You Can’t Fix Stupid
By R. J. Treharne
Copyright 2016 R.J. Treharne
ISBN: 9781310773860
You Can’t Fix Stupid
As stupid as it may sound, individuals have the inalienable right to not do what is their best interest. But what happens when their stupidity detracts from another person’s rights? If someone wishes to roar down the highway on their motorcycle without a helmet and visor, one may say “well that is their right, it is their head!” However, when that motorcyclist gets involved in accident with another vehicle because a bug flew into their face or they get air lifted to the hospital with a serious head injury and their medical cost causes the insurance rate for everyone else to increase – knowing that both of these unwanted results could have been prevented had they worn their helmet and visor - now that individual’s right has just crossed over the line and affected another person’s rights. Obviously, there needs to be a balance between the rights of an individual and the rights of the rest of the community. In this instance, the purpose for compelling a motorcyclist to wear a helmet is not so much for their protection (you can’t fix stupid), as it is for the protection of everyone else’s rights (minimizing the effect).
One of government’s primary roles is to protect people from either other people or from a common threat. The latter, a common threat, like a foreign enemy, a natural disaster or a communicable plague is easier to understand the necessity for a government. However, how and when the government needs to provide security for people is a little more difficult to discern at times. Government protecting the community with a police force against crime seems clear enough; but whether government should provide education for everyone is not so clear. Yes, it would seem a community as a whole should be better off if more people are educated; but at some tipping point the cost of the education exceeds the benefit to society. It is obvious that the government should provide security to everyone equally against crime; however, is the government also responsible for providing education equally to everyone? Some would argue ‘yes’ because democracy is based upon the concepts of “equality” and “individual rights” – but what happens when that effort to obtain equality and securing individual rights results in a lower quality of living for everyone else? What happened to their rights? Does it really make sense that in the attempt to make everything equal everyone must have less, including those who were made equal? Who is really benefiting then?
Let’s look at two different scenarios, one with equality and one without, and see ask ourselves which is really the better situation. The fictional story deals with two chicken farmers.
The Two Chicken Farmers
Imagine that there are two neighboring farmers, each raising egg-laying chickens. Farmer “A” knows that egg production is directly related to the amount of food each chicken eats and thus believes that for the best for egg production each chicken should receive the same amount of food. So Farmer A devises the best way to ensure that each chicken gets exactly the same amount of food by separating the chickens into individual cages and constructing an automatic food delivery system which equally proportions the food to the chickens. Unfortunately, though, because of the expense of the cages and food feeding system, not to mention the expense of maintaining the system, Farmer A now has less money available for him to spend on chicken food; so he is forced to reduce the amount food provided to each chicken. Now while all of his chickens are little underfed, he his comforted by the fact that he knows that all the chickens are receiving equal treatment and is laying the same quantity of eggs
Now Farmer “B” uses the old fashion method of letting his chickens run free and he just tosses feed on the ground and lets the chickens compete for the food. And, because Farmer B does not have the same overhead expense as Farmer A, Farmer B has sufficient money to supply all the food the chickens need to produce the desired quantity of eggs; but clearly when he feeds his chickens he sees that some chickens do get to eat more food than others. And he notices that some chickens lay more eggs than others. But at the end of the day, Farmer B’s chickens which got the least amount of food off the ground still ate as much food as any of Farmer A’s chickens with it equal feed system. Furthermore, Farmer B’s chickens out produce Farmer A’s chickens. So, which Farmer do you think is actually being the better steward of his chickens?
Hopefully by identifying and outlining some simple, pragmatic solutions to many of our more complex and divisive issues described one may be able to finally realize that often the best solution for all does not necessarily mean equality and protection of individual rights. To appreciated this concept, one must first understand what is a “right.”
A Privilege versus a Right
An individual has the "right" to seek a driver's license; however the government actually grants them the "privilege" of possessing the driver’s license. Drive carefully and obey the laws and the government allows you to maintain that privilege. Violate the law or operate your vehicle in a unsafe fashion which could cause injury or damage to others, then the government has the authority to revoke that privilege. But when a "privilege," for whatever reason, somehow becomes elevated to a "right"; then that “right” can be as easily controlled and often inadvertently undermines the rights of others.
Another example, early in American history from the wealth and generosity of the local community and through a self-imposed tax, a "privilege" was afforded to others within the community to attend schooling even though they could not afford it – the beginning of public schools. The thinking was the more educated the general public, the better the community would be as a whole. Originally, attending a public school was considered a privilege. And like driving a car, if you did not obey the rules or behaved so that your actions adversely affected others in their learning, then your "privilege" could be revoked. Under this system, the schools did very well in their task of educating many and at high levels and at a reasonable cost. But at some point, that privilege mutated into a "right"; a right that all students can attend school even if they do not follow the rules and their presence is at the detriment to other students or even they would not significantly benefit from being in school.
Well intended individuals, thinking that “no child should be left behind” and that all children, even ones with learning disabilities and handicaps should be “mainstreamed” into the school body, in namesake of equal rights, spearheaded the cause. Unfortunately though, their noble actions have inadvertently diminished the quality of educational for everyone. Because, by changing a “privilege” into a “right,” teachers and administrators find themselves no longer having the authority to quickly discipline let alone remove students from the classroom who are misbehaving or causing disruption of the learning process to others because those students’ “rights” may be violated. Disproportionate amounts of time and resources were spent dealing with a relatively small segment of the student population. In the attempt to provide equality to all, now all the other students' "rights" to benefit from a "privilege" has been diminished. One has to ask, what happened to those other students’ rights? It is admirable for someone to want to help the handicap or disabled student, (who generally constitute less than 2% of the total student population but with special amenities and programs consume 25% of the school’s budget). But what happen to the rights of those other 98% of the students whose educational quality now has been reduced because of cutbacks to those programs which could benefited them, not to mention benefiting the community as well?
The Founding Fathers were careful in their limited selection of what are "rights" in the U.S. Constitution, recognizing that a "right" cannot be "right" if it in any way takes away or diminishes another pers
on’s “right.” In fact, the Bill of Rights was not even part of the original Constitution, but added later because of the fear of even delineating those rights. Even then, the Bill of Rights only identified the rights of individuals against the government and not received from the government. Individuals have the right to keep and bear arms (as a means to protect themselves against the government if necessary) and the right to due process of law (again, to protection themselves against the government). The Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and most subsequent