Another way many of us think unclearly is by going through life with a list of made-up obligations. We wake up in the morning with a long list of “must do” items. After a while, our feet start dragging and we feel a heavy burden on our shoulders. But we “must” press on. Such phony obligations get in the way of clear thinking.
There is very little in the world that we actually must do. Let’s face it, unless we are in jail or otherwise detained, we have complete freedom about how to spend our day. The reason we don’t just pack up and go sit on the beach every day is that our actions lead to outcomes—and many of our “have to’s” give us the outcomes we want. Going to work, for example, provides camaraderie and a feeling of importance, as well as the money to buy the things we need and want. The “I must” person tells himself that he must go to work. The clear-thinking person says, “If I work at this job for another year, I’ll be able to buy a house. I could quit my job today, but if I want that house a lot, I’d better show up for work on Monday morning.”
The “I must” attitude increases our burdens and lessens our humanity. When we have goals in mind, we should reframe the issue from “I must” to “I want.” I want to go to work so that I can feed my kids, buy a car, buy a house, or change the world. If my goals don’t seem to justify the effort, then maybe I should rethink my goals and my overall strategy. When we act with clarity of mind, we cease being a fake prisoner and realize our true freedom. For more on this, see David Kelley’s powerful essay “I Don’t Have To.”
This is from David R. Henderson and Charles L. Hooper, Making Great Decisions in Business and Life, Chicago Park Press, 2006.
I’ve been reading a lot and seeing a lot on cable news about Donald Trump’s mistakes in dealing with the Covid-19 crisis. One item I don’t see mentioned, which I think is one of his biggest mistakes, is his signing of the CARES Act in March. That’s the law that gives billions of dollars to businesses to keep them in business, as if the government knows which ones should be kept, and gives an extra $600 per week in unemployment benefits to people who are unemployed. I’ve written extensively on both of these. (Here and here, for example.)
In late March, shortly after Trump signed the bill into law, I ran into a friend who’s a prominent local Republican. He started ragging on our governor, Gavin Newsom, and I agreed with all his criticisms. I said, though, that someone else who deserves criticism is Trump. As Exhibit A, I gave his signing of the CARES Act. My friend didn’t disagree that it was a bad law, but said, “He had to.”
“No, he didn’t,” I said.
The above excerpt from Charley’s and my book says why.
READER COMMENTS
nobody.really
Jul 21 2020 at 4:57pm
General Semantics, a school of linguistics, strives to bring the structure of our language closer to the structure of the world as we understand it. I might say that a happy coincidence brought me to this web page. But I prefer to say that *I* feel happy about discovering this web page; I really don’t know anything about the coincidence’s emotional state.
General Semantics recognizes that many statements contain implicit terms. Sometimes leaving these implicit terms unstated does little harm. Thus I say “Please pass the salt” rather than “May it please you to pass the salt.” But often leaving terms unstated impairs our thinking. “Have to” statements often fall into this category. I favor replacing “have to” statements with statements identifying the anticipated consequences of failing to do an action. Rather than, “I have to obey the speed limit,” I favor “If I don’t obey the speed limit, I might get a ticket–or get in an accident, or even kill someone.” We can then evaluate the merits of my claims. The discipline of stating anticipated consequences helps us examine our assumptions.
That said, when a person says, “Trump had to [sign the CARES Act],” I could imagine he meant, “If Trump failed to sign the CARES Act, he would have exposed himself to such political assault from his opponents as to ensure that Democrats would sweep the executive and legislative branches of the federal government in the next election, thereby ensuring that policies more extreme than the CARES Act would be adopted.” Now, as Henderson correctly observes, this consequence did not literally prohibit Trump from vetoing the bill; he clearly had the option of committing political suicide. But once we elaborate on the implicit aspects of the sentence, does it really lead to a different conclusion?
In short, as a matter of linguistics, I share Henderson’s view. But as a matter of politics, I don’t know how much we gain in this context from speaking with greater precision.
