrest and conviction rates and simple incompetence. The NRA is not to blame, any more than the AA is responsible for drunk-driving. The true enemy is a mixture of government incompetence and a system that literally can neither be gotten to work nor internally reformed.

This is a common problem. The US Federal Government has tried to mandate standards for education right across the United States, ranging from Common Core to endless tests upon tests and race-based discipline. These ‘solutions’ tend to cause more problems than they solve, because the natural response for teachers (or anyone, really) is to look for ways to improve their standing and grades rather than actually do something useful. The system is broken because the people at the top are fundamentally disconnected from the people at the bottom.

‘Ban the Box’ is another American example, an idea that only a terminally-disconnected person could love. In theory, low African-American employment in America is explained by African-Americans having criminal records, therefore the solution is to ban potential employers from asking about criminal histories. Logical, right? What actually happened was that African-American employment fell … because employers, unable to separate candidates with criminal records from those who didn’t have criminal records, made the logical choice not to hire any African-Americans.

On the other side of the Atlantic stands a tottering institution, the European Union. The basic idea behind the EU was sound enough. However, it rapidly began growing towards a transnational institution that was largely unaccountable to the people it claimed to represent and, in doing so, expanded its powers into all manner of areas. It isn’t an exaggeration to claim that a whole series of woes afflicting Europe, from financial disasters to the migration crisis, might have been averted if the EU had bothered to actually think about what it was doing instead of mindlessly grabbing for more power and influence. Nor did it consider that its actions, however logical they might have seemed in Brussels, scanned very differently at a local level.

What made this worse was a flat refusal to grant concessions that might – might – have averted a number of major problems. The EU did not offer David Cameron anything substantial he could use to claim a victory, which might have averted the BREXIT referendum or allowed Remain to win. Instead, it was coldly dismissive of the people on the ground who, logically, voted against what they saw as an alien power that was actively harmful.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say this again. The more you ask your government to do for you, the less it can do for you.

John Ross, of Unintended Consequences, had an argument that ran something like this:

Suppose you want to ban abortion. Suppose you succeed … abortion is now a federal crime. Mothers who abort their children go to jail for five years, doctors who perform abortions go to jail for ten. Sounds great, right? Life wins?

There’s a drug that causes abortions and it works, put simply, by inducing a miscarriage. Think about it for a moment. How long do you think it will be until you see federal agents harassing women who had natural miscarriages, citing probable cause? And they will be right – there will be probable cause. Those federal agents will want to improve their statistics in a manner that won’t put them in any danger … of course they’ll go after (formerly) expecting mothers. And those mothers will not be able to prove that they didn’t have an abortion.

The risk of giving the government – or any large institution – power is that they will use it in a manner you will not like. And by then it is difficult to stop them.

The government may not be evil, in the classic sense, but it is bloated and stupid and, to a very large extent, driven by forces most people cannot match. A large percentage of school shooters were on prescription drugs of one kind or another, but this is barely challenged because the drug industries have enormous clout. The teachers on the spot are often at the mercy of rules handed down by Washington or London, but they don’t have the ability to say no. Declaring schools gun-free zones seems logical, but it rests on an assumption that criminals follow the law … which is utter nonsense. Most school shootings in America seem to take place in gun-free zones …

(Another one)

So, as David Hogg says, we now have students exposed to (yet another) humiliating practice that will do absolutely nothing to prevent violence. Say what you like about Hogg, he’s right on this point. And, perhaps, it will teach students something about the blindness of the people right at the top.

The solution to this problem – and many others – is simple. Decentralise. Give the school administers, the ones parents and students actually see, actual authority to do something about potential problems. Come down like the wrath of god on bullies, no matter who they are; make it clear the rules apply to everyone. Suspend and expel problem students; head teachers to have the power to suspend or fire problematic teachers (and have clear guidelines to identify troublemakers). Resort classes to put people with the same basic level together. Concentrate on reading, writing and maths rather than social justice and the soft sciences; stop talking about what divides us and focus on what unites us. Decent school meals, no more tests than strictly necessary and teachers who actually know what they’re talking about …

I submit to you that these changes would radically improve British and American schools. But don’t look to the government to give them to you. Bureaucrats are very good at coming up with reasons why they shouldn’t let people have more control over their lives. And David Hogg and his friends, as well-meaning as they might be, are only making it worse.