So, I was reading some articles today about how funding was cut for the levees in New Orleans due to the massive expense of the war in Iraq, and it got me thinking about 9/11, and how essentially, there is a massive fault in our collective feedback loop.
For *this* President to care about something, it has to affect him personally, either by hurting his allies, or hurting him politically. The problem is that in essence, the President *gains* from massive tragedy – after 9/11, his poll results went through the roof. He’ll undoubtedly be able to leverage this tragedy for political gain as well.
The problem is that essentially, the general public doesn’t care that preventative measures weren’t take, because as a whole, individuals find it hard to believe that these were known potential threats. Since *I* couldn’t have predicted 9/11, it took some time to internalize that our *government* as an organization *did*. Similarly, though the President has said that he didn’t think anyone could have anticipated the levees not holding up, many people did.
The issue, though, is that people seem content to hold the President and his administration to the same standards as some random idiot off the street.
This creates a problematic feedback loop, because essentially, the President is *praised* for massive governmental failures by increased polling numbers, while incurring *no punishment* for massive failures that *led* to the occurrence in question. Not only that, but had he *not* cut the budget for the levees, he’d have incurred *penalties* for overspending (well, even more overspending). In essence, had he taken action to prevent tragedy, he’d have lost in two ways. By taking no action, he wins. This, of course, discounts the tremendous human suffering involved, but I expect that in Bush’s calculations, that doesn’t factor in at all.
I’m not saying that this is a conscious conspiracy – I’m saying that we’re missing a feedback loop to govern this particular behaviour. It’s like training a dog. You praise it when it’s good, you punish it when it’s bad, and it learns to be good through positive feedback.
We’re giving the President positive feedback every time tragedy occurs. There’s simply no incentive for him to do anything to prevent it.
Here is a good summary of the levees being known to be a problem:
http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_echidneofthesnakes_archive.html#112557635057638481
In general (and not specific to this administration), there are a bajillion things that the government needs to look at to put into its budget. The problem is that almost all of these things are usually quite important, all in their respective ways. In hindsight, it is easy to say that we should not have cut the budget where it was cut, but we can only feel the effects of failures in the distribution. Now, what I want from the reigning administrations in general when determining the budgets is EXTREME knowledgeability and risk management to make sure that they are covering the biggest problems with the lowest risks.
And the problem with this administration is that I never feel confidence that it’s done the best risk assessment before the fact. It’s not so much that I’m wanting to think badly of this administration; I really *want* to think that it’s doing its best, but I want to be fairly sure that its best was the best of the smartest, best decision-making that can be done with the most informed and well-prioritized group of people who have contingency plans in case of failure in areas considered to be relatively low risk and therefore can be put aside until later, such a the levee work. I would never wish this horror on anyone.
My primary question is, then, when is it *ever* a good idea to cut the education budget? =\
Teachers (at least in California) have to buy their own school supplies and are no longer even allowed to put it on their tax write-offs. How messed up is that?
(Granted, that’s more of a local government issue than a Bush-issue…)