The politics of thinking there are simple solutions to complex problems
What it means when outrage dominates public debate
A defining myth of rightwing populism is that some hero-like figure can come along and “cut through the bullshit” and, with an arctic blast of “common sense” accompanied by a “three-word slogan”, rid us of all the “roadblocks” and “red tape” and “regulation” that are, allegedly, the only things getting in the way of what would otherwise be the smooth operation of all the systems of governance.
The political class in general—and I include the media in that—is full of people who pretend you can impose simplicity on complex systems and what I want to talk about here is how that pretence is the source of much that can go wrong with our democracies.
The likes of Donald Trump embody this approach and it is unsurprising that his former adviser, Steve Bannon, announced early after Trump’s 2016 victory that a key aim of the administration would be “the deconstruction of the administrative state.”
Simples!1
A lot of business thinking is underpinned by the same fairytale of simplicity and it has found its way into governance, into the public service, through the tenets of neoliberalism that overtook key sections of the political class from the late 1970s onwards, and it is still running amok.
Argentina’s new President, Javier Milei, explaining his decision to inflict neoliberal economics on his country, recently told a reporter that he was a relatively late convert to the doctrines of the Mont Pelerin Society but that he found that the “conceptual clarity of the Austrians is superlative.” Someone might remind him of HL Mencken’s quote that “every complex problem has a solution which is simple, direct, plausible—and wrong”, though in fairness, we are all too often tantalised by the prospect of cutting the Gordian knot (to double my ancient Greek references).
The drive for efficiency—as opposed to effectiveness—that has supercharged the rhetoric of neoliberalism from the beginning is tied to the idea that government bureaucracy is inherently replaceable with simplified systems of profit-and-loss, self-interest and individual incentives, rather than the complex idea of a greater good. Privatisation, out-sourcing and the like are meant to bring the “discipline” of markets to the provision of government services, simplifying delivering and saving money.
Move fast and break things, the unofficial slogan of Silicon Valley, almost holy writ, is an expression of the same idea. As is their oft-lauded idea of “frictionless” design. The whole notion of “startup culture” is predicated on simplification, that complex problems can be reduced to single problems to be solved individually rather than treating them as interacting problems that need to be addressed collectively.
None of this to say that there isn’t a role, in any complex system, like the administration of a state, for those willing to look beyond moribund routines and impose efficiency or simplification on practices no longer fit for purpose. Nor is to say that sometimes more direct—and therefore, if you like, simple—solutions aren’t warranted and may be the best way forward: public housing provision for the homeless and cash payments for welfare recipients are examples that come to mind.
But it is to say that there is a pretty good chance that the politician or operative who waxes lyrical about the clarifying effects of “simplification” is likely, almost by definition, to be authoritarian and anti-democratic, someone seeking to take decision making out of the hands of the many and consolidate it in the hands of the few, for profit or power or probably both.2
In one sense, Anthony Albanese’s incremental approach to governing, of which I have been highly critical, is a nod to complexity, a recognition that you can’t—shouldn’t—try and do everything at once, and we should be recognise that. But ultimately his approach is just another simplifying strategy where clearer acknowledgement of complexity is needed, the willingness to argue and prosecute policy positions that don’t fit simplistic media frames and tropes.
The criticism is that the PM’s approach allows a space Dutton and co. can fill up with their own simplistic nonsense and we see it week after week. The fact that the media itself is a huge simplification machine, that its reporting often leads to massive distortions and dishonesty in how our politics is conducted, inevitably compounds the problem.
It is easier, as Jay Rosen has pointed out, for the media to report the odds rather than the stakes of political argument, and this is all part of a more general tendency within the media to oversimplify: to report politics as a sport rather than the function of power within and between complex and interacting institutions; to elevate personality over policy; to think of the audience as punters rather than voters. (God, I hate it when they call their audience punters.)
The current problems at the ABC around their Gaza coverage arise in large part because management tried to impose simple solutions on a fraught and multifaceted issue by, for instance, banning the use of words like “apartheid” and “genocide”, while simply sacking a staff member who allegedly stepped outside their coverage rules. By taking this approach, the organisation not only left itself open to criticisms of bias, it made itself vulnerable to precisely the sort of pressure campaign that was mounted by the “Lawyers for Israel” WhatsApp group.
In fact, all that happened was that the simple “solution” instigated at the ABC conceded ground that the WhatsApp group and others were able to exploit, and then in turn, pressure from the WhatsApp group gave the ABC the excuse it needed to sack the journalist in question.
How’s that all working out for you, David Anderson?
