4 ms·

Give me a break. I guarantee that when NASA was proposed, nobody had a presentation which showed all the companies that would result, nor all the side effects

by fbags 13y ago

Give me a break. I guarantee that when NASA was proposed, nobody had a presentation which showed all the companies that would result, nor all the side effects of the engineering talent that would be accreted in industry and universities, nor all the innovations that would occur not just from items listed in the RFPs but from items inspired by those items and so on. You're pretending that if something good happens after a government action it was all intentional and thus there were never any unintended positive impacts of anything, ever. Because government is full of far-sighted individuals who totally grokked that ARPAnet would eventually be used for every conceivable form of communication, entertainment, and commerce. The world is complex. Governmental programs aren't all good or all bad. Reality isn't compatible with your small-minded ideology. Deal with it.

CWuestefeld 13y ago
You're pretending that if something good happens after a government action it was all planned I'll admit that I'm walking a dangerous line with the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. I stand by my judgment of the examples cited, but agree there is some room for debate. I think the NASA example fails not because I'm being too narrow, but because the initial stated objectives were so fuzzy and broad. More importantly, these stated objectives were probably just secondary, a rationalization to enable the true objective - the nationalistic desire to win the "space race" against the Soviets. JFK, who initially got the whole ball rolling, actually wanted nothing to do with space exploration. His backing of it was really just a political ploy. (of course, in pointing this out, I'm making your point to a certain degree: JFK set out to score political points, and in the end he wound up bringing us velcro and ICBMs - yes, I'm being snarky there) That said, you've also given me the best reply to my question: ARPAnet. While it wasn't large at the time, it was certainly complex (beyond my ability to understand all of its technology, anyway). And since it was developed for defense purposes, the end positive consequences are in a whole different ballpark than what was originally planned. Anyway, what really drives my questioning here is a Megan McArdle post from yesterday [1] about a political science class at John Hopkins about policy failures. She quotes the prof. as talking about opening minds to critical thinking about the endless ways in which the best-laid plans can go awry. [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-04/learning-from-iraq-katrina-and-other-policy-disasters.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-04/learning-from-iraq-...
- hga 13y ago
  "nationalistic desire" implies an inward looking reason, right? As I read it, it was part of the fight for the hearts and minds of the 3rd world, the "Western" 1st World's approach to things vs. the Communist's 2nd World approach. Eisenhower let the Soviets orbit the first satellite to de facto establish his Open Skies policy, which the Soviets were mightily objecting to (the principle that outer space overflights were beyond territorial claims like those for airspace) ... but that the usual internal infighting led to our being visibly behind the Soviets in the most visible form of high technology. Which severely weakened our sales proposition to the 3rd World.... One explicit objective that developed, especially after LBJ took over, was uplifting the South with high tech. The opportunity of spending an extra billion in Texas is why we didn't build any infrastructure in space....
- fbags 13y ago
  If you're going to stand by your judgment, you should do so on both sides. Actors within government are generally aware that their actions have some negative consequences. They have a lot of smart people who tell them about problems that can (and will) occur, along with some likelihoods of the magnitude and frequencies of those problems. So under your classification scheme, there really aren't many unintended downsides of governmental action. You seem to be conflating the public marketing of a policy (it will be sunshine and rainbows) with the internal understanding of a policy (it will solve a few problems, create a few different problems, and hopefully net positive).
  - CWuestefeld 13y ago
    You seem to be conflating the public marketing of a policy with the internal understanding of a policy Yes. I'm doing that consciously, because I think it's appropriate. The very nature of the question is that when it's presented to the public, only the public marketing is on display. At the time we're debating a policy, we can guess at the internal agenda but we never really know for sure until later (if at all). So if we're trying to learn from history and apply it to today's policy debate, of what use is a history that separates the hidden agenda - a factor that we are unable to know and make use of at the time the decision is being made?

by fbags 13y ago

CWuestefeld 13y ago

You're pretending that if something good happens after a government action it was all planned I'll admit that I'm walking a dangerous line with the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. I stand by my judgment of the examples cited, but agree there is some room for debate. I think the NASA example fails not because I'm being too narrow, but because the initial stated objectives were so fuzzy and broad. More importantly, these stated objectives were probably just secondary, a rationalization to enable the true objective - the nationalistic desire to win the "space race" against the Soviets. JFK, who initially got the whole ball rolling, actually wanted nothing to do with space exploration. His backing of it was really just a political ploy. (of course, in pointing this out, I'm making your point to a certain degree: JFK set out to score political points, and in the end he wound up bringing us velcro and ICBMs - yes, I'm being snarky there) That said, you've also given me the best reply to my question: ARPAnet. While it wasn't large at the time, it was certainly complex (beyond my ability to understand all of its technology, anyway). And since it was developed for defense purposes, the end positive consequences are in a whole different ballpark than what was originally planned. Anyway, what really drives my questioning here is a Megan McArdle post from yesterday [1] about a political science class at John Hopkins about policy failures. She quotes the prof. as talking about opening minds to critical thinking about the endless ways in which the best-laid plans can go awry. [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-04/learning-from-iraq-katrina-and-other-policy-disasters.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-04/learning-from-iraq-...

hga 13y ago
"nationalistic desire" implies an inward looking reason, right? As I read it, it was part of the fight for the hearts and minds of the 3rd world, the "Western" 1st World's approach to things vs. the Communist's 2nd World approach. Eisenhower let the Soviets orbit the first satellite to de facto establish his Open Skies policy, which the Soviets were mightily objecting to (the principle that outer space overflights were beyond territorial claims like those for airspace) ... but that the usual internal infighting led to our being visibly behind the Soviets in the most visible form of high technology. Which severely weakened our sales proposition to the 3rd World.... One explicit objective that developed, especially after LBJ took over, was uplifting the South with high tech. The opportunity of spending an extra billion in Texas is why we didn't build any infrastructure in space....
fbags 13y ago
If you're going to stand by your judgment, you should do so on both sides. Actors within government are generally aware that their actions have some negative consequences. They have a lot of smart people who tell them about problems that can (and will) occur, along with some likelihoods of the magnitude and frequencies of those problems. So under your classification scheme, there really aren't many unintended downsides of governmental action. You seem to be conflating the public marketing of a policy (it will be sunshine and rainbows) with the internal understanding of a policy (it will solve a few problems, create a few different problems, and hopefully net positive).
- CWuestefeld 13y ago
  You seem to be conflating the public marketing of a policy with the internal understanding of a policy Yes. I'm doing that consciously, because I think it's appropriate. The very nature of the question is that when it's presented to the public, only the public marketing is on display. At the time we're debating a policy, we can guess at the internal agenda but we never really know for sure until later (if at all). So if we're trying to learn from history and apply it to today's policy debate, of what use is a history that separates the hidden agenda - a factor that we are unable to know and make use of at the time the decision is being made?