Intellectual Freedom Podcast
Intellectual freedom is not just a buzzword. It is a fundamental necessity for human civilization and your life's flourishing. It is the essence of the human spirit to question, explore, and seek answers to the most profound questions that confront us every day.
Without intellectual freedom, we are but slaves to the whims of those in power, unable to challenge authority, push boundaries, or pursue truth. In our post-modern world, ignorance and oppression weigh heavy on all of us, stifling creativity, innovation, and progress. The quest for knowledge is not a luxury. It is a basic human need. Only through intellectual freedom can we unlock the full potential of our collective intellect and build a brighter future for all.
This podcast explores topics in culture, philosophy, wisdom literature, and complex problems we all confront in life.
Intellectual Freedom Podcast
Episode #117: The Uniparty's Dirty Game: Create a Problem to Solve a Problem
Have you ever wondered why a government, a system of institutions specifically designed to solve problems, often preserves and worsens the problems they are supposed to solve?
Buckle up as we dive into a lively discussion unraveling the Shirky Principle, which suggests governments are more prone to protect problems than solve them. We will break down a hilarious example involving the case of an Ontario-based carpooling site, PickUpPal.com, which was forced to shut down by the Canadian government not because it failed but because it was too efficient!
We will dissect the costly and often inefficient mechanisms of our government. Examples abound of how our government throws billions of dollars at problems that are never solved and often create worse problems in the process.
We will call out our dear politicians; however, it isn't malice or evil. Sometimes, it is mere stupidity how our politicians and bureaucrats go about solving problems. Brace yourselves as we scrutinize the colossal amount of funds funneled into sectors like the war on drugs, education, the military, and pandemic relief, with little to no palpable results. They simultaneously pledged billions to Israel for war, and Palestine for aid is called into question as we ponder who the real beneficiaries of this funding are.
Closing the episode, we scrutinize the deteriorating trust of the public in their government to solve problems and their motives in taking on issues.
It's a stark reality that politicians from both ends of the spectrum, the Democrats and the Republicans, often create problems only to present themselves as the solution.
Can we really hope for change when the same forces that created the problems continue to wield control and claim to be the solutions?
This episode promises to push you out of your comfort zone, compelling you to question the status quo and critically evaluate government actions.
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Welcome to the intellectual freedom podcast where we unravel thought-provoking concepts and dive into different world of ideas. As all of you know, and I'm your host, david Hopkins, and in today's episode, taking on a funny topic it's not a comedic funny topic like ha ha ha funny, but funny in a dark, a sad and a cynical way we're going to be exploring together the shirky principle and it's a fascinating insight into how institutions, and especially our governmental institutions, deal with quote unquote problems. And you know, while preparing for this podcast, I ran across a quote from Upton Sinclair and I think when I read it it hit the nail on the head for me when he said this quote it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. End quote. Well, of course, we don't have any shortage of problems right now that the government needs to solve, absurd government debt, inflation that can't seem to be tamed, multiple wars in multiple parts of the world, just to name a few headlines. But today, when discussing the shirky principle, I want to focus on just a few things. I think understanding this one principle it's going to go a long way in understanding the current state of affairs in our sprawling government and the different things that our politicians try and tell us they're doing, to quote unquote, solve the problems.
Speaker 1:So the shirky principle is basically the adage that institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. In short, our government doesn't actually want to solve a problem. I mean, what have you ever heard from the mouth of a democrat or a republican? Hey, we built this agency, we solve the problem and now we can close this agency and reinvest the money into a new problem. Heck, almost feel like a comedian even saying such a thing, because it never, ever happens. The chance of a government agency actually solving the problem that they were created to solve and they set out to solve and then disband and put the money back in the coffers of the taxpayers to take on new issues is about as likely as finding a snowball in hell or seeing a big fly.
Speaker 1:So suppose we take a government agency that's meant to address a particular societal issue. Well, almost immediately it's going to get defensive and territorial. It's going to scratch out its turf, it's going to protect its funding and its existence from any other group trying to compete and it actively actually actively it's going to hinder cooperation or attempts by other to address that issue, to ensure that this new agency remains relevant. Remember back to 9-11 when, after the horrific event happened and all kinds of study and analysis and different groups were put together to see what happened, we pretty much figured out that the FBI, the CIA, other intelligence agencies, law enforcement, had almost no communication amongst their departments. They were all completely territorial, with the me and mine mentality. They weren't focused on working together to make sure something like that wouldn't happen. They were worried about keeping theirs and controlling theirs. I mean, I guess, to their credit, post 9-11, and the supposed issue has been addressed. I mean, whether that's actually fixed or not, who knows. But the territorial aspect of the Shurkey principle, it's a key characteristic.
