What is Seen, What is Not Seen

It is a categorical mistake to think that actions should be judged by their intentions alone rather than their consequences, at least when those consequences are predictable. In the personal sphere, the focus is perhaps more on what the actions say about the individual, and feelings of discomfort and intention can loom large. Judging by intention can capture many important aspects about the morals of the person, which is often what we are interested in knowing.

But in the political sphere, the choice is clear. Politicians cannot have the luxury of doing what feels right, because the impacts are too large. Your feelings are insignificant compared with the cold equations of what results your actions will produce. As Eliezer Yudkowsky puts it, "Shut up and multiply"

Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard was facing a large number of boat people arriving in Australia. He implemented a policy of putting all asylum seekers into detention offshore (and outside Australia) while they were processed, and taking a hard line on their applications. John Howard is denounced as horribly cruel by lefites.

What is seen:



Kevin Rudd gets elected as the Labor Prime Minister. Half-way through his term, he gets rid of the offshore processing, a process followed up by new Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard who continues to relax rules on immigration detention. Plaudits follow from lefties.

Q: If the expected cost of seeking asylum in Australia is reduced by making conditions easier and increasing the probability of successful applications, will the likely number of asylum seekers:
a) increase
b) decrease
c) remain unchanged.

What is not seen:


Such is the nature of incentives. You can ignore them, you can pretend they aren't there, you can plead that this wasn't what you intended. And yet they remain.

Q: If a percentage x of asylum seekers travelling to Australia by boat will drown in transit, and the number of asylum seekers increases, the number of asylum seekers drowning will:
a) increase
b) decrease
c) remain unchanged.

What is seen:

The Prime Minister's invitation to the opposition to join a bipartisan group came as authorities continued to search for more victims from the boat which smashed into rocks at Christmas Island yesterday, killing at least 28 men, women and children.  ...

The boat, with up to 100 asylum-seekers aboard, was washed onto rocks and broke up, throwing men, women and children into the water. At least 42 people survived, including 11 children, but authorities are still unsure how many remain missing.

 And yet, behold the complete inability to identify the problem.

'Islander frustrated at Navy response time to Christmas island Asylum seeker boat crash'

'Advocate queries why boat wasn't stopped'

Let me put this in the plainest terms I can:

The problem is not the @#$%ing navy.

Let's go back to the quote I had earlier:

The Prime Minister's invitation to the opposition to join a bipartisan group came as authorities continued to search for more victims from the boat which smashed into rocks at Christmas Island yesterday, killing at least 28 men, women and children.  ...

When you screw up badly enough, the seen becomes large enough that even dullards start to figure out the unseen. And that unseen has her fingerprints all over it.I bet she wants a bipartisan group all right. 

Julia Gillard has proven herself manifestly unwilling or unable to shut up and multiply. Her political career deserves to go to the same watery grave as those poor buggers on Christmas Island, tragically and predictably responding to the incentives set up by the Labor Government.