Design To Function

     I’ve done several kinds of design. They all have unique requirements and constraints. But they share a single universal imperative: the one in the title above.

     “What must this thing to do?” is the prime question of design. You must know and understand it. You must also know and understand that what you want it to do isn’t the only thing it will do. Quoth Marc Stiegler: “You can never do only one thing.” There will be side effects. It’s guaranteed that one or more won’t be pleasant.

     These days there’s a great deal of consternation over charity. That should surprise no one. The foofaurauw over how, when, and to whom to give has been raging since Christ walked the earth. Much of that rage is over the putative side effects, with this one in particular: the more money and effort is dedicated to charitable action, the more money and effort charitable action will demand.

     The great Cyril Northcote Parkinson understood it. He propounded his Second Law – “Expenditure rises to meet income, and tends to exceed it” – for that reason. That Law is broad in application, but it definitely covers charity.

     Money and effort put to meeting a particular demand reinforce that demand. Consider what happened to medical costs when governments got involved in paying for medical products and services. Providers raised their prices to absorb what had been budgeted and clamored for still more. It’s the same with charity: “Hey, look how much I got from them! Get over here and get in on it!”

     That didn’t happen when charitable giving was confined to the wills and wallets of private citizens. Their willingness to give of themselves was limited by firm constraints: their families’ needs and their recognition that there’s such a thing as unwise giving. The responsibilities and demands of living enforced the former; personal involvement with the recipients of charity persuaded them of the latter.

     Given that sad wisdom – and as it flows directly from human nature, it’s both sad and inevitable – how does one design a charitable organization?

     The short if brutal answer is: You don’t. Organized charities destroy the personal involvement that best serves to deter unwise and excessive giving. The closest possible approach to a sound charitable organization is something like a local food bank that vets those who want to partake of it. Even those will be plundered to some extent by the undeserving.

     Mega-charities such as the United Way are the best possible examples of unwisdom in giving. They absorb most of their receipts in organizational expenses; the fraction remaining isn’t guaranteed to reach the deserving needy. That’s not conjecture; they issue regular reports that make the problem starkly obvious. Jerry Pournelle would have told you so.

     Charity – the simple act of helping those who need and deserve help – is thus insusceptible to efficiency through organization. But if something that simple defies top-down control, what is there to say or do about the many thousands of other things for which we form and tolerate large organizations?

* * *

     There’s a quote from Herbert Spencer that comes to mind:

     “A blade which is designed both to shave and to carve, will certainly not shave so well as a razor or carve so well as a carving-knife. An academy of painting, which should also be a bank, would in all probability exhibit very bad pictures and discount very bad bills. A gas-company, which should also be an infant-school society, would, we apprehend, light the streets ill, and teach the children ill.” And if an institution undertakes, not two functions but a score; if a government, whose office it is to defend citizens against aggressors, foreign and domestic, engages also to disseminate Christianity, to administer charity, to teach children their lessons, to adjust prices of food, to inspect coal-mines, to regulate railways, to superintend house-building, to arrange cab-fares, to look into people’s stink-traps, to vaccinate their children, to send out emigrants, to prescribe hours of labor, to examine lodging-houses, to test the knowledge of mercantile captains, to provide public libraries, to read and authorize dramas, to inspect passenger-ships, to see that small dwellings are supplied with water, to regulate endless things from a banker’s issues down to the boat-fares on the Serpentine; is it not manifest that its primary duty must be ill-discharged in proportion to the multiplicity of affairs it busies itself with? Must not its time and energies be frittered away in schemes, and inquiries, and amendments, in discussions, and divisions, to the neglect of its essential business? And does not a glance over the debates make it clear that this is the fact? and that, while Parliament and public are alike occupied with these mischievous interferences, these Utopian hopes, the one thing needful is left almost undone?

     [Herbert Spencer, The Man Versus The State]

     Spencer was one of the greatest intellects of the Nineteenth Century, nor can anyone justly claim to have surpassed him. He saw clearly. He told us about what he saw forthrightly. And what was he saying in the above? Design to function! As straitly as possible, have your instrument do the thing for which it was fashioned, and nothing else. Even if we omit all abstract considerations of things such as freedom, justice, and the rights of men, there can be no profit in assigning a great many responsibilities to a single instrument.

     That is: except for the profit that accrues to those who loot it.

* * *

     Forgive me, Gentle Reader. The above is the consequence of having crossed the path of one who seemed a sincere liberal. His grail is “compassion in government.” He felt it as imperative as dispensing justice and protecting the nation from invasion. I could not sway him. Ultimately I had to conclude that for him, charity was a “design point:” something absolutely required of the State. The absurdity of an institution whose sole method is force undertaking to dispense the milk of human kindness did not reach him.

     Well, I suppose I should restrict my outreach efforts to those who can be persuaded. Now it’s back to fiction. This next novel will be special! Not only will it tell a gripping story that expresses deep truths about the human condition; it will also present and analyze an entirely new chess opening and include the C.S.O.’s twelve favorite cake recipes! Coming Soon to a website near you.