Counter-Compulsion

How mandates make things worse.

I'm sensitive to the urge to say "I told you so" when a prediction or warning comes true, for reasons that should become evident as you read on. But, here, I will make an exception, point out that I've been arguing against mandates from nigh-on the beginning of the pandemic, and note that we are reaping the consequences I warned of.

Far and wide, politicians and pundits of a statist bent are increasingly histrionic over the resistance to vaccinating exhibited by a subset of the population. Anti-vaccine screeds and "research" are propagating around the Internet, and especially social media, far faster than the censorious scolds can whac-a-mole them away, and people are proudly avowing their "I'm not a sheep" superiority even as report after report of notable anti-vaxxers dying from COVID compete for headline space.

I suggested from the start that many people who'd go along with a well-reasoned request for voluntary action or cooperation would dig their heels in resistance to the exact same presentation were it compulsory.

And, sure enough here we are.

Told you so.

This resistance-to-mandate also popped up in my feed on a different matter: that of racism-education. This excellent expose of the indoctrination that poses as education in the United Kingdom's elite colleges by a Cambridge professor speaks of the inefficacy of coercive anti-racism.

Making this training compulsory is especially likely to be counterproductive. A 2016 study of more than 800 US firms finds that:

five years after instituting required training for managers, companies saw no improvement in the proportion of white women, black men, and Hispanics in management, and the share of black women actually decreased by 9%, on average, while the ranks of Asian-American men and women shrank by 4% to 5%. Trainers tell us that people often respond to compulsory courses with anger and resistance-and many participants actually report more animosity toward other groups afterward.

Paying for something with no proven benefits is bad enough. Compulsory training may actively be making things worse.

Humans are an ornery bunch. We don't like being told what to do by people we haven't invited to do so. We really don't like being told to do things, or say things, or think things, that don't pass a "gut check" of sanity or truthfulness or believability. And, when we are forced to do something, we often suspect the forcers’ motives are less than pure.

So, when we're told that children must wear masks against COVID despite their far lower risk levels than even vs the flu, or that we should mask while outdoors, we cock an eyebrow.

When we're told that we are inherently racist because our skin is white, we bristle.

When we're told that the only way to make things better is to put even more power into the hands of people who've gotten things wrong so many times, we shake our heads in disgust.

When we're told that, unless we behave in an actively "anti-racist" fashion we might as well be George Wallace, we start to see red.

When our "betters" carry on about COVID masks and distancing and reduced gathering sizes, but are routinely caught out flaunting their own rules, we sharpen pitchforks.

We see this in the various prohibitions imposed upon us. Recreational drug use has not been quashed by prohibition - in fact, the potency of drugs has grown steadily in its face. Cannabis activist Richard Cowan proffered the Iron Law of Prohibition:

The harder the enforcement, the harder the drugs.

Which we see first-hand in the fentanyl epidemic.

Parents know that one of the surest ways to get a teenager to try or attempt something is to flat-out tell them they will not.

Prostitution remains "the world's oldest profession" despite bans and their enforcement.”

Meanwhile, in Portugal, where personal use quantities of all drugs were decriminalized, usage is down, overdoses are down, problematic use is down, and more addicts are getting help.

The added illicitness of prohibitions makes them enticing to many, but even those not drawn to being "naughty" in that fashion react viscerally against being ordered to do and not to do.

By and large, I figure that those who support a particular mandate would do what's mandated voluntarily, meaning the coercion is of no consequence to them. And, of course, those who'd not do are clearly wrong, so...

We have far more than enough examples this compulsion contrariness to know it should factor into policy decisions, and yet, pols default to ordering us around whenever they can get away with it. Which tells us all we need to know about them.

It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it... anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. -- Douglas Adams

The way to get people to go along with a policy is to ask, rather than tell. Give them reasons to do so, rather than mandates and "or else."