In my last article, I wrote about applying the principle of Occam's Razor to conspiracy theories as they increasingly thrive in this increasingly uncertain political realm. The focus of this article will be related to the principle as applied to public policy, which encompasses a wide range of issues, including climate change, the protection, and expansion of human rights, and also economic policy. I will focus on a primary issue and then derive a general principle from said solution. In this article, to make clear the assumptions I make to develop my arguments, I will state all assumptions I have made.
Occam's Razor refers to a principle in philosophy that states that the simplest alternative, or the alternative that makes the least amount of assumptions, is usually correct. This works for many simple actions that we do every day, such as understanding movement, or understanding object permanence. It is worth noting that we make assumptions about things every day, it is innate in our human nature. From a young age, we develop schemas of what things are, how they act, and how they relate to the world around them. We assume things are ducks because they look and act like a duck.
However, politics is more difficult because everyone has different of schemas about how a government should operate, what the end goal of government should be, and its relation to its subjects. Politics is a normative study, at its core, however, I think that we try to apply the principle to politics to at least get a sense for its implications. This will be difficult given that everyone has marginally different ideas of what is wrong, what is right, and what is correct in the political realm, so I will analyze it based on expected benefit and expected harm of each individual policy. The policy with the greatest net benefit will be the 'correct' policy as far as we concerned.
The first issue we will apply it to is environmental policy. We must ask ourselves, what should be done to help the environment? This could encompass anything from combating climate change, fostering the health of various and all wild ecosystems, and of course, sustainable development. It would be nearly impossible to analyze every potential solution, every potential policy, which is why I will focus my analysis on one particular policy for each issue that will be discussed in this article. Most of which are heavily contested in American politics. The first potential solution I will be discussing will be the Carbon Tax.
The carbon tax is exactly what it sounds like, a tax on the release of carbon into the atmosphere as an incentive to not release carbon into the air. Simple. However, there are serious political implications of such a plan. First is that since it makes the release of carbon more costly, something that producers, the major cause of the increased amounts of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere, would dislike as it increases the cost of producing a good. This shifts some degree of costs onto consumers, and those who do not have sufficient means then have to pay a greater proportion of their income simply because of higher costs, especially since the poor benefit the most from untaxed carbon as they use those goods the most.
Second, we must assume that this tax will actually cause the reduction of carbon emissions. We can argue that it would, because typically taxes, which are just incentives, help to curb consumption or production depending on the nature of the tax and particular behavior. Third, we must assume the release of carbon is an undesirable behavior, so then we must assume the release of carbon dioxide hurts the atmosphere and contributes to the greenhouse effect. We must then assume that the tax will increase revenues, as taxes often do. With these assumptions and implication clear now, we are free to move forward.
This policy has only 4 assumptions that have to be made. Is that optimal? Is that better than other policy options? It is of my opinion that yes, it is better because it has a small number of assumptions and very few variables. The problem of solely relying on international policies and international initiatives to combat climate change, which unfortunately seems to be the international plan for reducing climate change in many countries, is that there are too many moving variables, too many moving parts, and if one part doesn't do its part than the whole system struggles.
This doesn't mean that this approach shouldn't be followed, however, it becomes increasingly difficult to work and therefore cannot be deemed 'correct' by the standard we put forward. The carbon tax, if we take these assumptions to be true, as they are all, then it becomes clear that the benefit is seen in not only revenue gained, but also future economic activities that couldn't take place if the environment was changed, the temperature warm, and so forth and the gross loss is the harm it would do to the poor of America. This could easily be offset with further political policy, perhaps mandating that the revenue gained goes to policy to help the poor.
However, the discussion is beyond fruitless for many reasons, but the most prominent of which is our own political system. Our political system and the way our government works is the opposite of simplistic. In the house and senate of the states and of the federal government, bills often extend past their original purpose and are often stretched in various different directions from it's starting premise in order to satisfy the number of votes they need. Our political system has a way of distorting the simplest of things into the most of complex things. This isn't necessarily bad, nor wrong, however, it makes the application of Occam's razor almost impossible to the realm of politics. Here we arrive at the general principle then; Occam's razor can only apply to political things in an isolated case, and in isolation of all variables, however, it is not translatable to the state of reality.
In reality, we face the issue of our political system, of writing legislation, and so on, that the number of assumptions, the number of variables increase to the point where it becomes nearly impossible to determine 'correct'-ness as we established earlier. This is the case of the razor, it can not apply to a normative reality of things as it has to make assumptions to adjust into a state of reality and to justify the statements, or in this case, policies, existence. Positive statements and assumptions, ones based on reality, ones based on the concrete evidence in the real world, are, by their nature, different, and thus, this does not apply.
Occam's razor, then, is not applicable to the field of public policy, and, as discussed in my last article, is applicable to conspiracy theories, which make assumptions based on concrete facts and evidence. Politics and public policy have anchored in facts, or at least should be anchored in facts, but it is too much based on each individual's values and beliefs that the razor is not easily translatable. Occam's razor can be used as a measure to determine the outline of certain policy, such as the carbon tax example, but it can not be used throughout the whole process of public policy.
