Afloat in Vague Notions

Bertrand Russell said, “Everything is vague to a degree that you do not realize until you’ve tried to make it precise.”  Here’s a practical example to clarify: The public outcry, “repeal the health care law”.  Now that doesn’t seem too vague, does it?  Let’s take it a step further.  Do we repeal the entire law? Or do we just reform it?  Oops!  I’m beginning to see what Mr. Russell meant.  Those two simple questions introduced a level of precision, albeit minimal, and now we begin to see just how vague that outcry is. 

Let’s go a bit further.  If we decide that we need to just reform a few clauses, which one’s will they be?  Do we give the insurance companies back their rights to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions?  How about life time maximums?  Or the practice of cancelling someone’s coverage who has been paying premiums for years and now needs expensive medical care?  Let’s get even more precise.  Is this really a government program as the opposition says it is?  And if it is, shouldn’t people who oppose it on those grounds oppose all forms of government involvement in our health care to be consistent?  And if so, shouldn’t we cancel Medicare and Medicaid? Boy, this precision thing really gets one to thinking.

Healthcare is too emotional.  So let’s move to another topic.  How about “more jobs”.  Sounds precise enough.  We need jobs – pretty straightforward.  How can this be vague?  Let’s see.  What kind of jobs for what skill sets?  Where will they come from?  How do we close the job gap left by continuing technology-based productivity improvements?  Do we stop productivity improvement and fall behind in a global economy?  Why would  corporations bring jobs back from foreign countries?  How do we reconnect the moneyed interests with job creation?  They are doing so well in the financial industry with minimal risk and effort?  Why are we extending tax cuts for the wealthy, supposedly to stimulate job growth, when it hasn’t worked since the cuts went into effect ten years ago? 

Vagueness is a trick of the mind.  Watch any expert and then try to replicate his or her performance.  It takes many years to develop “mastery” in any endeavor.  I remember an interviewer saying to a movie star: “You’re an overnight sensation”.  The star said, “are you kidding me, I worked twenty years becoming an overnight sensation”.

It always looks easier from the sidelines.  This must be so, because we have so many people who can do it better than the guy who has the job.  You know; the arm-chair quarter backs, the movie critics, the talking heads, the barbers, waiters, accountants, and lawyers who can all do anything better than the guy in the job.

In America today we have lots of experts with vague notions of and simplistic solutions for our problems, standing on the sidelines calling plays that can’t work.  Like, let’s shrink government by 20%, cut taxes, but not reduce any programs or services and still compete vigorously in a $70 trillion global economy. 

James Madison said, “There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current one, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.”

To see this in action consider that common outcry of many today; “our interests are being ignored by the Obama administration”.  I have two points here: The first is that the “interests of the majority” are too vague to mean much and the second, those interests are not only vague but often misguided and based on wrong-headed notions of what’s wrong and how to fix it.

The contrarian stock market trading strategy depends on a common wisdom; you can depend on the masses to be wrong.  Billions have been made betting on that simple fact.

Robert DeFilippis