I was bowled over by a quote I came across in a novel by William Golding that I just finished, Darkness Visible. In it, one of the key characters, Sophy Stanhope, who, in trying to hatch a scheme and talk her boyfriend into helping her execute it, is overwhelmed by the complexity of life in general. During a sort of rant at Gerry (the boyfriend) she has an epiphany on the matter:
“Everything’s running down. Unwinding. We’re just—tangles. Everything is just a tangle and it slides out of itself bit by bit towards something that’s simpler and simpler—and we can help it. Be a part….
“Being good is just another tangle. Why bother? Go on with the disentangling that will happen in any case and take what you can on the way. What it wants, the dark, let the weight fall, take the brake off—”
A truth appeared in her mind. The way towards simplicity is through outrage.
(My emphasis)
That last sentence is a near perfect explanation of the logic of the sort of campaigns Peter Dutton and other members of the global authoritarian right are running in democracies around the world, including Dutton’s most recent shite about boycotting Woolworths.
The ploy is all about creating outrage because, as Sophy intuits, that is the perfect way in which to simplify political argument. Reduce the matter to an outrage, to a question of for or against, and you will almost always push things away from the progressive solution. And in our current media environment—old and new—such simplification leads to amplification.
As I said the other day, it’s a match made in hell.3
While it can help to call out the rightwing mischief in things like Dutton’s boycott threat of Woolworths, to call out the hypocrisy of such campaigns, to analyse the process and, if you like, make the darkness visible, at the end of the day the counter to such tactics is not as simple as that, which is why such responses very rarely achieve anything.
People often say then what are we meant to do about it!? and I am increasingly of the view that the solution is irreducibly complex.
It begins in democratic practice itself, in taking seriously the idea of self-governance, in people insisting on inclusion in the decision-making process, demanding the means to participate in that governance, not just by voting every three or four years, or by joining an executive-dominated political party, but by engaging directly in the process itself, via citizens assemblies and the like, in the period between elections.
This is difficult to accomplish, but we should never concede ground to authoritarians by pretending there is a simple answer.
As one great Furnace flam'd, yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Serv'd only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all;
—John Milton, Paradise Lost
Sure, plenty of people are happy to embrace the strongman antics of a Trump: no-one is saying it can’t work. The whole is that it does and this is why we have to resist it. As Jeff Sharlet argues in his latest book The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War, a reasonable percentage of Trump’s supporters are fascists and are happy to see the end of democracy. And as Rick Perlstein notes in a recent interview with Sharlet (that I highly recommend), this creates enormous difficulties for mainstream journalists whose techniques don’t allow proper consideration of such complexity. Sharlet says he first noticed this failure when covering the Rwandan massacres in the mid-90s and realised that The NYTimes “reduced a nuanced political and social conflict to irrational (and by implication unsolvable) ethnic differences.” He quotes Burundi’s communications minister who begged the Times to do better. “The situation is very complex. You don’t have cowboys on one side and Indians on the other. It is not a moral problem; it is a political one.”
I won’t go down that rabbit hole, but these are telling examples of the problems of simplification.
Which is interesting, given that neoliberalism has always been justified on the grounds of combatting government centralisation and the allegedly concomitant rise of dictatorship, as per Ludwig von Mises assertion that "Every step which leads from capitalism toward planning is necessarily a step nearer to absolutism and dictatorship." (Then again, the likes of Hayek and other founding fathers never hid their anti-democratic agenda.)
I noted in the wake of the loss of the Voice referendum that nothing “distorts the complexities of why voters choose certain outcomes than to force them into and either/or option, and nothing better guarantees negative campaigning than an either/or option” but let’s look at this through the lens of complexity more generally.
The No case was successful not just because the referendum process reduced the matter to an either/or proposition, but because those prosecuting the Yes case fell into the trap of selling a complex matter as simple. As Stan Grant noted, “The voice was never a modest ask, it was monumental,” and perhaps “this was the opportunity lost by the yes campaign, to not let the voice truly speak. Instead, it was shushed … shrunk small enough to fit into politics.”
The Voice is a good example of how kneejerk simplification is often not the friend of progressive policy and that the urge to simplify, to remove complexity, telegraphs to voters, not so much that the answer is obvious—so just do this, shhh—but that we don’t trust you or think highly enough of your ability to come to the right conclusion on your own. Such presumptions are nearly always fatal for progressive politics.
The underlying problem with the Voice was that it was, in effect, a revived and remodelled ATSIC, and Albanese was unwilling to defend that. Hence, all the footwork around the famous "details", pointing to the Calma-Langton report as showing everything we needed to know, while backgrounding that the government wasn't committed to the ideas in that report at all.
Wicked problems don't have innocent solutions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem