To think about the sound bite, all you have to remember is these 6 key questions.
1) Just exactly what was said.
Remember Bill Clinton’s famous sound bite – “I did not have sex with that woman!” He was using a rather narrow definition of the word “sex”.
Those catchy slogans “Right to Life” and “Right to Choose” – do you know what a “Right” is? Do you think that both sides to the debate have the same definition?
And remember Tim Hudak’s infamous campaign blunder about “firing” those 100,000 civil service people?
Do you know what he really said? The actual quote uses the words “reduce the public sector by 100,000 jobs”
It was the Liberal Party’s campaign who transformed that into the “firing” sound bite.
There are approximately 1,331,000 public sector employees in the province (2011 data) – 99.6 public jobs for each 1000 people in Ontario.
– so cutting 100,000 jobs amounts to a 7.5% reduction.
Since it already dropped 3.5% in the last year as a result of normal attrition and a hiring freeze,
A 7.5% reduction can be achieved purely through normal attrition is just over 2 years.
– So much for “firing 100,000 public servants”!!!
2)What are the Benefits, and to whom are they going to accrue?
Who Benefits is usually fairly obvious – it is the benefits expected from a Nice Idea that justifies it as a solution in the first place.
But don’t take the obvious as the final tally.
A lot of nice ideas are floated by people who will benefit in non-obvious ways.
Think of the traffic lights at the entrance to the Nottawasaga Inn.
The beneficiaries obviously include all those victims of accidents that won’t happen.
And all of those users of the entranceway who no longer have to wait so long for a safe gap in traffic to exit.
But you also have to include the company and workers who were paid to put the traffic lights in.
And the politicians and public servant bureaucrats who can boast of “improving safety”.
And perhaps the owners of the Nottawasaga Inn who may get an increase in customer traffic now that there is a traffic light at their entranceway.
3) What are the costs, and who pays
These are usually not mentioned in discussions of “nice ideas”.
In the case of the traffic lights, one of the obvious groups to mention is the tax payer.
But don’t forget the group of drivers who never use the entranceway, and for whom the traffic light is a nuisance.
And all those who would have benefited had the money been spent elsewhere.
It is sometimes said that “If it saves one life, it is worth it!” — But that is nonsense. If it were true, there would be traffic lights at every intersection.
4) And since most of the Unintended Consequences that actually do result from the implementation of many “nice ideas” result from their interference in the normal market incentives
it is a recommended that you notice who is making the decisions.
Normal market incentives work properly when the decisions are being made by the consumers and suppliers.
Third party’s who make decisions never seem to get penalized for mistakes, and never seem to have their incentives in align with the good intentions behind the “nice idea”.
Why anyone would expect better decisions to be made by third parties who pay no penalties for being wrong is one of the mysteries of our time.
5) Identifying the likely Unexpected Consequences is made much easier by identifying what category of Market Disruption is being created.
6) And finally – what are the facts!! Not the rumours, or the opinions, but the facts.
A lot of nice ideas are floated and adopted on the basis of assumptions about who is going to benefit, and how.
But are those assumptions accurate?
Rent controls designed to provide affordable housing to the poor, actually result in less affordable housing.
Minimum Wage laws designed to provide a more livable wage to the poorly paid, actually result in higher unemployment for those it was intended to help.
Government control of the health care industry, intended to provide acceptable health care to those who cannot easily afford it,
actually provides declining quality health care at the end of increasingly long waiting lists – even to those who can afford an alternative.