![]() ![]() So I think we're headed exactly down the wrong road. Under those conditions, you won't get anyone to do anything unless you make it worth their while financially. But my sense - I teach at an institution that has very smart students - and my sense is that you're really regarded as naive to have this kind of noble aspiration you don't understand how the world works you've got to put a shell on you've got to become cynical. We should acknowledge openly and celebrate that, and the celebration of these kinds of people should be built into the training that we get in law, medicine, education, or anything else. Instead of being embarrassed by our naiveté when it comes to great lawyers, either in fiction or in history, as motivating us to want to become lawyers, we should celebrate these people, acknowledge that we want to be lawyers because of the good that lawyers do we want to be doctors because of the good that doctors do and so on, and so forth. ![]() It takes a certain kind of person to want to do the right thing and know what that is, and part of the point of my talk is that our reliance on rules and, even worse, on incentives, has virtually guaranteed that we won't find such people. But the idea that you can simply eliminate these rules and trust that people will routinely want to do the right thing and know how to do the right thing is just self-deception. It is certainly true that when you rely on rules, usually promulgated by government agencies, terrible things will sometimes happen, preposterous things will sometimes happen. Mediocrity is the best you'll get when you expect people to adhere to a rigid set of rules. And my point was that they work to protect against disaster, but, at the same time, they assure mediocrity. So these rigid procedures were designed to protect against disaster. And you can see why, the reason these procedures were put in place, is that, no doubt in the past, welfare workers have been negligent, neglectful, and what have you. At every step in the process, people said the same thing: I hate to do this, but I have to follow procedure.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |