Knowledge And Decisions

In general, the political trends discussed in Chapter 10 remain a matter of “embattled freedom,” as described in the last section of that chapter and of the book. The political role of intellectuals in particular remains very much what it was in 1980, including “the totalitarian thrust of the intellectual vision,” while “the rampaging presumptions” mentioned there have continued unabated. Perhaps the most striking example of these presumptions was the 1993 attempt to have the government in Washington take over the entire medical sector of the country — an attempt spearheaded by people with neither medical training, hospital management experience, nor expertise in pharmaceutical research or even in the running of a drugstore. That this attempt ultimately failed does not negate the fact that it looked very much as if it would succeed for quite a while. Moreover, the political methods which brought this attempt so close to success may well prevail in other issues, where a sufficiently strong counterattack does not develop as quickly or as effectively.

The strongly pessimistic tone of the last chapter of Knowledge and Decisions in 1980 can now be moderated by subsequent experience — a feedback mechanism very appropriate to this study of feedback mechanisms. While political plans and schemes for overriding the decisions of people with knowledge and experience by government officials with power and articulation continue to be formulated in the political arena or imposed by federal courts loosely “interpreting” the Constitution or the statutes, opposition to such trends has also grown over the past fifteen years, so that the ultimate outcome is at least in greater doubt than it seemed to be in 1980. On the international scene, the “remote hopes” of changing totalitarian governments referred to in the last chapter have already been realized in Eastern Europe. There are few developments on which it is so gratifying to be proved wrong.

Nevertheless, the political forces described in Knowledge and Decisions have by no means been vanquished, even if they have been dealt a setback, and they may yet be resurgent, either at home or abroad. The political situation today is much like the military situation described by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1942, after a British army finally won a battle against a German army: “We have a new experience. We have victory — a remarkable and definite victory.” But he cautioned:

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.¹⁴

What has happened politically since 1980 is perhaps the end of the beginning of a worldwide drive toward ever more sweeping government control of individuals and institutions — a drive which, in the 1930s, caused many even in the democratic world to speak of totalitarianism as “the wave of the future.” World War II put an end to one kind of totalitarianism but it was nearly half a century later before the surviving totalitarianism of the Communist world suffered its first major defeat with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the freeing of its Eastern European satellite nations. If this turns out to be no more than the end of the beginning, it is still a very welcome end to a very ominous beginning that included an unbroken series of massive territorial expansions for the Communist bloc around the world.

If nothing more, a new century can begin without the dark cloud that hung over most of the twentieth century.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The unifying theme of Knowledge and Decisions is that the specific mechanics of decision-making processes and institutions determine what kinds of knowledge can be brought to bear and with what effectiveness. In a world where people are preoccupied with arguing about what decision should be made on a sweeping range of issues, this book argues that the most fundamental question is not what decision to make but who is to make it — through what processes and under what incentives and constraints, and with what feedback mechanisms to correct the decision if it proves to be wrong.