Jon Murphy
Jul 22 2020 at 10:21am
Yes, in a rather significant manner. When one has “no choice,” then it implies there is no responsibility. I have no choice over the thunderstorm that comes by and damages my siding. I am not to blame, nor is it, nor is the meteorologist who said it was coming, nor my mayor. It just is.
When one is faced with a choice, even a terrible choice, the burden of choice remains. Yes, the costs of not doing X may be sufficiently high that X might be strongly preferred to the relevant alternative (not doing X), but that does not mean no choice is involved. Since choice is involved, the responsibility remains (in economic jargon, responsibility for bearing the costs remains).
To go back to my thunderstorm example, I have no choice about whether the storm passes over my house or not. I do have a choice of whether or not to repair the damage. I can choose to replace the siding, in which case I still bear the burden of the choice (ie the cost, what I had to give up to repair the siding). Or I can choose not to repair the siding and bear the burden of that choice.
In other words, Trump should not be let off the hook for his decision. He made a choice, and choices have consequences.
nobody.really
Jul 22 2020 at 11:03am
Returning to semantics, the French distinguish between two kinds of “have to”: Devoir and falloir. As I understand it, devoir refers to duty, while falloir refers to necessity. So if we were speaking French, perhaps we’d encounter fewer of the problems identified by Henderson: We would exclude the idea of choice when discussing necessity, but not when discussing duty. (Where is Pierre Lemieux when you need him?)
But I suspect not. The statement “Trump had to” was a reference to necessity. The statement was not intended to deny the conceptual possibility of making a different decision. It was intended to say that the other alternatives available to Trump were so inferior as warrant no consideration, thus leaving Trump with no practical alternatives.
Yes, Trump literally had a choice–much like you have a choice when the mugger presents you with a menu of options in the phrase “Your money or your life!” And perhaps you would draw up a list of pros and con of each option to aid your analysis before you inform the mugger of your selection. But I suspect many people would have such a strong preference among the options as to effectively exclude all but one–and these people might regard our need to emphasize the existence of a choice are rather academic, if not naive.
Jon Murphy
Jul 22 2020 at 11:47am
Which would be incorrect. There is still a choice with necessity.
Thomas Hutcheson
Jul 21 2020 at 8:22pm
I would fault Trump more for the state of the bill that came to him to sign rather than for signing it. If he had provide leadership, I think that instead of the unemployment top up and PPP, we could have had a proper unemployment insurance plan that replaced a high percentage of workers’ lost income plus automatic access to health insurance. And he might have been able to trade acceptance of the one-time checks, a transfer with no perverse incentives, for a long term suspension if not permanent abolition of the wage tax that “finances” Social Security and Medicare which depress firms’ demand for labor.
Jon Murphy
Jul 22 2020 at 10:25am
Presidents have no say in how legislation is crafted. It’s not clear how “leadership” would have changed anything there.
nobody.really
Jul 22 2020 at 11:11am
Any theories about why people speak of FDR’s New Deal legislation, or LBJ’s Great Society Program, or Obamacare, or Trump’s tax cuts?
Jon Murphy
Jul 22 2020 at 11:49am
Simplicity. Far easier to attribute things to the singular executive (or another sole agent) rather than the myriad of people actually involved. Other examples:
-Trump’s economy
-Steve Jobs’ Apple products
-The Pope’s church
-The American economy
etc.
David Henderson
Jul 22 2020 at 12:58pm
Actually, Jon, Trump’s Treasury Secretary had a pretty big role in the negotiations about the CARES Act.
Jon Murphy
Jul 22 2020 at 7:34pm
True. What I mean to say is that Congress creates legislation. Congress writes legislation. Congress debates legislation. They may need to coordinate with various elements of the executive branch in terms of execution, but legislation is a product of Congress, not the President. So I don’t see how “leadership” by the President in a process where he is, at best, a contributor and not a leader, would have mattered.
