Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

One of the many annoying aspects with discourse is how many times sound reasoning is replaced in favor of emotional manipulation or logical fallacies. I’ve mentioned framing, causation vs correlation, and recently false dilemmas. But one of the most used fallacies is the intentional blurring between the means and the ends.

The ends is the what: the end goal of the action. The means is the how: the action used to reach the goal. While a lot of people will see these equivalent in value, it’s not the case. Any given means will almost always have unintended consequences outside the scope of the ends, differing long term and short term effects, or simply just have better alternatives.

A good recent example is the minimum wage hike that is stalled in the Senate. The ends of this initiative are to help low wage employees, the means the are legislation to increase minimum wage. Proponents of this plan criticize their opponents of hating the working class.

This is, of course, disingenuous. There are many economists that believe a minimum wage hike won’t help and may even hurt the working class. Plus, why couldn’t you want to both help the working class and oppose the minimum wage hike. They aren’t mutually exclusive. (As an aside, I’m speaking more about the general public and not the senators, who are mostly likely doing whatever their special interests tell them.)

Let’s look at this from a different angle. Suppose that I’m carpooling with friends to Seattle (the ends) from the Eastside. We have two choices, taking the 520 bridge or the 90 bridge (the means).

Let’s say I’m planning to take the 520 bridge, and my friends says, “I don’t think we should take 520.” I don’t assume my friend hates Seattle, because my friend isn’t saying, “Let’s not go to Seattle.”, he’s saying let’s try a different way.

Part of the problem is that our leaders and media don’t want to present detailed and deliberate reasoning to support their positions, it’s much easier to rally people with a nice soundbite like, “Support our Troops”. And this style of persuasion is lucrative: look at all the “experts” on CNN or Fox News with their horrible books and speeches.

For the minimum wage, if we really needed to use legislation, I’d rather we decrease the payroll taxes for those workers. This way, workers get more money, and the increased cost is felt by the federal government, not directly by the business and consumer. If anyone is in a better position to absorb the financial hit, it’s the bloated government. :-)