Welcome to Litsy!

Ideological crusaders often fall into the trap of thinking that they are living in a revolutionary moment and that the standard political rulebook no longer applies. The Weather Underground in the 1960s and the Gingrich revolutionists in the 1990s both thought that they could dispense with politics as usual. They were both wrong. And they both did a lot of damage in the process.

“Freedom is more important than equality, and the attempt to realize equality endangers freedom.“ --Karl Popper

“Those who can, build. Those who can't, criticize.“ --Robert Moses

Many (most?) of us long to be “on the right side of history.“ But this way of thinking suggests there is a bright line between right and wrong. Things are rarely that simple. Ideas are not so easy to sort into clear categories marked “good“ and “bad.“ Objectivity may be a platonic ideal that no human can ever achieve, but “moral clarity“ is a false god that can easily lead to extremism and intolerance.

Our default setting should be to admit the obvious: our problems are big and our brains are small. If we knew how to solve difficult social problems, we would have done it by now. A better civic discourse would acknowledge our limitations and commit to a process of learning by trial and error in an effort to build knowledge over time. That's why humility is essential to our brand of incrementalism.

In 2001, Texas became the first state to offer reduced in-state college tuition to undocumented young people. Subsequent efforts to change the law have failed repeatedly, perhaps because of its economic benefits: the advocacy organization the New America Economy estimates that each new class of undocumented graduates (who have to have lived in Texas for three years and apply for legal status after graduation) provides $400 million in...

“The stereotype of the illiterate, poor and rural migrant reaching the borders of affluent countries has to be abandoned,“ writes Francesco Castelli, a professor at the University of Brescia in Italy. “The poorest people simply do not have the means to escape war and poverty and remain trapped in their country or in the neighboring one.“

On bail reform in New York:

Controversially, the new law did not allow judges to consider whether someone was a risk to public safety in making a decision on whether to set bail or not. (Almost every other state in the country permits judges to do so).

Epidemics seldom end with miracle cures. Most of the time in the history of medicine, the best way to end disease was to build a better sewer and get people to wash their hands. “Merely chipping away at the problem around its edges“ is usually the very best thing to do with a problem; keep chipping away patiently and, eventually, you get to its heart. --Adam Gopnik

The unpopularity of “Defund the Police“ among people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds has been well documented. A USA Today/Ipsos poll found that only 22 percent of respondents supported 'the movement known as 'defund the police.'“ In contrast, seven in ten supported increasing police budgets.

According to a 2020 Gallup study, when asked whether they want the police to spend more time, the same amount of time, or less time than they currently do in their area, most Black Americans--81 percent-- want the police presence either to remain the same or to increase.

Tufts University professor Eitan Hersh blames some of this polarization on “political hobbyists.“ Hersh believes that real politics is about “the methodical pursuit of power to influence how the government operates.“ In contrast, political hobbyists are more likely to spend their time consuming the news than volunteering in political organizations. Political hobbyists treat politics like a parlor game, an opportunity to debate abstract issues.

Thomas Edison said it best: “Vision without execution is hallucination.“

One of the core appeals of incrementalism is that it allows us to face the world as it really is, as opposed to its idealized form. It also encourages humility about how much change is possible or desirable given limited information and uncertainty about the impact of our actions.

Human beings, who always face severe cognitive, conceptual, and political constraints, cannot operate according to a comprehensive ideal. Instead, they take shortcuts and seek to reduce their decision-making burden into manageable chunks. They do so not out of excessive fealty to the status quo but because it is the best way to actually get things done in the real world.

In recent days, the two of us have, at various points, taken a subway ride, sat in a local park, drunk clean water from a tap, and visited a public library. The streets we walked on were, by and large, clean and safe. No policeman approached us looking for a bribe. All of these building blocks of a good life can be traced back, in one way or another, to incremental improvements by government.

(continued) Looking at Rosling's efforts, Matt Ridley, the author of The Rational Optimist, concludes: “People are worse than ignorant: They believe they know many dire things about the world that are, in fact, untrue.“ According to Ridley, one of the reasons for our predilection for pessimism is simple: bad news is more sudden than good news, which is usually gradual.

Swedish public health expert Hans Rosling began asking people a fundamental question about global poverty: has the percentage of the world population that lives in extreme poverty almost doubled, almost halved, or stayed the same over the past 20 years? Only 5 percent of Americans got the right answer: extreme poverty has been cut almost in half. A chimpanzee picking answers at random would do much better.

Amara's Law, named after Stanford University computer scientist Roy Amara, argues that we tend to overestimate what can be accomplished in the short term and underestimate what can be done in the long term.

As Giuseppe Lampedusa, the Italian author of The Leopard, once wrote: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.“

Outstanding! Such an important book. A much-needed return to common sense.
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