My 10th grade daughter came home the other night with a home work assignment – to write a speech about a controversial subject. The topic she chose was sex education in high school. She was for it. Her argument, with which many people disagree, was that sexual activity, like it or not, is frequent, if not the norm, and that basing a teenager’s defenses against contraception and disease on abstinence alone was akin to living in a world of illusion. It was wrong, she argued, to confuse what should be with what is.
Well, like I said, some people agree, some don’t. But as I listened to her practice her speech it occurred to me that the debate between principle and practicality – or, for some, expedience – isn’t limited to issues we regard as being moral, if not theological, ones. In fact, it underlies many of the economic policy debates we have today.
For example; file sharing, or piracy. Stealing something – anything – is wrong. But technology has made the potential for file sharing unstoppably enormous. Right or wrong, it’s here. Once the media business accepts reality as it is, it can move forward to new business models that turn file sharing an economic bonanza, not a death threat, just as Hollywood now makes more money off DVDs than theater tickets, or the Brooklyn Dodgers were the first Club to see radio as free advertising, not a threat to its box office. But piracy laws that try to legislate what should be, and ignore what is, or even more crucially, what can no longer be, are dangerous, particularly if they create toll booths and check points along the Internet that compromise its openness. Sure, prosecute egregious pirates, but insisting that piracy go away isn’t going to work.
And another example of the confusion between what should be and what is is immigration. Sure, one we decide an immigration law, it needs to be enforced. But burgeoning levels of immigration show that relying on enforcement alone isn’t working, and isn’t going to work. There is simply too much demand here for everything from programmers to dishwashers and too much supply that’s one plane ticket or one midnight mad dash away from it. Once we accept that enforcement, like piracy laws, or abstinence, isn’t going to solve the problem alone, we can move forward to thinking about new guest workers programs, expanded programs that allow employers to bring in specific needs, or other measures that manage immigration appropriately.
And these three issues share one more similarity – the assumption that one side is “moral” and the other “isn’t.” Abstinence has moral virtue, but so does preventing unwanted pregnancy or disease. Piracy is wrong, but cheap distribution of artistic works allows for more competition and, therefore, experience for consumers and opportunities for new producers. And pell-mell immigration may be bad, but not for the Americans who benefit from low-wage service work that might otherwise go undone, or for people trying to build a better life, much as previous generations in many of our own families did. You can have all the attitude you like, but the next time somebody empties your bedpan, you’ll thank an immigrant.
There’s something wonderfully wistful about a world in which teenagers chastely danced to records and Mom cleaned up after them, not a West African housekeeper. Whether it was a better world (or even existed) is not the issue – whether we should base policy on the goal of recreating it is.
Oh, That Reality
My 10th grade daughter came home the other night with a home work assignment – to write a speech about a controversial subject. The topic she chose was sex education in high school. She was for it. Her argument, with which many people disagree, was that sexual activity, like it or not, is frequent, if not the norm, and that basing a teenager’s defenses against contraception and disease on abstinence alone was akin to living in a world of illusion. It was wrong, she argued, to confuse what should be with what is.
Well, like I said, some people agree, some don’t. But as I listened to her practice her speech it occurred to me that the debate between principle and practicality – or, for some, expedience – isn’t limited to issues we regard as being moral, if not theological, ones. In fact, it underlies many of the economic policy debates we have today.
For example; file sharing, or piracy. Stealing something – anything – is wrong. But technology has made the potential for file sharing unstoppably enormous. Right or wrong, it’s here. Once the media business accepts reality as it is, it can move forward to new business models that turn file sharing an economic bonanza, not a death threat, just as Hollywood now makes more money off DVDs than theater tickets, or the Brooklyn Dodgers were the first Club to see radio as free advertising, not a threat to its box office. But piracy laws that try to legislate what should be, and ignore what is, or even more crucially, what can no longer be, are dangerous, particularly if they create toll booths and check points along the Internet that compromise its openness. Sure, prosecute egregious pirates, but insisting that piracy go away isn’t going to work.
And another example of the confusion between what should be and what is is immigration. Sure, one we decide an immigration law, it needs to be enforced. But burgeoning levels of immigration show that relying on enforcement alone isn’t working, and isn’t going to work. There is simply too much demand here for everything from programmers to dishwashers and too much supply that’s one plane ticket or one midnight mad dash away from it. Once we accept that enforcement, like piracy laws, or abstinence, isn’t going to solve the problem alone, we can move forward to thinking about new guest workers programs, expanded programs that allow employers to bring in specific needs, or other measures that manage immigration appropriately.
And these three issues share one more similarity – the assumption that one side is “moral” and the other “isn’t.” Abstinence has moral virtue, but so does preventing unwanted pregnancy or disease. Piracy is wrong, but cheap distribution of artistic works allows for more competition and, therefore, experience for consumers and opportunities for new producers. And pell-mell immigration may be bad, but not for the Americans who benefit from low-wage service work that might otherwise go undone, or for people trying to build a better life, much as previous generations in many of our own families did. You can have all the attitude you like, but the next time somebody empties your bedpan, you’ll thank an immigrant.
There’s something wonderfully wistful about a world in which teenagers chastely danced to records and Mom cleaned up after them, not a West African housekeeper. Whether it was a better world (or even existed) is not the issue – whether we should base policy on the goal of recreating it is.