The Shirky Principle, Revisited

Being a retired guy with plenty of time on my hands, I've been working on transferring the handwritten record of my 5,128 blog posts (currently occupying four spiral-bound notebooks) into a searchable Excel spreadsheet to help me more easily find specific posts. It's been a worthwhile exercise, if for no other reason than I've been reminded of all the fascinating things I've learned and written about over the years*. 

One of those fascinating topics comes from back in 2016: The Shirky Principle: “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” 

My post on the Shirky Principle was pretty prescient, given Congress's ongoing and self-inflicted border-crisis wound.

That there's an immigration crisis at our southern border is beyond doubt ... people are fleeing north in record numbers in search of a better life. The United States has always been seen as a land of relative safety and opportunity by people fleeing poor economic and political conditions in their home countries, and the current situation in much of the world is such that the US of A looks better than ever. In all the screaming and handwringing over the situation, though, we tend to lose sight of the fact that there is not a single American citizen (other than indigenous Native Americans) who is not descended from an immigrant to these shores, whether legal or illegal. Nobody wants to admit that, but it's true.

The cause of the crisis, though, really doesn't have anything to do with numbers or motivations, but with our outdated and totally inadequate laws and policies governing immigration and citizenship. You may recall, if you paid attention during your civics classes, that Congress is responsible for drafting laws ... which brings me back to the The Shirky Principle.

We have totally inadequate immigration laws and policies because they present a politically useful weapon, and neither party is willing to disarm. Last week, Republican members of Congress took a theatrically useless "fact-finding" trip to the southern border, where they were able to gain valuable Faux News airtime to berate the Biden Administration for not doing enough to hermetically seal the border. 

Congressional Republicans demand that the President take the actions they want by executive order ... which, of course, allows them to avoid getting their fingerprints on them, and blame Mr Biden if the situation doesn't immediately and magically improve. They insist that their proposed legislation (HR-2) is the only solution to the crisis, is absolutely not negotiable, and must be implemented exactly as written**. 

Texas GOP Representative Troy Nehls said the quite part out loud when he recently said, 

“Let me tell you, I’m not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating ... I will not help the Democrats try to improve this man’s dismal approval ratings. I’m not going to do it. Why would I?”

Mr Nehls added that "[Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer has had HR 2 on his desk since July. And he did nothing with it." 

My way or the highway seems like an odd way to secure support for important legislation.

Granted, the Democrats had their chances to reform the immigration mess when they were in power, but at least they had the grace not to be so angrily blatant about it.

When the solution is less important than the ability to use the problem to score political points, we see the Shirky Principle in action.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* Well, fascinating to me, anyhow.

** Making it the legislative equivalent of the Bible or the Koran.