Catastrophe is a precondition to fundamental reform
For some time I’ve had this title in my unwritten-posts inventory, but now the French riots, and the French government’s so-far-unimpressive response thereto, bring it to the fore:
Catastrophe is a precondition to fundamental reform
“Maybe we should rethink the station design ….”
Fundamental reform means major structural system in a system that is operating. This means disruption, overturning established priorities, and inescapably, upset some incumbent beneficiaries of the status quo. (If it were easy, it would have happened by now.)
All that adds up to very substantial political cost — for very uncertain return. So the typical elected official adopts a defense of the status quo worthy of Dr. Pangloss:
—It is clear, said he, that things cannot be otherwise than they are, for since everything is made to serve an end, everything necessarily serves the best end. Observe: noses were made to support spectacles, hence we have spectacles. Legs, as anyone can plainly see, were made to be breeched, and so we have breeches. . . . Consequently, those who say everything is well are uttering mere stupidities; they should say everything is for the best. (Chapter 1, page 4)
A burn rate of 150 cars a night is perfectly acceptable!
By such reasoning, as Voltaire reveled in showing, anything is acceptable:
“…and private misfortunes make the public good, so that the more private misfortunes there are, the more everything is well.” Chapter 4, pg. 19
The desire to believe everything will be all right is so powerful that it withstands any single short sharp shock and succumbs only to repeated periodic hammer blows. Any one fiasco we shrug off as an aberration. Only when failure becomes a pattern can it be seen as structural, and only then does denial give way to depression, and thence to acceptance. Hence there’s usually a long lag between the first horse being stolen and the barn finally being locked. Famous examples include:
- The stock market crash of Black Tuesday (
That one took only took four years of severe depression and a new president.
- The savings and loan bailout (1988) begat FIRREA (1989) which among other things regulates real estate appraisers.
- Fannie Mae’s accounting scandals will beget properly regulating GSEs, although roughly two years after the fact.
True reform is the ugly bastard child begotten by catastrophe. This has been understood by writers from
“I was able to formulate what I’m vain enough to call Orcutt’s First Law. I haven’t come up with a second one yet.”
“What’s the first one?”
“To get better, it must get much worse.”
– Ross Thomas, The Fools in Town Are on Our Side, 1970, page 45
As I’ve previously posted,
“What, me worry?”
For
Unfortunately, I remain deeply pessimistic. The nostrums currently being peddled by Messieurs Chirac and de Villepin — crocodile photo-op empathy, vague pledges of future job training, and a ninety-day extension of the state of emergency — add up to a nod and a patch, but nothing like a substantial program. They express not so much an understanding of their problems’ severity as the hope that with a smile and a handshake this will all just blow over.
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, right, greets a resident of
—All events are linked together in the best of possible worlds; for, after all,
· if you had not been driven from a fine castle by being kicked in the backside for love of Miss Cunegonde
· if you hadn’t been sent before the Inquisition
· if you hadn’t traveled across
· if you hadn’t given a good sword thrust to the baron
· if you hadn’t lost all your sheep from the good
you wouldn’t be sitting here eating candied citron and pistachios.
—That is very well put, said Candide, but we must go and work our garden.
Chapter 30, Conclusion
In short — the French situation is not bad enough yet, and not enough time has passed. I expect a winter calm and then a more vicious spring explosion.
“If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others?” Chapter 6, pg. 25
