by Mike Mercer, Stevensville
As difficult as it seems in this climate, I will endeavor to make a salient political point as briefly as I can. The maxim, first do no harm, has now extended beyond the medical field to other areas including education, the environment and a host of other community interests.
The canonical statement on harm occurs in JS Mill’s 1974 Essay ‘On Liberty’; in summary form this reads:
‘The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of their number, is self-protection…the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others’.
The justification of government intervention requires that society’s knowledge be complete on the subject, or the transparency of government knowledge as it were. This requires open debate with no voices silenced; we call that, Free Speech.
The need for individuals to engage with those who hold contrary opinions is a moral imperative in a free society. It cannot justify indifference to the findings of science, but neither can it be a precautionary principle for policies that aim to protect people against future bad possibilities or relying too heavily on scientific projections that might prove to be wrong. Therefore, our claims to certainty in the social and natural sciences must always be open to disproof, without which, we are politically rudderless.
Armed with knowledge, we endeavor to do no harm, this principle provides us the measure of how far public policy is likely to be well founded, or not.
Bitterrooter says
Mike,
This is a thoughtful letter. It spurred me to think, research, and think some more. These are all things that a LTE should do.
I believe that the problem with the Mills quote (and his general thesis) is that it largely begs the questions placed by a complex society. What counts as “a harm” to one person? Take the issue of land use planning. If a new neighbor to me was to move in and start a business that was exceedingly loud, smelly, or had some other externality, I feel I could obviously claim I had been harmed (the value of both my home/land and my lifestyle would be degraded. Would you think this type of harm legitimized the county from instituting a generalized zoning map that separated business/industrial uses from residential in order to reduce future incidents of this harm? I think this is a no-brainer.
On the issue of scientific findings/projections (here I am thinking of applications to such contentious issues as climate change or vaccines) we as a society need to agree on the ground rules as to what constitutes compelling scientific evidence. Science by its nature does not deal in absolutes. All scientific findings must be open to being questioned by new information. However, in order for society to function and advance at all, we can’t give the same weight to different sides that have vastly disproportionate levels of evidence. As they say. “anecdotes are not data.” At some point governments need to institute policies to protect the citizens as a whole even if a small minority feel that they would be harmed by the policy. I am not saying these are easy things to resolve, but for government to not try to address obvious potential dangers facing citizens is to abrogate the main responsibility of government.
Again, you raise interesting issues, but I fear that Mills lived in what was in many, many ways a vastly simpler time where simple statements seemed appropriate to most situations. Unfortunately, a lot has changed in 170 years…not all of it good.
Best wishes.
Mike Mercer says
Mill was a Liberal, I am not but my point was the need for open-source information not select data points that lean one way or the other. The open lands issue is a one that begs many questions which I have no information on. I asked for clarification showing the local need for this but only got statewide info. I too have problems with neighbors “auto wrecking yard” but don’t look to government to legislate. What if I don’t like the new map because someone else has better zoning and I now have to live with junk, think “Environmental Justice”. This is the big stick used by liberals who do not want to solve problems retail and just throw a big wholesale map out there and make me live with it, show me the justification with open-source information first.
From your letter;
‘…in order for society to function and advance at all, we can’t give the same weight to different sides that have vastly disproportionate levels of evidence.”
And there it is…who decides what level of evidence will be given weight. For every expert there is a counter-expert just as qualified, just name the scientific field; and you want the government to decide?
I was hoping you would call me out on the 1974 date, oh well.
Bitterrooter says
“I was hoping you would call me out on the 1974 date, oh well.”
I did Mike. But rather than pointing it out specifically, I subtly noted that Mills wrote On Liberty 170 years ago.
Mike Mercer says
Conceived in 1854 and first published in 1859