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Politics : View from the Center and Left
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To: Dale Baker who wrote (381)6/5/2005 11:43:19 AM
From: Lane3  Read Replies (1) of 541355
 
If nothing else, supporting a centrist compromise means evaluating issues pragmatically and on their merits

Not necessarily. Compromises are often simply what you can negotiate and have no inherent consistency or merit. Building half a dam as a rational alternative to either no dam or a whole dam is just dumb. Or I'll agree to build a dam if you agree to divert the river so it bypasses the dam. We have a lot of laws on the books that contain incompatible mish-mash owing to the pragmatism of getting something passed.

The other problem with compromised is that they produce systems that you can't audit, measure, learn from. If the problem worsens, is it because of the part of the compromised that A wanted or the part that B wanted. Welfare failed because we wasted money on free-loaders who squandered it. No, welfare failed because it was underfunded. You can't prove it either way. At least when you do things one way or the other rather than a mix of the two, you have the data to evaluate the ideology.

Having said that, I think the political environment has gotten bad enough that I might support half a dam or a waterless dam for no other reason than that it might get folks out of their intransigent ruts and working towards more constructive practices.
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