Since shortly after the second world war, when major development efforts began in what was called the third world, hundreds of projects have set out to bring a quantifiable good to some quantity of people. Though methods have changed and theories have developed, the planning of development projects is today at its core quite similar to what has gone on for the last sixty plus years. The project planners set targets, and the targets are always numbers. There is a problem with this method, however. Numbers provide planners with better information to make decisions, but concurrently reinforce a way of viewing issues that is radically disconnected from the nature of development. Development is about empowerment, and in a system of top down planning, it is the planners who are empowered.
Numbers help set goals. Most simply, numbers are countable, so they make projects accountable. They make something achieved or not achieved. They are attainable. Numbers can impress donors, governments, and voters. Because they provide something concrete, numbers have come to hold a central position in the world of development. Without a doubt, numbers are necessary to monitor and evaluate projects, yet the way that numbers are set up and used can detract from the very goals they are intended to quantify.
If, as a planner, I look only at numbers, then I have the power to solve the problems of development by balancing the other half of the equation. This makes me quite an important guy. I can direct resources where I think they will be best used. I can get even better numerical information, balance an even better equation, and pretty soon I can lay out a plan to solve just about anything. That can be quite gratifying. Hitting a target becomes less about the overarching goal as it is about me. This sort of ivory tower planning has occurred in innumerable situations in the short history of the development industry, from the halls of academia, to the UN, to the management levels of any international and national NGO. It has produced the kind of surveys in which poor families have their every possession catalogued, from livestock to land to eating utensils. All in the name of informing the planners, so better decisions can be made for them.
My intention is not to demonize the development industry or those who study the challenges facing people in the developing world. Rather, the point is to remind us that there is a person who is represented by that number, and if our goal is empowerment, we should be aware of whom it is that is being empowered by our actions. Not many country directors, World Bank economists, or members of the board would like the field staff to show up and take account of every possession in their homes.
Development has some very large numbers involved. Billions of people live on some few dollars a day, don’t have access to clean water, and don’t get basic healthcare services. These numbers need to be fixed. But this is not an equation that can be balanced. To balance it is to treat people as numbers, which does not allow them to be free acting, independent variables.
In any project there has to be a plan, and that plan must involve some numbers to monitor and evaluate its effectiveness. But that plan should also have at its heart the notion that each number, each targeted individual, is actually an independent variable, and the true goal should be to make them even more independent, not to pigeonhole them into some preconceived scheme of economic behavior.
In the end, numbers are a tool like any other, and can be used wisely or poorly. Tools are empowering to those who use them, but if we become too enamored with our tools, we lose sight of our goals. In the orthodoxy of development speak, it is kosher to say that the planners and workers serve those people who are the targets of their projects. But if the targets are numbers, and the numbers are a tool, then who is serving whom? In our desire to fix these broken numbers, we must not lose sight of a basic equality, stemming from our shared humanity, with those whom we are there to serve.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
The Logic of My Cold Dead Hands
The recent mass shooting including the murder of six people in Tucson Arizona would have grabbed mass media attention had the victims not included a U.S. Representative, a child, and a Federal Judge. That said, the range of media commentary and self-reference (often without valuable introspection) would likely not have been so great had the victims been migrant workers. Commentaries have appeared with regards to the vehemence of political rhetoric, media bias, and of course gun control.
Venting on the failings of people in positions of social responsibility is not my strong suit (though that has not kept me from trying from time to time), but I have been on occasion known to use logic decently well. As the debate over the second amendment again rises to the forefront of the national stage, there is an opportunity to apply logic, that oft neglected capacity, to the political discourse. This argument does not directly support one side or the other of the gun issue, but rather says that the debate is misplaced. Beyond the federal government making sure that every person has the right to bear some kind of arm, it is not a federal issue. The state or local governments should sort out the details.
First to the logic, and please forgive the simplicity with which this is put forth, but it allows for clarity in analysis. The argument is:
1. The second amendment to the Constitution states that we have the right to bear arms. It does not specify beyond the word 'arms.' It does not say 'some arms' nor 'all arms.'
2. If some arms are banned legally, then it would follow that the second amendment does not guarantee the right to bear all arms, but at least some arms.
3. Some arms are legally banned, such as nuclear arms, therefore the second amendment guarantees the right to bear some, but not all arms.
4. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that one branch or another of the Federal Government (including the Supreme Court) has the power to specify which types of arms are protected under the second amendment and which are not.
5. The tenth amendment to the Constitution says that the powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states or the people.
6. Because the power to determine what sorts of arms are permitted and what sorts are not is not delegated to the federal government at any point in the constitution, that power rests at the state or local level.
