You can force it but it will not come... everything is broken

One of the things I was given for Christmas, was a book that you may have heard of. It's called "Freakonomics" and it provides a rather unconventional look at the way the world works, tackling such issues as eduction, parenting, crime and so forth. It's fairly well written and makes for a pretty compelling read. It's occasionally guilty of the third kind of lie, but generally speaking the arguments and reasoning appear sound, if a little of the wall. The tone errs on the side of editorialising, but this is aimed at being a popular paper back for the casual economist, so that goes with the territory. Either way, it's a good read and I'd recommend it, if only to those with a passing interest in statistics and the like.

Yesterday I read a chapter concerning the fall of crime in the USA during the late eighties and early nineties, which surprised everyone as crime was expected to skyrocket at that point. The authors debunk various theories - improved policing, gun control, strong economy among others - and settle, with a knowing air of controversy - on the notion that it was the legalisation of abortion that led to falling crime. The argument goes that unwanted children are more likely to turn to crime, so as the legalisation of abortion (Roe v Wade 410 U.S. 113, for those of you who really want to read a full case note. For the less keen, the edited highlight can of course be found at Wikipedia) leads to less unwanted children, less crime logically follows. The reasoning is persuasive, albeit somewhat distasteful, and it certainly treads a fine line between utilitarianism and Machiavellianism. The idea that we can reduce crime at the cost of however many million unborn babies is certainly difficult to weigh up.

I am reminded, at this point, of another economic notion that I have come across in my limited flirtations with the subject. There exists a logical fallacy, known as "the parable of the broken window" which was conceived by a French economist in 1850. The fallacious argument goes that if a window happens to be broken, this is a good thing, because it makes work for the glazier, who can then spend his earnings on bread, such that the baker then has money to buy a pair of shoes from the cobbler, and so forth. The factor that is overlooked is of course that the owner of the original window has paid out the cost of the repair, and has nothing to show for it. He has borne the cost of the improvements to the rest of the economy, and the end result is that the system as a whole is worse off to the tune of one window.

It may be a sound argument to say that the abortion of many children is a good thing if it reduces crime. Society benefits from lower crime, and there is much rejoicing. The problem that is overlooked is that society has lost millions of children, and has arguably committed an act of corporate murder, depending on where you stand on the abortion issue. As for myself, I come at things from a Christian perspective, albeit a fairly liberal one. I disapprove of abortion for reasons of lifestyle, laziness and contraception, but I think it's probably OK if there is a great risk to the child or mother. All of which leaves me in the position of considering the cost of abortion to be a pretty steep one to pay for the prize of lower crime rates.

The real difficulty with this sort of thinking is that I'm pretty much bound by the nature of this life to think in terms of "the lesser of two evils". The thing is, I don't want the lesser of two evils. What I want is no evils. I don't want to have to pick between two bad things to try to achieve one good thing. The brick wall that I come up against is that this world is fundamentally broken, and no amount of chopping and changing can fix it. The window was broken way back in The Garden of Eden, with the apple debacle, and we've been attempting to pay off the glazier ever since. The sad truth is that the system can not be fixed from within, and requires an outside influence to sort things out - in short, it can only be done by God, by way of salvation through Jesus. That's the only way that this particular window can be fixed. Any other solution is short term and limited. We may fix one thing, but it will always be at the cost of something else, until we look for something beyond this world to help us out.