David McElroy

During the round of “stimulus” spending two years ago, federal bureaucrats figured out how to stimulate the sign industry. They instructed states to spend millions of dollars for signs to post on highway projects telling motorists that the projects are funded by “stimulus” spending.

The example is outrageous, but it’s symptomatic of bureaucratic political thinking in monopoly situations. Getting the job done in the least expensive possible way wasn’t the priority. Clearly, the priority was delivering a political message. Although nobody can put a dependable figure on the cost of all those politically motivated signs, it’s clear that they cost millions of dollars — but why would anybody worry about spending small change like that?

Actually, many mainstream (Keynesian-influenced) economists wouldn’t complain about the cost. They’d say that the spending employs sign makers and installation workers — who pay taxes and spend their income — so it “obviously” has a “stimulative” effect. That’s the Keynesian theory that led the Fed and the U.S. government to pour money down various ratholes in the past few years.

Is all of the “stimulus” spending the equivalent of paying people to dig ditches and refill them (or post signs with a useless political message)? Of course not. Some sizable percentage of it ends up being spent for things that are nice (or at least, sort of nice) to have. Some roads get repaired or expanded. Some downtown areas get spruced up. Some playgrounds get built. It’s not bad stuff, but the things that are seen are just part of the story. What’s unseen is the part of this story that nobody talks about — and it’s a point that French writer Frederic Bastiat famously made in his 1850 story about a broken window. (Please take three minutes to read Bastiat’s story. It will help you understand the rest of what I have to say.)

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Some families have a child who’s just plain different from everybody else. When everybody else zigs, the oddball zags. In my animal family, that delightful oddball is Dagny.

I found her in the trash. More accurately, I found her underneath the trash — under a big blue dumpster in the little downtown area of the suburb where I live. She was tiny.

Around her neck, she had a ribbon with a bell on it. But it was the middle of the night and there were no houses for blocks. She was dirty and skinny and scared. She had to come home with me.

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I kept thinking this week about the scenario I mentioned a few days ago about slaves wanting to escape. It occurs to me that this metaphor works for many of the situations in our lives. What lessons can we draw from it?

My mind keeps going back to those plantation slaves a couple of centuries ago. There were many of them. There were few people guarding them. Why didn’t more of them escape? Or at least make serious attempts?

The answer I keep coming to disturbs me, because it condemns me for things I’ve done at various points in my own life — maybe even including the present — because it suggests that the reason is fear and a cowardly need to be certain. Escaping doesn’t come through fear or chasing certainty. It comes from exercising openness and faith. Most of us are naturally afraid of the uncertainty in the distance, so we cling to whatever kind of bondage we’ve gotten ourselves into.

There are a lot of things I’m not certain about. In fact, “I don’t know,” is something I say frequently — and I’m comfortable with that. I know that if I insist on certainty before I take a risk, I’m dooming myself to a kind of misery stuck with what I have. I say that because I’ve done it before.

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