Introducing the Shade Tree Razor

While watching This Week with George Stephanopoulos a few weeks back (IFC wasn’t showing their usual Sunday block of old Japanese Samurai flicks) I heard South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint say the following (or something very close) to Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank during a round table on the proposed stimulus package “You have to ask yourself if absent the crisis would you still want to do all the things we’re suggesting be done?”

DeMint was responding to a list of items read by Stephanopoulos that seemed to have no relation to economic stimulus yet were part of the proposed package. To me, DeMint’s response was posed as a type of ‘razor’. Obviously I’m not talking about the kind of razor you shave with but I do reserve the right to discuss, at some future point, the subject of George Stephanopoulos, Barney Frank, and razors (although I believe the OutQ channel on Sirius may have already covered this). The kind of razor DeMint employed is more of a philosophical tool used to strip away the irrelevant notions posed in an argument. Some call it logic. However, most discussions these days, especially those conducted on television programs like This Week with George Stephanopoulos are so devoid of logic we never get to see it used.

Well, I’m one for bringing logic back. And what better way to start than by claiming this particular razor and naming it after this blog? If you answered “No better way!”, then good for you.

Allow me to provide a bit of context before fully perpetrating the theft. Perhaps the best known razor is Occam’s razor; “the idea that the simplest or most obvious explanation of several competing ones is the one that should be preferred until it is proven wrong.” I won’t go into details here as I’m not familiar with them and didn’t have any time for research. But trust me, Occam’s razor is a handy a way of getting around having to take forever to make or explain a decision. Had I known about Occam’s razor in my teenage years I could have cruised through many a dicey situation.

Police: “Son, why are there eleven cases of beer in the back of your station wagon?”

17 year old Shade Tree Economist: “Sir, there is a universe of explanations as to how so much beer could have ended up in the back of my Malibu. But officer let’s not waste your time or mine. Allow me to invoke Occam’s razor and propose that the beer you see in the back of my car was put there by people unknown to me without my knowledge and therefore completely exonerates me from any responsibility or transgression of the law.”

Wow, who could fight that? Continuing on with our newly minted (punny!) ‘Shade Tree Razor’, allow me to work DeMint’s question into a razor-like one:

“Absent a crisis would you still want to do all those things you’re recommending to resolve the crisis?”

If the answer is yes, then the bullshit detector should go off as someone is most likely using a crisis to push through an agenda that would, under normal circumstances, not have a chance and should not be considered. If the answer is no, then we may assume the recommendations are directly linked to a crisis and should be considered.

The logic behind the yes and no results is quite simple. If there are recommendations being made that stand on their own as solutions to existing problems not pertaining to the crisis at hand, why put solving the crisis at risk by adding complexity, cost, time, etc? If there are recommendations that make sense in terms of solving the crisis and would not stand on their own as solutions to other existing problems, the only value they bring is in solving the crisis and should only be considered within the context of doing so.

Try applying the Shade Tree Razor to your favorite crisis to see if any of the popular recommendations for ending said crisis are truly aimed at fixing the problem or are more like pile-on pet ideas unscrupulously inserted to satisfy the wants of a certain group.

As a final warning (and charming metaphor), this razor may not produce the best solution to a crisis or the best answer to a problem but it will shave off the back hair that can clog the shower drain that prevents the crisis or problem from being flushed away.

- Later