This excellent post by Alex Tabarrok about the effect of removing traffic lights — traffic improves — reminds me of how I discovered the work of Jane Jacobs. Browsing in the Transportation Library at UC Berkeley, I came across The Economy of Cities.
That order arising from below (from individual drivers and pedestrians) can be much better than order imposed from above (by traffic engineers) was a point Jacobs made often. The details in Alex’s post and the video he embeds don’t just suggest that traffic lights in thousands of places could be profitably removed, they also support more radical thinking:
- Traffic engineers were completely wrong in all these cases. Trying to improve something, they made it worse. How did we get to a world where this is possible? Surely it isn’t just traffic engineers.
- What would happen if students were given more power to control their own education? Perhaps we would need far few professors. I gave my students much more control and found (a) my job got easier and (b) my students learned much more.
- What would happen if all of us were given more power to control our own health, rather than rely on gatekeepers, such as doctors? Perhaps we would need far fewer doctors.
The essence of my self-experimentation is that I took control of my health. Rather than seeing a doctor about my early awakening, or waiting for sleep researchers to find a solution, I found a solution.
If law and order would follow spontaneously from less regulation, how would that work in a community of Bernie Madoffs?
And regarding our society’s experts on law and order — attorneys — how many law students could be trusted to take the LSAT exams or the bar exams on an honor system, without proctors watching them?
There is a good reason for regulations and enforcement.
I particularly don’t like the fact that doctors are the gatekeepers for prescription drugs. When I get a cat bite, I ought to be able to go to the drugstore and buy some Augmentin myself, without first jumping through hoops (and possibly waiting for a few days while I can get an appointment).
Ever read the Tao Te Ching?
Re Bernie Madoff: perhaps the existence of the SEC made investors less careful.
G, no I haven’t read the Tao Te Ching. Why do you ask?
@ Seth:
From chapter 60:
“Ruling the country is like cooking a small fish.”
i.e. you ruin it with too much prodding.
I think the Gia-fu Feng translation is the best one; you can read it all here:
https://thedailyg.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/tao-te-ching-complete-text/
A lot of these ideas floating around just now about self-organisation, not trusting experts on faith, and doubting models of reality, etc have been around for thousands of years. The problem is that the writings are in an ancient language and nothing like the kind of scientific exposition that nonhistorical scholars can take seriously as a source of good method or theory. But they dig much deeper than the faddy meme-mongers we tend to esteem these days, I think. I like a lot of what Nassim Taleb and Richard Dawkins have to say, but I take Lao Tzu or Chuang Tzu over them any day. They didn’t stop once they were onto something powerful that could sell books – they wanted a complete philosophy of life. They were sort of reticent and doubted whether anything of worth could be transmitted as easily as just reading a book.
It’s like that James lyric, “I saw the crescent, you saw the whole of the moon.” Ancient philosophers were aiming for some kind of ideal life; I get this general sense that thinking has left that behind for the time being; we think that’s romantic and that life is sterner stuff. But the weird thing is, those ancient idealists were living in much sterner circumstances than us. We think they were prescientific crackpots with some good ideas, but in many cases they had a more urgent eye on empirical reality than most intelligent modern people. Yeah, maybe they went on pilgrimages to go hallucinate in a cave, but they had to survive bandits, nature and who knows what trials along the way.
This is why Buddhist monasteries emphasise physical work so much – as well as preventing physical torpor, it stops the monks from becoming the classic absentminded professor.
James Carse is a contemporary thinker who might be more like the kind of deeply aspirational philosopher I’m waxing on here.
G, have you read The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, by Jonathan Haidt? It’s a truly excellent book, and Haidt covers some of the same topics that you mentioned in your comments above.
Alex, thank you for the reference, but it looks to me like a ‘positive psychology’ scholar mining ancient wisdom for nuggets that will improve mood as evidenced statistically. The ancients had something different in mind, and so do I.
Not that I think people should blunder into misery and high blood-pressure!
I am not like those Scientologists who think psychology is evil because it conflicts with some religious paradigm. My beef with PS’s ‘mining’ of ancient wisdom is that they are trying to achieve mundane goals by using sacred materials*. That is not a dogmatic distinction – it has substance. The spiritual geniuses were aiming at a core of life and value. They were prepared to weather misery and high blood-pressure if necessary. Everyone knows that the various saints of note often practiced austerities or had misery thrust upon them. They weren’t looking for hacks to improve mood. It just happens that a deep understanding of life bestows a deep joy, serenity and fortitude. But when you look at portraits of Bodhidharma when focused on his quest for enlightenment, he is not pictured as an optimistic sensualist enjoying the good life with good friends – he is pictured as someone who sat grimly facing a wall for nine years, like he was having a staring-contest with the universe. When you read the biographies of saints and sages, what you find is never some sanguine tinkerer looking for the path of least resistance: you find people who were very conscious of their own egotism and limitation, yet intuitively aware of their half-obscured divinity, and desperate to destroy or tame all that is base in them.
* In case this needs made clear, I aim for mundane goals every day, like trying to get a ketchup-stain out of a t-shirt – this is obviously fine in its time and place.
https://the50besthealthblogs.blogspot.com/ came up as not found. Hmm.
Actually, it depends on the kind of regulation. In traffic, the whole thing models well in fluid dynamics and some things create more turbulence than others.
In the case of Bernie Madoff, the SEC had been notified of his malfeasance. Several times. They did nothing.
Not such a resounding success for regulation.
P.S. The economic double speak is “regulatory capture.”