A chapter in Malcolm Gladwell’s most recent book, “What the Dog Saw”, makes an excellent point that many good public policy proposals force law-makers to choose between the pragmatic and the fair. This often results in bi-partisan opposition to a perfectly sensible action. Bear with me, I’ll bring this back to offshore recruitment in due course, I promise.
Gladwell, a staff-writer for the New Yorker magazine by day, has crafted a career by identifying and articulating social, political, corporate and economic phenomena. The book features chapters on topics as diverse as tomato ketchup and the Dog Whisperer, Cesar Milan; proof if it were needed that he is the Rumpelstiltskin of the non-fiction genre, spinning the worthless wool of the arcane and otherwise-trivial subject into the literary gold of engaging and thought-provoking analysis.
In a chapter entitled “Million Dollar Murray” Gladwell discusses the seemingly intractable problem of hard-core homelessness in US cities as told through the life of the eponymous Murray, a gap-toothed drunk frequenting the emergency rooms and jailhouses of Reno, Nevada. To cut a long story short, it turns out to be much much cheaper for the state to provide Murray with modest accommodation than it is to provide him with free emergency room health care, “temporary lodging” and transport between the two (via that most expensive and best-avoided form of public transport, a squad car), not to mention the diminution to local business and tourism caused by his irksome vagrancy and pan-handling.
However, the notion that Murray should be “rewarded” for his life of sin and misery with free state-provided accommodation is simply too unfair for many to stomach. There are undoubtedly many more deserving Nevadans: working single mothers and veterans to name but two.
Ironically those on the right are most aghast at the proposal, the same people lambasting wasted government resources. This is the essence of the pragmatism vs fairness stand-off.
Since reading this chapter I’ve noticed the same dissonance in many areas of my life including local public policy, internal management issues, even in my social life. Do you do what’s fair, or what’s best by some objective measure?
So what does this have to do with offshore job opportunities? As this blog is already longer than planned for, I’ll get to that in part 2 to be posted on Wednesday. To make sure you don’t miss the next exciting installment (and find out exactly how tenuous the link is between toothless Reno vagrants and corporate lawyers!), follow me on twitter.
