I’m not advocating anger as an emotional state—I think that’s usually counterproductive.
And it’s also important to avoid the kinds of internal inconsistencies you mentioned.
But I wouldn’t say criticism without suggestion is useless. My point is precisely the opposite.
Consider government corruption. Useful ideas can be proposed for limiting corruption, but the fact is that (in some states, and in some countries) nothing has really succeeded. This lack of success tends to make people see corruption as ordinary, as business as usual. That’s a logical fallacy. Lack of success at fighting corruption does not imply anything about how harmful or harmless it is. I remember a column by John Kass of the Chicago Tribune where he interviewed the families of children killed in car accidents by truck drivers who had gotten licenses in exchange for bribes. His point: just because corruption is traditional and common and we don’t know how to fix it, does not make it harmless.
Places such as Hong Kong have been able to rapidly move from very high to extremely low corruption through government campaigns spearheaded by groups able to attain power from outside the corrupt system. See Paul Romer’s recent post on the subject.
The test of whether a political idea to fight corruption isn’t whether it “really works” and would reduce corruption to zero.
That not really relevant. What matters is the expected utility of focusing more resources on fighting corruption instead of focusing the resources elsewhere.
I’m not advocating anger as an emotional state—I think that’s usually counterproductive.
And it’s also important to avoid the kinds of internal inconsistencies you mentioned.
But I wouldn’t say criticism without suggestion is useless. My point is precisely the opposite.
Consider government corruption. Useful ideas can be proposed for limiting corruption, but the fact is that (in some states, and in some countries) nothing has really succeeded. This lack of success tends to make people see corruption as ordinary, as business as usual. That’s a logical fallacy. Lack of success at fighting corruption does not imply anything about how harmful or harmless it is. I remember a column by John Kass of the Chicago Tribune where he interviewed the families of children killed in car accidents by truck drivers who had gotten licenses in exchange for bribes. His point: just because corruption is traditional and common and we don’t know how to fix it, does not make it harmless.
Places such as Hong Kong have been able to rapidly move from very high to extremely low corruption through government campaigns spearheaded by groups able to attain power from outside the corrupt system. See Paul Romer’s recent post on the subject.
That not really relevant. What matters is the expected utility of focusing more resources on fighting corruption instead of focusing the resources elsewhere.