You Shouldn't Save $10 when What You Need Is $100

According to the logic of many politicians, they would give you the following advice: If you need $100 for something, and you have an opportunity to save $10 toward that $100 - don't. You should not be saving that $10 because it is not the $100 that you need. Not only that, but if you save that $10, it will somehow preclude you from also acquiring the other $90. For example, one of the most recent and flagrant examples is regarding off-shore drilling for oil. Now, I'm not arguing any pro or con positions on the merits of off-shore drilling because that's the problem I have - no one is discussing it on the basis of merit. I am merely using it to illustrate the non sequitur arguments against it. The argument that opponents are using against drilling are two. One is they say that it will not solve our energy problems. Two is that any drilling would not put any oil into supply for many years. THe same arguments are used against nuclear energy. I don't think anyone has said or claims that off-shore drilling would make our problems go away. No, it is true that it is not the $100 we are looking for, but it seems to me that it would be helpful to be $10 closer to that $100. It is also intimated that drilling for oil is somehow mutually exclusive of other energy programs. They say things like "we shouldn't drill for oil because what we need to be doing is conserving." How exactly does one preclude the other? Can't we drill for oil AND conserve AND develop alternate energy sources? Can't we save that $10 and another $20 here and another $30 there and then we will be that much closer to the $100 goal? It is interesting if not hypocritical that the ideas of others are measured against totality of solution whereas their ideas are not held to the same metric.

Since I'm talking about drilling for oil, what about the delay to seeing the additional oil in the supply and how is that an argument against drilling? Not only are we not supposed to save that $10 now, we shouldn't try to enable saving $10 tomorrow because that won't help us today. One claim I have seen is that even if we started drilling today, we would not see any oil until 2030. Do they not grasp the concept of investment? My God, if it's bad now, what's it going to be like in 2030 if we don't start today? It seems to me that it is an argument to get moving on it if it will take that long to see a benefit. Maybe if we don't start today, by 2030 it will be too late.

Now, I am all for discussing the merits of whether or not we should be drilling off-shore considering things like cost/benefit analysis and risks, etc. But don't try to tell me that we shouldn't pursue helpful rational ideas because they won't solve the entire problem or because they won't solve it right now today or by suggesting that it would somehow preclude other solutions that are not mutually exclusive. The pragmatist says that an opportunity to save $10 toward that $100 is still better than $0, it doesn't preclude saving other $, and even if we won't see that $10 until tomorrow, it's still better to have that $10 tomorrow even if we can't have it today.

And it's not limited to energy policy. It also happens a lot elsewhere. Other major examples are dealing with illegal immigration, health care, and economic policies. I am sure I will discuss these at sometime as well. Look for any time a politician says "we shouldn't do 'A' because it doesn't solve the whole problem" (why not fix the part 'A' does solve?) or "we shouldn't do 'A' because we should be doing 'B'" (why can't we do both?) (for that matter, if "A" is unacceptable because it does not solve 100%, why does that stipluation not also apply to "B"?) or "we shouldn't do 'A' because it won't see results until sometime in the future" (later is still better that not at all).

Another classic occurrence of this logic was with regard to the "Star Wars" effort. The argument was that we can't stop all of the missiles so we shouldn't even try to stop any. Maybe it's just me but it seems that fewer missiles reaching their targets is better than all of them reaching their targets. To be sure, there are many other arguments about things such as cost and implications related to game theory and we should be doing everything to prevent it from even happening in the first place (it's not not mutually exclusive), but to suggest that there would be no benefit to preventing some number of missiles reaching their targets even when that number is less than 100% just doesn't make sense. It would make a big difference to the people who are on the receiving end of the missile that doesn't get through. It would still suck, but at least they would still be around to care.

Many of today's problems are very large, complex, and multifaceted. My point here is that we need to debate and consider every proposal based on its merits. We should argue against a proposal based solely on the fact that it only addresses one facet of the problem. Even if that proposal only saves $10 of the needed $100, that's still $10 we wouldn't otherwise have. And since no proposal is likely to provide the entire $100, we need to save the $10 wherever we can find it.