Craig Anderson
Jul 22 2020 at 1:51pm
If only that were true. I think that was the original intent but lately it seems Congress is only too willing to take advice from the executive branch.
nobody.really
Jul 23 2020 at 11:32am
Both Reagan and George W Bush tried reducing funding for Social Security and Medicare–and later walked back their proposals. Obama cut the payroll tax, but on the condition that the loss of funds for the Social Security “lockbox” be funded via general revenues/borrowing. Whatever the theoretical merits of replacing a payroll tax with an income tax, the Republican House initially opposed extending it into 2012–until they confronted political realities and capitulated.
So now–surprise, surprise–the Trump Administration has backed off its demand that the next stimulus/relief plan include payroll tax cuts, given that Republican congressmen fear anything that would look like they’re threatening Social Security during an election year. Given polling showing the speed with which senior citizens are abandoning the GOP, this seems like a perfectly reasonable concern.
Of course, none of the prior statements will make sense to people who think that presidents play no role in crafting legislation.
Aladin
Jul 22 2020 at 12:42pm
What … exactly is the alternative? Let’s ignore the political implications of rejecting the stimulus package for a bit (if you think the social unrest, both with right wing anti lockdown protestors and left wing … well anti lockdown protestors effectively, is bad now, what do you think it would have been had people actually lost their jobs?)
But on the economics side, yeah its imperfect, yeah the airline bailout was unnecessary, yes the PPP had fraud, yes too much was given in unemployment. But there had to be something.
A lot of people cannot find jobs. I have the skills to work in a job from home. Some people, maybe construction, can figure out how to socially distance on the job. A lot of people can’t. What do you want to do about them? Give them money seems to be the best choice.
And having the government as an arbiter, you need saving, you don’t, I agree that’s terrible. Which is why the program basically was to pay everyone.
I agree with the quote. But this is a very weird hill to die on. The assumption was that this would be temporary so that we just pay people through it, and everything would go back to normal. That assumption, maybe, was wrong. But we could at least wait until the crisis abated a little before we ease up and let the free market force long term changes. Why force those adjustments in the middle of a pandemic?
Yes, excess stimulus leads to inflation. The money everyone has saved up from not going to bars, etc.. hasn’t gone anywhere. Which is why the fed will likely have to pursue deflationary options when this is over … which yes is unfair to savers. I am one, and yeah I’m pissed our that, but that is just how stimulus is.
I suppose mask wearing and all out to vaccine would have been a better policy. But the lockdowns would probably have happened regardless, even if the federal government would get its shit together the states were still messed up. So in response to lockdown, to people losing their jobs … the CARES act was a response. It had flaws, but I package rushed through in a week will have flaws. I have not seen someone propose something better that could have been conceived and pushed through in that time frame.
David Henderson
Jul 23 2020 at 10:27am
Aladin,
I’m glad we see eye to eye on so many of the problems with the CARES Act.
The alternative I proposed early on was to let businesses and individuals borrow some large percent of their previous year’s tax liability at a very low interest rate. And a real loan, not a fake one as in the PPP.
The advantage would have been that then business owners could ask themselves what their odds of staying in business are, and act accordingly. They could have drawn on their local knowledge, knowledge that the feds don’t have. Some of them would have chosen not to take the funds. And for those who did, the contribution to the federal budget deficit would have been minuscule compared to that of the large PPP program.
It’s true that if individuals can borrow only 60% of their federal tax liability the year before, that doesn’t much help low-income individuals because they don’t pay much in federal taxes other than payroll taxes. So let them borrow a large percent of their previous year’s payroll taxes too. Moreover, they would have been more of pressure group to end the lockdowns sooner. Also, I bet we wouldn’t have the rampant destruction we’ve had since the George Floyd murder if there hadn’t been millions of youths getting more in unemployment insurance than they earned in their previous jobs.
nobody.really
Jul 23 2020 at 11:42am
I’m not following this. What would be government’s interest in lending people money?
Cyril Morong
Jul 23 2020 at 12:05pm
Nietzsche talked about slaying the dragon whose name is “Thou Shalt.” The dragon is the concretization of all those imprints that the society has put upon you.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6812012-nietzsche-s-words-that-relate-to-this-with-respect-to-masks
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