From the indefatigable JK, a link to yet another story of swaggering government overreach and unintended consequences.
A sage once was asked:
“Master, what is wisdom?”
“Good judgment.”
“And how does one acquire good judgment?”
“Bad judgment.”
Unfortunately, this process works for people, but not democracies, where those who make the bad judgments never pay the cost.
3 Comments
Probably because we Americans don’t have a “falling on our own swords” ethos as they do here in Korea. When you’re shamed in Korea, you tearfully apologize, the media eat it up, you retire, and then you’re forgiven. If you’re President Noh Mu-hyeon, you then ponder your many mistakes and jump off a cliff. I’m still trying to decide whether, in Noh’s case, that was the honorable way out or the coward’s way out. But it might be nice to see some US officials implement the same solution. At least the same problems won’t arise again from the same officials. (In the States, longevity gives us Jimmy Carter.)
(Of course, Noh Mu-hyeon served his presidential term until the end, but the scandals during his term plagued him after he left office.)
Right, but I’m not talking about the “shaming” that follows exposure of corruption. Eastern cultures certainly take public shaming more seriously than the modern West, though I don’t think corruption itself is any rarer.
What I’m getting at is an intrinsic weakness of democracy itself when it comes to policy-making. Because its lawmakers come and go, and because there is never a single point of responsibility, the system strongly encourages legislators to pursue short-term gratification of the particular coalitions of donors, voters, and colleagues that support them and keep them in power. The long-term consequences of their actions will be somebody else’s problem, and the promises they make will be somebody else’s to keep.