In more plain English, if we accept that individuals should not be allowed to own nuclear weapons, a type of arm, then some arms can be restricted as long as some other arms are protected. But the Constitution itself provides no more specific guidance as to what can be allowed or disallowed. It says that any issue not specified in the articles and amendments laid out should be left up to the states to decide. Therefore, as specific arms are never detailed in the Constitution, it must be left up to the states to decide whether they wish to allow automatic weapons, tasers, swords, or lead pipes and candlesticks. The debate should not be on the national stage, but on fifty or more state and district stages. The federal government, beyond guaranteeing that the right to bear some arms is protected, should not be involved.
A second point is more of a supporting practicality than an argument in itself. It is simply to say that given the difference of lifestyle and prevailing opinion in the diverse locations across the nation, it makes more sense to have state governments debating what arms are to be allowed than having a federal decision. Of course someone living on a ranch in Nevada will have a different take than someone living in Washington D.C. It makes sense that they should be allowed to regulate their right to bear arms differently. This means if the people of one state vote overwhelmingly to allow unregistered automatic weapons, then they should be allowed in that state. Similarly, if the people of another state or district vote to disallow handguns, then that should be upheld in that region so long as the region specifies what type of arms are allowed (halberds, perhaps?). It would follow that if a case went to the Supreme Court, they would uphold the local decision so long as there were provisions as to what sort of arms were allowed. If the local decision were an outright ban on all arms, then it would have to be struck down.
In the recent case of McDonald v. Chicago it was ruled that the fourteenth amendment protected an individual’s right to bear arms, unhindered by state or local intervention. That would be true, or logically valid, if the Federal Government had the power to determine what arms a person can bear. But if we apply logic to the premises given in the Constitution, the Federal Government does not. That power should belong to the state and local governments in the first place. The only place the Supreme Court would have a place in overturning a local decision would be if no arms were stipulated to be permitted, as that would violate a person’s right to bear arms.
Venting on the failings of people in positions of social responsibility is not my strong suit (though that has not kept me from trying from time to time), but I have been on occasion known to use logic decently well. As the debate over the second amendment again rises to the forefront of the national stage, there is an opportunity to apply logic, that oft neglected capacity, to the political discourse. This argument does not directly support one side or the other of the gun issue, but rather says that the debate is misplaced. Beyond the federal government making sure that every person has the right to bear some kind of arm, it is not a federal issue. The state or local governments should sort out the details.
First to the logic, and please forgive the simplicity with which this is put forth, but it allows for clarity in analysis. The argument is:
1. The second amendment to the Constitution states that we have the right to bear arms. It does not specify beyond the word 'arms.' It does not say 'some arms' nor 'all arms.'
2. If some arms are banned legally, then it would follow that the second amendment does not guarantee the right to bear all arms, but at least some arms.
3. Some arms are legally banned, such as nuclear arms, therefore the second amendment guarantees the right to bear some, but not all arms.
4. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that one branch or another of the Federal Government (including the Supreme Court) has the power to specify which types of arms are protected under the second amendment and which are not.
5. The tenth amendment to the Constitution says that the powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states or the people.
6. Because the power to determine what sorts of arms are permitted and what sorts are not is not delegated to the federal government at any point in the constitution, that power rests at the state or local level.
In more plain English, if we accept that individuals should not be allowed to own nuclear weapons, a type of arm, then some arms can be restricted as long as some other arms are protected. But the Constitution itself provides no more specific guidance as to what can be allowed or disallowed. It says that any issue not specified in the articles and amendments laid out should be left up to the states to decide. Therefore, as specific arms are never detailed in the Constitution, it must be left up to the states to decide whether they wish to allow automatic weapons, tasers, swords, or lead pipes and candlesticks. The debate should not be on the national stage, but on fifty or more state and district stages. The federal government, beyond guaranteeing that the right to bear some arms is protected, should not be involved.
A second point is more of a supporting practicality than an argument in itself. It is simply to say that given the difference of lifestyle and prevailing opinion in the diverse locations across the nation, it makes more sense to have state governments debating what arms are to be allowed than having a federal decision. Of course someone living on a ranch in Nevada will have a different take than someone living in Washington D.C. It makes sense that they should be allowed to regulate their right to bear arms differently. This means if the people of one state vote overwhelmingly to allow unregistered automatic weapons, then they should be allowed in that state. Similarly, if the people of another state or district vote to disallow handguns, then that should be upheld in that region so long as the region specifies what type of arms are allowed (halberds, perhaps?). It would follow that if a case went to the Supreme Court, they would uphold the local decision so long as there were provisions as to what sort of arms were allowed. If the local decision were an outright ban on all arms, then it would have to be struck down.
In the recent case of McDonald v. Chicago it was ruled that the fourteenth amendment protected an individual’s right to bear arms, unhindered by state or local intervention. That would be true, or logically valid, if the Federal Government had the power to determine what arms a person can bear. But if we apply logic to the premises given in the Constitution, the Federal Government does not. That power should belong to the state and local governments in the first place. The only place the Supreme Court would have a place in overturning a local decision would be if no arms were stipulated to be permitted, as that would violate a person’s right to bear arms.
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