He Ain't Crazy

It has become so commonplace we no longer notice it: someone does something bizarre, usually violent, and we quickly search and find some sign from his past and using some 50 cent buzz-phrase from the behaviorists, we say he’s insane, he’s ‘crazy.’

We have gone so far as to extend this line of reason into the world of politics and economics. Saddam Hussein was crazy, Bernie Madoff lost his mind. The fact is nothing could be further from the truth. Saddam Hussein was not only not crazy, he was one of the most calculating, rational political leaders on the planet. And Bernie Madoff: as with all great thefts, it is normal for everyone on the outside to wonder, even as we are grateful he has been caught, why he didn’t just pull up stakes at one point and head to some country where there is no extradition, and live the high life. He ‘must have been crazy’ to not have left, as if he ‘wanted to be caught.’ If he had not been so consumed by greed that he lost the ability to make a clear decision, he could have disappeared, etc., etc.

The fact is that there are very few people who can function normally, that is, make it form one end of the day to the other on their own, who are truly mad. We often hear people say that Hitler was mad. But the fact is that there are very few cases in all of recorded history where a national leader was truly mad, that, like the Red Queen, he rose from bed, asked for toast, and then yelled ‘Off with their heads.’ If such were the case it would be so much easier, because bad leaders would be easy to spot. But bad leaders aren’t crazy. They may be incompetent, they may even be evil. But most of them are quite rational. And this truth ‘trickles down’ through various government agencies to the lowest level bureaucrats. The people we deal with on any given day are usually very rational, that is, they have clear reasons why they are doing one thing and not another, why they have made a certain decision and not another. And often, those reasons are ‘unknowable’ to us. And they therefore appear at best arbitrary and at worst ‘crazy.’

But they aren’t.

And this is important because we see it in the actions of government agencies all the time. A friend sent me a notice the other day about E-85 gas and the fact that it is really not compatible with most boat engines. What this means for those who like to get in the skiff and head out for a morning of fishing, is that you shouldn’t use E-85 in your engine (of course you can’t buy regular gas very easily anymore in some states) and if you do you will burn more gas per mile and your engine will need more maintenance. That is, more pollution, higher maintenance costs, and more engine wear and tear.

But, you might ask, why would the government let such a thing happen? By insisting on this E-85 usage across much of the nation we have seen corn prices rise, oil use rates remain essentially the same, it has not served to hold down gasoline prices, there is no significant change in carbon footprint (a stated government goal), etc., etc. ‘This makes no sense.’

In fact, if the stated reasons for a decision appear to be unrelated or contradictory to the consequences of that decision, then we should conclude that either the decision-maker was either less than competent on the one hand or less than honest about the reasons for the decision on the other.

As an example, the consequences of the decision to promote E-85 has mainly been seen in higher corn prices – a de facto subsidy of corn farmers - with no substantive change in imports of oil, prices of gasoline, etc. (There have been fluctuations in imports, prices, etc., but none can be traced back to the E-85 decision with any credibility.) What was the aim of the politicians who made the decision to push E-85 usage? My own suspicion is that their sole goal was to ‘do something’ and thereby assuage their constituents who were frustrated at the lack of action out of Washington. So, they took action. Was it poorly thought out? Yes. And from their perspective, So What? The common objective was to do ‘something.’ And further, this ‘something’ would also mean money flowing into US farms, which is almost the Holy Grail in Washington. Objective met. Those few who actually wanted to achieve something else – reduction in US imports for example – found themselves arguing for complex, long-term solutions. Meanwhile, the bulk of the folks in Washington, to include the press, had a ‘something’ they could support right now. All rational decisions.

But if that is the case, why do they still support this action? There is the obvious rationale that no one likes to be seen to have made a mistake. So there will be real resistance to changing the decision simply because to do so means they lose credibility, at least in their own minds. (That there are people out in ‘Middle America’ who would welcome the idea that some politician or senior bureaucrat stood up and said ‘We tried XXX and it was a bad idea and now we are stopping’ is lost on those in Washington, that is, it is outside their normal intellectual ‘scan.’) But, at the same time we have to assume that the continued stressing of E-85 even after it has been shown to force an increased consumption of oil (increased energy used to make fertilizer, grow the corn, process it and move it) means that someone somewhere sees it as being in his interest to continue the program. What those reasons are I can guess at, but it would be just a guess. But, at the same time, I am absolutely certain there are reasons for it, and they have nothing at all to do with desires to control oil imports, clean up the environment or any other ‘social good.’

The point here is simply this: there is a reason for nearly every decision made by anyone in government. Very few of those decisions are transparent. In business we at least know that when Exxon or Apple does something it is simply motivated: they want to increase profits. The motivations are clear, and the decisions have an inherent rationale. But while the decisions that are made in governments are always publicly backed up by a wide range of justifications, the fact that the consequences of the decisions increasingly do not match the stated intentions must lead us to question true motivations. The decision-makers may be less than capable leaders – making poor decisions even when presented with the right information; incompetent – unable to recognize that they do not have the right information to make the correct decision; or deceptive – making a decision for reasons other than the ones they have publicly enunciated. There isn’t room for much more.