Comment by roc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by roc | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

As far as I can tell, it hasn't caught on because Americans don't want to hear it. We seem to have a deep problem with denial. Sure, people might join in on chastising the TSA for a particular mistreatment of a passenger. But overall they just don't want to think about the idea that there's no real solution to terrorism.

They certainly don't want to confront the idea that sometimes, despite setting our minds and hundreds of billions of dollars against a problem, that we can't solve anything; let alone consider the notion that we might have made things much worse for trying.

Look no further than the War on Drugs. It's been clear for decades that by every objective measure it's a (barbaric, costly) accelerant for exactly the kinds of social problems it was conceived to fight. But it's still deeply unpopular to say that.

>> Look no further than the War on Drugs. It's been clear for decades that by every objective measure it's a (barbaric, costly) accelerant for exactly the kinds of social problems it was conceived to fight. But it's still deeply unpopular to say that.

I think you're right about the War on Drugs being a failure but wrong about this being an unpopular viewpoint.

A Zogby poll referenced here shows 76% of respondents think the War on Drugs is a failure: http://civilliberty.about.com/od/drugpolicy/p/War-on-Drugs-F...

Perhaps "unpopular" was the wrong way to phrase things.

"You don't hear it very often/emphatically from the mainstream media, nor spoken aloud by anyone in a position to change policy, nor spoken aloud by anyone who has a serious desire to gain the positions that could change policy."

It's commonly thought to be a failure, but it's politically incorrect to propose any solution other than doing the same thing we're doing now, only harder.

I consider this one of the most common failure cases of government; if they don't stumble on the essentially-correct policy the first time out, it becomes virtually impossible to change it later because it involves someone (possible very large and powerful someones) having to admit they were wrong. For another example where the only acceptable solution is "the same, only more more more", see school reform. "Everybody" knows that isn't going to work, but nothing else is acceptable.

Which, put that way, is not unlike the Innovator's Dilemma.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com