How many times have we heard the lament by individuals, businesses, large organizations and, in general, those in need of post-misdeed comfort: we are acting in the spirit, if not the letter, of the law, the regulation, the policy, ethics, etc.? So, the Canadian government has a new cell phone tower rule to replace the old guideline which seems to have been misunderstood by the companies supposed to be abiding by it. It used to be they had to consult with the locals (they read yokels) before putting up any of their attractive towers, if they were 15 meters or higher. Now they have to ask permission to go to the toilet for towers of any height. Why?
Why? Why indeed? Because they were just too clever by half and began putting up towers that didn’t reach higher than 14.9 meters. They thought no one would notice. Perhaps they even thought they’d get lots of praise for their thoughtful efforts to put up relatively tiny towers so as not to bother anyone who was legally blind. Who could object to a nicely designed 14.9 meter tower when the alternative would have been a gigantic 15 meter monstrosity? They are probably feeling hurt by the public’s failure to see through the steel webbing and into the goodness of their intentions. Well, it seems that the first 14.9 meters is the biggest hurdle and everything beyond, up to million kilometers, is OK. They probably thought they could make shit look good or, more likely disguise it as just a small tasty morsel which the yokels would easily swallow.
That lament, it’s like the scratchy sound of a broken record stuck in an eternal loop. Why don’t the lamenters just stand up and say “been caught, tried, but failed to behave like we ought to. It’s stronger than us. It’s the way evolution has programmed us; to be GREEDY?” That’s greedy, not GREEDY, that we’re programmed to be. The last stretch to GREEDY is the result of other stuff like grasping opportunism, psychopathy or, as economists like to describe that undesirable behaviour, rent seeking; where one group tries to abrogate to itself a larger piece of the pie without actually offering any more in return, like the skyrocketing pay of head honchos.
Better still, instead of letting it all get to the point of the lament, why don’t we just say no whenever a big player asks that we trust them? It’s not that they’re bad, it’s irresistible, just like the instinct to breath, they can’t help it and, it seems, the bigger they are the more helpless, like the 1%. When the railways ask us to lighten up on safety regulations for the transport of hazardous materials, like exploding DOT 111 cars carrying oil through small towns, we can just say no. When the Bankers ask us to trust them to make big bets with our money we should think of the executives of a big New York Bank raising a toast to clients and their great good luck that they have none because the bothersome customer comes first. This dealing with non-clients is really convenient because then you can sell them products and services that make you really big money even as the non-clients sink beneath the weight of what is really shit.
When the government tells you that they’re only collecting metadata, you’re expected to breathe a sigh of relief and practically send the thinking part of your brain on vacation because metadata does not include the content of the communications described by the metadata. It only includes the name, yes, the name, of the user, the location, the date and other such non-content, boring stuff. HOWEVER, ask David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell, what they don’t tell us. Those seemingly boring bits of metadata are the only coordinates anyone needs to track you down and take a long peek at the contents of your communications. Yes, it’s just a child’s step from metadata to content. So, why do we trust them, when they say they’re only trying to protect us?
I’m not sure but I’ll bet it has something to do with fear. Fear of the Hobbesian description of humans: “In such condition…..continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”. We are willing to trust the government because we really want to believe that our government is this Hobbesian Leviathan, completely objective, selfless, interested only in our welfare and, by extension, the greater good of society. That it will keep our safe, comfortable, prosperous civilization from the clutches of Attila and his hordes. It ain’t true. Governments are made of people, people that place their own interests above all others. It is why democratic societies have developed, over centuries, checks and balances, to keep government misbehavior to a minimum.
If flummoxed, bafflement, gawking surprise is your thing, then your best bet is to put your trust in others, whether big/small business, the nice 1%, governments, bankers, Bitcoin promoters and others who pledge to have only your interests at heart. Otherwise it’s best to trust everyone but remain vigilant at all times, and heavily armed with regulations and oversight, just like the famous “First League of Armed Neutrality,” made up of countries that fully trusted their proclaimed neutrality to keep them out of wars, but maintained serious military preparedness, just in case.
