The Limits of Common Sense

Another thing that gets me frustrated is the endless tropes about "common sense" when it comes to governance.  It sounds good, which is why the phrase gets used so much.  But what it fails to acknowledge is that systems are complicated, big systems are even more complicated, and the US federal government is a really big system. 

So common sense that works around the kitchen table in your family just has no parallel in the federal government.  In fact it doesn't have that much parallel in lots of areas.

For example, when I go to the hospital for a medical operation, I don't want the doctor referring first and foremost to common sense when he starts cutting me up- I want him using the latest scientific research and drawing from his vast experience performing similar operations.  I don't care whether he has enough common sense to fix a lawnmower or carve a turkey.  I'm looking for a savant who knows about his specialty.

To take another example, when considering Global Climate Change, referring to common sense arguments has no meaning.  We had a snowy winter here in New England, so common sense tells me that the planet couldn't be getting warmer.  Except climatologists who are studying this stuff for a living overwhelmingly agree that the planet is indeed getting warmer, and that it's caused by humans.  I think I'm going with the geeks here.

And finally, comparing the US government budget to my own family budget is comparing apples to cow dung.  The goals are completely different- we should be paying attention to what professional economists and policy wonks say about deficits.  And we should look at history- not the history of my family's finances, because that's not relevant- the history of our macroeconomy when governments have run deficits, the history of tax rates and how growth is tied into taxes.  When I'm arguing with conservatives about this I start with this kind of stuff, and they inevitably reply with "common sense" arguments about how government deficits crowd out private borrowing and how the burden of debt repayment will be unmanageable- but they've got no data!  Because the data's all pretty clear when you look at history instead of analogies to your family budget.

I had an old boss who once said "common sense isn't so common".  True that.  But in political discourse we could use even less of it.