Expert Advice Versus Politics

I would like to explore why it is so difficult for many people to have productive conversations about policy, change, or just ideas in general.

It appears that:

1. Almost everything of consequence is grouped under the umbrella of ‘politics’.

2. Politics is either not something that should be discussed in polite conversation or results in a large number of people acting in bad faith or being unproductive.

3. A = B, B = C, thus C = A. 

This would mean that almost everything is either not something that should be discussed in polite conversation or results in a large number of people acting in bad faith or being unproductive.

One perspective shift I have used to help address this is a restructuring of how one considers something ‘politics’ or ‘not politics’.

To me whether or not something is politics depends on if the conversation is about either:

A. How whatever is being discussed affects a political agenda; getting elected and leveraging political capital are examples. 

And/or

B. If the conversation is about something that should be implemented, not theoretically but actually, and it requires interacting with a political system.

Here are examples:

A conversation about lowering or raising taxes being optimal to meet some goal in human behaviour: not politics.

A conversation about the effect of raising or lowering taxes on someone’s political campaign: yes politics.

A conversation about deciding if we should implement a new tax and how one could get the public to accept it: yes politics.

Why care about this topic and its distinction?

I believe it is important to have productive conversations in general. If a person is incapable of having a productive conversation, then either the context needs to change so they can be productive or their input is irrelevant and it is a waste of time to interact with them.

My bias is to prefer not to consider people a waste of time so my initial attempt would be to alter the context of the conversation to one that can be productive.

The separation of things from politics can also have significant impact on people’s lives. Here are two different examples that have occurred which many people should be familiar with. The two examples are going to be medical advice during the Covid-19 pandemic and carbon taxes.

Medical Advice During Covid-19

During the Covid-19 pandemic virtually everyone in my industry and the ones adjacent to it were extraordinarily busy, myself included. Much of the specifics of what we did cannot be openly discussed due to various forms of non-disclosure restrictions which generally fall into 3 categories:

1. Classified information

2. Client/Patient Confidentiality

3. Non-disclosure agreements

Given that this article has been in the public domain for years: https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/vezina-the-cost-of-sidelining-emergency-managers-in-a-pandemic

A more specific example showing this issue may be illuminating.

The position of medical professionals who informed on policy during the Covid-19 pandemic was generally along the lines of: ‘I can only give the best evidence-based medical advice on the situation’.

The context of this situation is as follows:

Political leadership is bearing the brunt of the downside of pandemic policy. The majority of the negative consequences are burdened by politicians.

Medical leadership gains the majority of the upside of pandemic policy. The majority of positive political consequences are given to medical professionals.

In many areas politicians who are dependent on reelection had approval ratings on a downward trend, while their medical advisers had astronomically high approval ratings.

This created a situation where the following sort of conversation could occur:

Politician: Hey medical, what should we do about the pandemic?

Medical: Whatever saves as many lives as possible and protects the healthcare sector from collapse.

Politician: What does that look like?

Medical: (A lot of highly restrictive things that people really are not going to like).

Politician: But isn’t that going to cause massive issues in multiple other parts of society?

What about the risk of economic damage, long-term learning disabilities in children, etc.?

Medical: I can only give the best evidence-based medical advice on the situation.

Now the politician has a problem. The medical professional is acting as an expert should. They are only speaking to things that they have expertise in, they are not considering political impacts. These things are irrelevant. From the medical professional’s perspective, they were asked a medical question and gave a medical answer. On the other hand, the political situation has placed the advice given from the medical professional into a political context. Their approval is so high, and the ongoing disaster is so significant, the politician is socially pressured to view the advice in a political context even though it is not.

Further, it is very possible that if the politician does not do what the medical professional says, this medical professional will publicly disagree with them, which given the current political climate, would likely result in career-obliteration for the politician.

So, the politician just does what the medical professional says, and the medical professional is effectively acting as the leader of the entire government, without outwardly intending to be the leader or potentially not even knowing that they are the leader.

Consider: You go to your doctor for medical advice, the doctor gives you medical advice. You reject or partially change this medical advice due to other aspects of your life and your own internal risk calculation. Applying Covid-19 to this example, its like if the political context ‘overrode’ your ability to make decisions and you were ‘compelled’ to do exactly what you doctor says without alteration.

Now the takeaway from this that some may have is ‘but then the medical professional should just have understood that they were effectively the leader and acted with politics in mind’. There are two problems here:

1. Medical professionals (and most professional advisers in most fields) do significant work to separate their personal interests from their professional advice. They specialize in giving this sort of highly field specific advice or guidance. Altering this advice risks losing this sort of information source as a resource. It isn’t in the interest of being informed to ask these types of experts to ‘filter’ their private advice through a political lens.

2. They are not practiced at this nor have they been elected for the position. They are not the people’s representative, they are not the government. Making people ‘king for a day’ and having them decide on matters that affect things they do not understand outside of their specialization risks significant long-term problems.

Carbon Taxes

If one asks virtually any economist what an optimal policy would be to combating carbon emissions, they will say carbon taxes.

People hate taxes, but economists will recommend them, why?

An economist is an expert of human behaviour and markets. If you ask an expert how to most efficiently solve a problem, they should give you an answer that makes sense based on their expertise.

Increasing prices disincentives purchases. In general, the more expensive something is the more demand will decrease, the less people will either be able to afford it, or will want to purchase it. There are some exceptions to this, but this is the general introduction to economics idea.

If one wants to emit less carbon from human activity, then the simplest solution is to raise the cost of everything that results in carbon emissions. The point of the tax is not to even collect the money, the point is to alter human behaviour.

This is basic carrot and stick. A ‘stick’ or punishment (tax) can be applied to the entire population for behaviour that wants to be disincentivized. A ‘carrot’ could also be given (subsidies) to particular competing technologies, but this involves picking winners and losers because the subsidies are generally targeted. The ‘stick’ of taxing everyone allows a freer market than the ‘carrot’ of giving a few companies money to make their products cheaper.

Why would or even should the economist care about the political implications? An expert is being asked the most efficient way to do something. If that way of doing something is politically unviable, a political actor can ask for five different options and then pick the one they like. Why ask the economist to decide? That is just abdicating freedom of choice for no reason.

When an expert provides advice on a subject and one gets politically offended consider:

Is the expert a political actor that is not doing their job and just advancing a personal agenda?

Or more likely, is the expert just providing advice without any political filter?

If, which is likely, they are simply providing expertise, then one might want to reexamine how they view an issue.

It is perfectly reasonable to think that something is more objectively correct but vote against it because it does not align with one’s personal interest, that’s politics.

However, if one is voting not because of personal interest, but instead for something because they think it is objectively correct; and are ignoring information from experts in the area that could better inform their position, that is disappointing.

Vezina is the CEO of Prepared Canada Corp. and is the author of Continuity 101. He can be reached at info@prepared.ca.