Speaker 1:Another fact with government agencies is that these agencies become so focused on how it addresses the issue that it fails to adopt better or new solutions as they become available. This is not breaking news. Our government moves slower than a sloth in a tree and once it goes down a path it's really slow to change. Very different from the private sector, which has to be agile, focused and looking for a competitive edge, government agencies tend to be more concerned about keeping the ship floating in the direction they began. Their biggest concern seems to be to keep the problem big and relevant, so they warrant more and more funding and employees and thus prolonging the issue and getting bigger and more powerful.
Speaker 1:There are plenty of examples in the federal government to apply the Shurkey principle. Just some statistics I found in 1960 there were roughly 200 government agencies. Sure seems like a lot, but that's nothing compared to 2023. There are now over 400 government agencies. So basically, we see more and more agencies and people taking on more and more problems without much success solving any of these problems. This system just keeps growing and growing. But to share just one funny example of the Shurkey principle from our from our friends up north in Canada, which, by the way, you can find described in a book called cognitive surplus, and this book is really interesting. It is written by clay shurkey, uh, and it contains one of the the first discussions, obviously the shurkey principle with the name clay shurkey.
Speaker 1:But canadians, especially around the ontario area, you you may be very well aware of this story, so pick up, pal calm. What this was is it's a. It's a carpooling site and it's designed to coordinate drivers and riders planning to Travel along the same route. I mean it's a great idea. Right in May 2008, the ontario based bus company Trent way wager Petition the ontario highway transport board to shut, pick up, pal down, because by helping coordinate drivers and riders, it worked way too well to be a carpool. What it worked way too well and you're going to go to the transportation board to shut them down because it's working too good. I mean, it seemed like an awesome, no brainer idea to alleviate a number of problems for people Inside of a city with that needed transportation. But oh no, solving the problem would be problematic. So Trent way wager invoked a certain section 11 of the ontario public vehicles acts and this just basically stipulated that carpooling Could happen only between home and work, rather than, say, school or hospital. It had to happen within municipal lines, it had to involve the same driver each day and gas or travel expenses could be reimbursed no more frequently than weekly. I mean, what a bunch of, what a bunch of crazy bureaucratic language. Trent way wager was arguing that because carpooling used to be inconvenient Basically it should always be inconvenient and that if inconvenience disappeared, then it Then it could be reinserted by legal fiat through this section 11.
Speaker 1:Nothing like keeping a problem around for the good old state funded bus company so that they could just keep on inefficiently, keep people beholden to them by slow routes, expensive routes, routes that don't get them where they need to go. Curiously, an organization that commits to helping a society manage a problem Also Many times commits itself to preserving that very same problem. And this, this issue in ontario, bears that out, because if its institutional existence hinges on societies continued need for its management, they'll never go away. See these bus companies. They provide a critical service public transportation, but they also commit themselves, as Trent way wager did, to fending off competition from alternative ways of moving people around from one place to another. And when this alternative became Way more efficient, way more effective Maybe, is cost effective, well, all of a sudden we got to stop that thing, that solving the problem that the public transportation Was supposed to solve in the first place.
Speaker 1:So the ontario board upheld Trent way wagers complaint and and they basically told Pick up pal hey, you got to stop operating in ontario. But here's where I, you got to give pick up pal some credit. They didn't just back down and walk away, they decided to fight the case. They still lost in the next hearing, but but and here's the big thing. You kind of got a spur under the public and public attention Became really focused on the issue and in, especially with a year of very high gas prices uh, financial downturns. Literally almost nobody took Trent way wager's side. The public reaction, I mean it channeled itself, I guess, through everything from online petitions to t-shirt sales, and I mean they even add on some of the messaging I read about this, say, pick up pal on t-shirts printed and which is kind of cool. But the idea that people couldn't use such a service Was just too hot for the politicians in ontario, even in ontario, to ignore. And within weeks of Trent way wagers victory, the ontario legislature amended the vehicles act to make pick up pal legal again. So, voila, they were able to hang around.
Speaker 1:But no for certain, if the people had not rose up, got loud enough, nothing would have happened. The shirky prince would have played itself out in textbook fashion. Pick up pal would have been killed. Trent way wager would be lamenting to the public and their next press release about the huge Transportation problems in ontario and the need for more money, research, staff, funding for all kinds of new initiatives to solve the problem all over again, which, of course, would probably never be solved by this agency, considering that they tried everything in their power to fend off an innovative solution, or at least one that would have helped alleviate the problem.
