Hard Cases And Treating Symptoms

     “Hard cases make bad law” entered the catalogue of American legal maxims through Associate Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1904. It’s supposed to warn lawmakers not to twist simple laws all out of shape to cover unusual situations. By and large, lawmakers in our time have ignored it. That’s one of the reasons the laws fastened upon us run to thousands of pages, such that no one except specialists in that particular law genuinely know what it requires.

     In witness of the counter-trend against hard-case law, we have this:

     Yes, it’s from CNN. Note the trailing sentiment from Will Fischer. He disdains generosity; he wants the government to step in. That is, he wants more law. The comments that trail that image at X, where I found it, are mostly to the opposite effect.

     The more-law advocate would normally reply along these lines:

     “Well, all right, this teacher’s colleagues stepped up to help him this time. But he’s just one case. The whole insurance system is broken. It leaves thousands of men like that teacher un-helped! It’s a disease that needs a systematic cure. You don’t cure a disease by treating a symptom!”

     That is the plea of the socialist. It’s recognizable at a hundred paces. By marrying it to a sympathetic figure in acute personal need, the socialist disguises his underlying intention: to have the State take over the provision of all medical goods and services.

     My old friend Dystopic a.k.a. Thales (neither is his real name, as if you needed to be told) called this weaponized empathy. He wrote penetratingly on its effectiveness. It’s a pity his site The Declination is no longer available for me to cite.

     I’m poised to deliver a revelation, here. It disturbed me when it came to me. I guarantee that it will disturb you, Gentle Reader. Yet it’s too important for me to keep to myself. It casts an unforgiving light on all of us who pontificate about public policy – specifically, on our tendency to aggregate things into “systems,” as if human societies could be organized the way a mechanic organizes his tools.

     Indeed, it’s so important that I’m going to cast in giant font, so that no one, however casually he’s inclined to scan my drivel, could possibly miss it. Are you ready? There here it comes:

Every specific event,
Every concrete instance of anything,
No matter whom it affects or how many,
IS A SYMPTOM.

     Sometimes it’s possible to see compelling similarities among an assemblage of events. Sometimes the people who see them propose schemes for dealing with them in a uniform or almost uniform fashion. That’s when the talk begins about “problems” and “solutions.” That brings forth planners and their “systems.” And that is what has albatrossed medical services (among other things) in these United States.

     But there’s no such thing as a system that lacks hard cases. All systems are challenged by cases that don’t quite fit the definitions, the scope, or the capabilities of the system. Another term for hard cases is edge cases. The edge case hovers tantalizingly out of reach, just beyond the edge of the system in place. It tempts lawmakers to stretch their creations just a wee bit… just enough to capture the plight of the poor, massively sympathetic figure at the edge. He needs our help, doesn’t he? And didn’t we erect the system to help people just like him?

     Once again, allow me to quote the great John Gall:

     Government Systems, acting in accordance with the laws of growth, Tend to Expand and Encroach. In encroaching upon their own citizens, they produce Tyranny, and encroaching upon other Government Systems, they engage in Warfare…. What is the track record of large systems designed for the express purpose of solving a major problem? A decent respect for our predecessors prevents us from dwelling upon the efforts of governmental administrations to eradicate poverty, reduce crime, or even get the mail delivered on time.

     [John Gall, Systemantics]

     In our Constitutional republic, edge cases are the principal ongoing driver of government growth. There will be journalists who will write about them in dramatic, often shocking terms, and editorialists who’ll ask “Why hasn’t anything been done yet?” Interest groups will latch onto them. Bureaucrats will see prospects for promotion and salary increases in them. Politicians will hitch their careers to them.

     And as the “adjustment” to the system in place will require just a little more money from the public, and will reduce free choice just a little bit more, the system will be extended to cover the luridly reported edge case. The sufferer will receive benefits. The bureaucracy will expand. The politicians will gain an increment of prestige.

     Will there be losers? Of course! The journalists will have to find fresh stories over which to slather their preferred adjectives. The editorialists will need new issues over which to fulminate and declaim. And let’s not forget you and me, as our choices among practitioners and insurers shrink and the hoovering of our wallets by the Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnibenevolent State intensifies.

     We’d be far better off treating symptoms one by one. Don’t tell your doctor that, of course. To him it would constitute medical heresy. He wants to identify and treat the disease; it’s what he was taught to do. But given that so many people come to him with eye problems, ear problems, nose problems, teeth problems, scalp problems, and so forth, you might want to ask him whether he would favor a system that simply cuts off the sufferer’s head.

     There are people out there who’d vote for that.