This weekend I was listening to Fareed Zakaria on GPS @CNN (a program that I love) and he mentioned another aspect of government that I hadn’t covered in my post on “In Defense of Government”
His point was that we look towards our government to avoid catastrophes – and he mentioned this in respect to the climate crisis.
What really got me thinking was – this is a crucial and very under appreciated function. Essentially if the government is successful in averting the crisis, it is a non event (who remembers the collective action to fix the ozone layer hole in the atmosphere and globally phasing out CFL based coolants in refrigeration), since history does not remember the mundane – and hence the success of the institution is always under appreciated.
While if the government fails spectacularly (for e.g. The World Wars – that’s one for the history books – recounted and studied as a tale of misery and suffering for generations).
So how do we address this inherent bias in human nature – probably by also including our spectacular (although under appreciated) successes in avoiding crisis and a careful meticulous analysis of failure of strategy and policy on disasters – not just a tale of human suffering.