Speaker 1:But I mean, ontario and canada is not unique in this. From tax code to immigration to voting you pretty much name it in government. Well, the shirky principle is everywhere. Heck for me right now, in this very complex problem of israel and hamas and palestine, we. We have our government Giving millions, if not billions, if not billions to israel, and also two huge aircraft carrier groups traveled right to the middle east region. Lord knows how much that cost. But giving billions to israel to destroy hamas in palestine. Then, even before the bombs really started dropping, the president of the united states promises to give palestine millions to rebuild. Now, if that isn't quick, promote the war by blowing up palestine. Then provide aid to rebuild what you just destroyed before you have really even begun the war. Wow, this isn't all that new Heck.
Speaker 1:After the Iraq Wars, the United States spent over $200 billion on rebuilding Iraq between the years of 2003 to 2014. Despite this massive investment, many Iraqis still lack basic necessities like reliable electricity and clean water. The effectiveness of the reconstruction effort has been widely criticized and obviously far from effective. But hey, the Shurkey principle strong, as an estimated 80% of that $200 billion that was spent on Iraq rebuilding Iraq went to American companies. Surprise, surprise. This means that American companies, like the Black Rocks of the world, received about $160 billion in contracts for work in Iraq to rebuild it, after America spent an estimated $815 billion on the Iraq War during the combat phase, which lasted from 2003 to 2011. So invade Iraq, create the problem, blow up Iraq, bring the solution, nation building, rebuilding destroyed infrastructure and, in the end, huge swaths of Iraq still need more. Iraqis, for a large part, still despise the West, and don't be surprised if once again, at some point in the future, this problem that started the Iraq War doesn't reemerge yet again.
Speaker 1:But maybe wars aren't always the greatest example. Wars can be really complex. Maybe not textbook examples of the Shurkey principle, but for me that's what kind of sprung to mind, to my mind anyway, while reading about the Shurkey principle this week. But where I think it hits the nail square on the head is when it declares the complex solutions like from government entities can become so dedicated to the problem that they, and only they, are the solution to the problem, and often they are in fact the ones that it had verdantly started or perpetuated the problem to begin with. Now, I'm not saying every time the government intentionally starts the problem, as sometimes these agencies are so big they just make stuff worse in general. But the fact remains they often create the very problems and then they claim that they alone are the solution. They just have to roll my eyes.
Speaker 1:After new administrations take over, after an election, you know the revolving door of Democrats and Republicans and then back again. But have you ever noticed that the party that is dead set against increasing the debt in Washington DC is the party that's out of power? But the party that's in power will spend like a drunken sailor. Democrats were just fiscal conservatives. On everything Trump wanted to spend money on, they would cry oh, that's such a massive waste of money, it's irresponsible. We have such a huge debt. And the Republicans were just sign on for all the spending. Right now, republicans with Biden are aghast at the runaway spending, but the Democrats are all for it. It's all required and it's all needed. The fact is, these two parties claim to be the solution to the federal deficit and care deeply about it when their party is out of power and they don't get the purse strings to spend the money. But when they're in power, it is spend, baby spend, and the problem will persist and persist, and persist. This way, they are all the problem and they all claim at various times when it's politically convenient or they have the power to be the solution.
Speaker 1:In real, simple terms, the entirety of the Shurkey principle is this One institutions stick to problems they can't fix. It's great for politicians to grab a side of an issue that they can't fix. Government agencies they often intentionally hold on to problems because it helps them stay important, often because it feeds their ideological base. Even in the private sector. If you're a diversity, equity, inclusivity officer at a major corporation or a university that is paying you really good money and I know they get paid really good money would they ever, ever, walk into the president's office and say, hey, my job is done. Here we are diverse, we are equitable and we are inclusive. We did it, so fire me.
Speaker 1:Of course, they will never say that there's always going to be an issue and it's never going to end as long as they want to work there. The government does the same thing. Number two when you create really complex solutions, you can make problems last a very long time, as it takes infinite time to implement very complex solutions. I mean solving huge, complex problems. Let's face it, it's never easy. But the bigger the agency and the bigger the problem. The solutions of our government usually don't solve the problem, but often make the problem bigger and last longer. Yet somehow our bloated bureaucracy is never full and there's always room to swallow more. Number three everything tends to keep problems going. According to the Shurkey principle, every entity tends to prolong that problem at solving. They tend to prolong these problems without making any claims about their intention. They almost never do they set end dates to their existence. But rather, no matter what success or lack of success, there is always much, much, much more to be done.
