The government helps you cope with the problems it creates.
Only the government “distributes” income, the rest of us earn ours. Rewarding failure and punishing success is not a good idea. Success diminishes and failure increases.
I have an idea, stolen from Marginal Revolution. The government taxes carbon-producing energy if the temperature rises and refunds money if it falls. In the real world, any carbon tax that is imposed, and government agencies which are created, will not stop when Global Warming becomes Cooling. That. you can count on.
If you torture the data long enough it (sic) will confess.
and more on criminal rehabilitation from: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:
Correctional polgrams have included, but are not limited to, such silly examples as acupuncture, music therapy, art therapy, aura focus, drama therapy, drum circles, heart mapping, healing lodges, pet therapy and yoga all sanctioned by people paid by the state.
As in other areas, professional judgement is a poor predictor of future behavior, in the case of corrections, risk of reoffending, and very inferior to statistical tools in determining the probability of recidivism. This is true in other areas of the social sciences, with different measures, where professional judgement is based on hope, belief, arrogance without performance and theory. When a government agency gives someone the label of “EXPERT”, many people, including the “EXPERT” believe the label while reality always has a different judgement.
An Example of What Can Happen When Science Loses to Laymanship
The debate between science and laymanship is not something for quiet contemplation by those who loll on scented beds in the ivory tower as shown by the following true story. There is a predictor of risk of returning to crime called the Level of Supervision Inventory (LSI), which could also be called the Level of Risk Inventory. This instrument, which was developed over several decades and represents one of the best examples of applied social science, is based on social learning theory and provides a summary number derived from the number of risk or criminological factors for an individual. The higher the number, the greater the chance of recidivism. Finding the LSI score for a criminal is an excellent way of determining the need for program intervention. The higher the number, the greater the need for rehabilitation.
This is the account of a man who was convicted of several charges of violent behavior such as assault, assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm and was sentenced to prison for two years less a day. While he was in prison, he went into the usual non-data based polgrams. At his parole hearing, he was rejected as not "sincere" enough in his self-directed rehabilitation attempts. Sincerity is an easy thing to fake, so he took another polgram with a high profile and ethnic correctness to show his increased sincerity. He was successful on his second attempt and was paroled to a half-way house where immediately walked away and shot a policeman to death shortly thereafter. His score on the LSI was 37, placing him in the 92nd percentile of offenders and making him an extremely high-risk offender who should have never been considered for parole. Sincerity, however, outweighed science and he got out early. The parole board was wrong and the policeman is dead.
Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
