Libertarian’s Corner:

A Lesson from a Fairy Tale

 

Joseph S. Fulda

Joseph Fulda is a freelance writer living in New York City. He is the author of Eight Steps Towards Libertarianism.

The fairy tale or fable is a literary device by which adults -- who have learned many of life’s lessons the hard way -- impart wisdom to the young.

It is at once an exciting and captivating story and a lesson in moral imagination. It succeeds because it is simple and direct.

Across most cultures, there is a recurring fairy tale: The Fairy Tale of The Three Wishes. In the fable, the poor chap who is at once hero and fool of the story is given three wishes. The first wish is inevitably spent on something foolish and trivial, but the wish is fulfilled powerfully and right away, thereby emboldening the wisher. The next wish is a much more serious wish, one that will thoroughly change the life of the wisher, all at once. Inevitably, it brings disaster and ruination upon the wisher, whose third wish, inevitably, is humbler -- to be rescued from the disasters of his earlier wishes with everything in his world restored to normalcy. This wish, also, is granted, and the hero comes away a much sadder but much wiser man.

What is the moral of this story? It is not quite that we do not know our own minds and what we really want, because of course in some important senses we do. I think the teaching of the story is that we are not wise enough to get what we want all at once by merely wishing for it, for we cannot foresee the multitude of consequences that will undoubtedly ensue, many of which we would not want. Unlike when objects of our desire are earned slowly, there is no feedback about the wisdom and appropriateness of the goal, there is no turning back or perhaps merely turning aside -- the wish is carried out by the genie exactly as it is expressed in words. There is thus no opportunity for reevaluation, reexamination, and ultimately reconsideration as there is when one embarks on a long path to a goal. Furthermore, when working towards a goal, a person commits his whole self to the goal in that he must take action after action after action to achieve his goal, and he must do so over a prolonged waiting period. When wishing, however, he does not have to put thought, care, or repeated and sustained effort into attaining his goal. Each action a person has to put towards a goal takes effort and each such action is therefore a reason to abandon the goal, if it is not worth -- if it is no longer worth -- the effort. The actions that people must take to achieve their dreams dampen their enthusiasm for them. Engineers call such dampening a “negative feedback loop” and it is the hallmark of a stable system that it centers around such a loop. “Positive feedback loops” quickly go out of control and rock the system’s limits.

So what, then, is it fair to conclude about knowing one’s own mind: At every step of the way towards a goal, a person knows whether the next step is worth it in light of that small step’s consequences -- small enough to be seen and felt -- and the effort required. Whether the step after that will also be worth it is something he will not, finally, decide till it is ripe for decision. The saving grace is that even if a subsequent step is no longer worth the effort often that does not mean the prior steps were in vain: Instead of turning back, the person may turn aside, and choose a path parallel rather than perpendicular to the original path.

The astute reader will already have divined the point we wish to make. The legislator is a wisher. Laws are wishes. And legislatures have not learned the lesson of the child’s simple but profound tale. Consider. Laws, like wishes, are effected at any speed -- even all at once; with the exception of Prohibition and a few other less notable cases, they are rarely reconsidered. The legislatures of this land do not take incremental steps towards whatever end they desire and then reevaluate both ends and means, always in light of the continued worthiness of the goal and the additional effort required. Laws are not like life’s goals. Many of them are foolish and trivial like the first wish in the fairy tale. Many of them are much more serious and wreak havoc on everyone and everything in sight in countless unthought of ways. But the legislators do not learn, like the sadder but wiser fool who through his learning becomes the hero of the tale, to simply undo their wishes expressed as legal fiats. Rather, seeing the untoward consequences of their wishes they remain, sometimes willfully, sometimes not, ignorant of the causes of the calamities their wishes have brought about. And they proceed to “repair” the damage with another, yet another, and yet still another wish, and the calamities multiply as the wishes are effected by the genies of government enforcers.     *

“A lot of people mean well, but their meanness is greater than their wellness.” --Robert Hunter

We would like to thank the following people for their generous contributions in support of this journal (from 9/13/2004 to 11/18/2004): Ariel, H.G. Bailey, Dirk A. Ballendorf, Nancy M. Bannick, Harry S. Barrows, Arnold Beichman, Carol & Bud Belz, Charles Benscheidt, Aletha W. Berry, Peter Block, William G. Buckner, Thomas M. Burt, Alva D. Butler, Terry Cahill, N. J. Christianson, Irma I. Clark, John Alden Clark, Samuel J. Criscio, Daniel G. Crozier, John D’Aloia, Lynn Davidson, Jim Dea, Jeanne L. Dipaola, Lester Farmer, Reuben M. Freitas, C. Jerome C. Fritz, Kelly A. Grant, Matthew B. Grocott, Alene D. Haines, Daniel J. Haley, Violet H. Hall, Anthony Harrigan, Bernhard Heersink, Norman G. P. Helgeson, Richard Herreid, Jaren E. Hiller, Arthur H. Ivey, O. Guy Johnson, Ken E. Kampfe, Martin Kellogg, Herbert London, Gregor MacDonald, John L. Mrocchi, W. C. Metcalf, King Odell, Ruth Orland, Daniel D. Payne, James R. Peterson, Mark & Beth Richter, Patrick L. Risch, Frances Rutherford, Michael J. Ryan, W. E. Saunders, Irene Schultz, William Schummrick, Weldon O. & Roxana B. Shepherd, G. R. Slade, Paul Sopko, John D. Sours, Carl G. Stevenson, Norman Stewart, Michael S. Swisher, Paul B. Thompson, Doug Tice, Daniel J. Torrance, Miller Upton, Eugene & Diane Watson, Robert C. Whitten, Herbert A. Widell, Piers Woodriff, Miriam K. Yachnin.