Speaker 1:Accounting for the Shurkey principle can be beneficial when it comes to several things. Intellectually, it can help us in three ways Understanding the past and current behavior and predicting future behavior, and then modifying behavior. This is really where the rubber meets the road when we hear our politicians speak, when we hear our government officials speak, when we hear bureaucrats speak. So if we understand the Shurkey principle, it helps you understand why certain institutions are seemingly so bad at solving certain problems, despite all the resources that they're given, like time, effort, money that they dedicate to these problems. Thus we, as the people, when politicians in the Uniparty or the Duopoly, whatever you want to call it the Democrats or Republican whenever they tell us they're going to solve the problem for us, we just need to create this agency. It's urgent, it's for your safety, it's for your convenience, it's going to solve this glaring global catastrophe with these billions of dollars. Well, maybe we can with listen with our eyes a little more wide open before signing on to this rhetoric.
Speaker 1:It helps us predict future behavior, for example, to help predict how some of these problems are actually designed, created or implemented to perpetuate a problem In order to improve a politician's status, a political party's messaging, destroy an opponent or elevate credibility for personal gain and lead to worse outcomes. What's the old adage? You can't predict the future without understanding the past. Well, the Shurkey principle has hundreds of examples in politics, in the private sector, that help us predict future behavior. And that future behavior of them creating and designing problems that they never solve or things that they say they have the solution to that never actually arrive, is just so glaringly obvious. It's hard to ignore and modifying behavior. For example, if the Shurkey principle makes you aware of someone's incentive to prolong a problem, we, the people, are armed with knowledge to attempt to eliminate these perverse incentive politicians tell us are good, and we, the people, can exercise our vote to disincentivize this type of problem, creating behavior. In practice, when we understand the Shurkey principle, it helps us assess relevant factors about our situation, such as what's causing someone to act according to this principle and what outcomes their behavior leads to it.
Speaker 1:Let's face it Trust in our government right now Is it an all time low? The Pew Research Center conducted a poll. This is fairly recent, september 2023. The poll found that only 15% of Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right just about always or most of the time. This is among the lowest trust measures in nearly seven decades of polling. The poll also found that trust in the government is low across all groups 2% of Republicans, 3% of Democrats say that they trust the government just about always. I mean, these numbers are atrociously bad, and so it becomes easy to just tinfoil, hat everything and believe every time, always, that while the government has some ulterior motive and they'll mess up. I mean, that's a lot of time, that's me a lot of the time actually, but both you and I, we have to at least suspend judgment each instance long enough to evaluate a situation on its own merits, despite our lack of trust.
Speaker 1:So there are a couple of other concepts that we can put in our intellectual toolbox when accounting for this shirky principle. The first one is called we bono, and it's a Latin phrase that means who benefits, who benefits, and it's used to suggest that there's a high probability that those responsible for a specific event or a specific agency or a specific problem are the ones who stand to gain from it. If we analyze this, we may find some root causes to help us dig through our perceptions and opinions on significant issues, rather than just go tinfoil hat all. They're just trying to destroy us, no matter what, whether it be war, cultural issue, economic issue. Understanding, though, who benefits the most when we hear an agency or a politician speak on some initiative, some new program or new spending plan, it can be a real eye-opener for us, and whether we should get behind something and support it or not is trying to figure out who benefits from it, and it's usually not the superficial. It's going to help all the little people. Almost never is that the case. We need to look at these things deeper, and that's called qui bono.
Speaker 1:The other related concept is handlens razor, and this is a well-known adage that you should never attribute to malice or evil what is adequately explained by stupidity and which would apply broadly, suggested when we, when we assess people's actions, we should not just assume that they acted out of a desire to be evil or cause harm, as long as there is a reasonable alternative explanation. Sure, yeah, sometimes, well, maybe many times, our government acts with malice or greed or other evil intention. I mean, that happens for sure, you know, sometimes well, how do I say it? Our politicians are economists, or our bureaucracy, or military intelligence or government agencies. They're not always staffed with intelligent people, or they've hired people with such arrogance and pride that they fail all the time to just see things properly and they just make really dumb decisions. That's handlens razor.
Speaker 1:You know, the world is complex and well, it's damn hard to get to core truths, root causes, and then solve an actual problem. Maybe sometimes handlens razor is true, and our politicians are not always malevolent, but just well, maybe they're ignorant and messed up. See, in our world today, though, it isn't easy to give our government the benefit of the doubt that they're ignorant, that maybe they just messed up and they're not evil, because the foundations of trust, as I mentioned, have been so that have been shaken so deeply in our government that the Shurkey principle is maybe more relevant than when it was first envisioned and coined back in 2010. It's hard to not go full stop libertarian, but geez, as governments are so ineffective and or corrupt anymore, and that old adage that government work expands to consume the resources available for its completion, it's just, it's just almost too true to be ignored. I mean, really our government. When they need money for something, they always, or at least almost always, consume every initial resource they are given to complete the work, and then they won't complete it and they will ask for more and more and more to solve the problem that they were initially tasked to solve, which never gets solved. In along the way, they want to take on more and more problems and things without ever solving the reason they were formed or funded in the first place. This revolving door makes me think that the smaller we can get our government, the better off we may be, because these agencies, these bureaucracies in the military, just simply can never get enough. They're insatiable. They will spend and spend and spend and well, never solve anything, yet continue to consume more resources, which is one of the key reasons why trust is so low. Then, as these administrative bodies get bigger, they tend to not get more efficient, but rather their substantial decrease in its efficiency. And then once again it comes back to our government's desire and officials in charge of these agencies to increase the number of their subordinates and their officials tendency to create work for each other.
Speaker 1:Politicians on the campaign trail for both parties lament the problem of divisiveness and ideological extremism. Such a huge problem, they say, and they are the solution to the problem in DC and they're going to bring people together. Then, shortly thereafter, they're on cable news, twitter, giving a rally to their ideological bases, stoking the fires of extremism and division. Politicians on the campaign trail lament the jaw dropping 32 trillion and that's 32 trillion with a T national debt in the United States. Then go back and vote for aid packages for wars, humanitarian aid, giveaways, stimulus packages, without even batting an eye. We spend more on education in America per student than any nation and our school system is in shambles. The solution is always what? More money, more programs, more administrators? We spend more on the military in America than the next five countries combined. Do we feel safer? How long has it been since we achieved peace through strength? I mean almost never in my lifetime, almost never.
Speaker 1:The United States has spent an estimated one trillion dollars on the war on drugs since its inception. The problem is drugs, the solution. We're going to end drug use. How close are we to solving this problem? We're probably further away today than we were when we first took on this problem. According to a report by the People's Vaccine Alliance, the top 20 pharmaceutical companies received over $100 billion in combined revenue from COVID-19 vaccines and treatments in 2021 and 2022. This includes both direct payments from the government and sales to private health care providers. Well, let's face it, the results were oh less than stellar by most people's account. To be kind about how effective the vaccine was. As of today I heard a report less than 3% of Americans have actually got the latest booster, because it doesn't really prevent COVID.
Speaker 1:We spent an estimated $2.3 trillion on the war in Afghanistan, as I already mentioned, $815 billion in Iraq. And did we win? Are they our allies? Is the problem solved. Now we're starting again. We've already dropped at least $80 billion in the urcraine to help solve a problem, with a pledge of another $60 billion. And now the latest, israel. We've pledged to Israel to blow stuff up and humanitarian aid to rebuild what we just blew up over $100 billion for that, or at least that is what the talk is anyway.
Speaker 1:Do any of us actually believe that anytime in the near term, either wars are going to be over in the urcraine or Israel and peace will be achieved? Sadly, I don't believe so. Who's going to benefit from this? The military industrial companies, for sure. The Lockheed Martins of the world, the General Dynamics, the Black Rocks on the rebuild side, and all those associated companies.
Speaker 1:I mean, I wish I had an answer to all this madness.
Speaker 1:I could go on and on and on, but all I know is, the more and more I open my eyes and look at the stories we are told, I see the shirky principle play out in different ways, in different forms Huge government agencies and politicians creating problems to solve problems.
Speaker 1:I think the veil has been torn down in many ways and we can see pretty clearly that well our government has forfeited the right to be trusted in so many areas. In many ways, and many times, the very people that claim they have the solution to the problem are the very people that created the problem. So maybe the problem is staring us in the face. I'm looking at you, democrats and Republicans, and the duopoly and uniparty. Perhaps the way to solve the problem at its core is not to include either of these parties in crafting solutions. Just something to think about, because if we just leave these two parties in power, there is little you can guarantee in life. But one thing is pretty sure we will continue to see politicians create a problem, then claim to be the solution to the very problem that they created in the first place, and then, years down the road, that problem is going to be the same or worse.
