A member of parliament who voted in favor of low-emission zoning (banning older vehicles from city centers) recently confessed to the writer Alexandre Jardin, who is strongly opposed to this measure: “We wanted to do the right thing, even if we misjudged the impact”. One might have thought that laws were passed precisely on the basis of their expected impact, but this is clearly not the case. Instead, they seem to be passed on ideological principles. In this respect, they constitute what economist Thomas Sowell calls categorical solutions, claiming to provide a single, simple answer to what are in reality complex social problems. Categorical solutions have become commonplace today, eclipsing pragmatic, nuanced and fair approaches, and the consequences are catastrophic.
In Thomas Sowell‘s view, intellectual and political elites feel invested with an almost sacred mission to solve the “big problems,” and to this end they promote policies based on visions of moral superiority rather than empirical evidence. A key concept in his critique is the notion of the “categorical solution,” which describes an absolute and radical response to complex social problems, usually defined in abstract terms (“Abolish poverty!”). This response is based on ideological certainty rather than practical effectiveness. Instead of recognizing the complexity of issues and the need for compromise inherent in policy-making, the solution claims to eradicate a problem completely, often without considering the consequences.
An example of a categorical solution is the ban on building a new highway to protect nature. The immediate effect is undeniable: since the highway will not be built, dozens of miles of land will not be paved, trees will not be cut down, and the frog couple will be able to continue to frolic. A victory! But there will be knock-on effects: trucks that could have used the highway will continue to pass through villages instead of bypassing them, residents will be stuck in traffic jams, wasting time and increasing fuel consumption, and so on.
These categorical solutions share four characteristics: 1) They ignore costs and trade-offs; they assume that the benefits of a solution exist in isolation and ignore perverse effects. 2) They reject incremental improvement; instead of seeking practical, incremental change, they seek the total eradication of a problem. Cut the Gordian knot and that’s it! 3) They reject empirical reality and the nuances of social situations; they favor ideological coherence over concrete evidence. 4) They ignore alternative perspectives; divergent opinions are rejected as false or even morally suspect.
Why do categorical solutions persist?
Despite their repeated failures, categorical solutions remain popular among policymakers and activists for several reasons:
They confer moral virtue – proponents of categorical solutions frame them in absolute moral terms, portraying the opposition as immoral rather than pragmatic. This virtue confers prestige, which is social capital, one of the most important resources in a collective.
Symbolic Victories – Even when solutions fail, their supporters claim the moral high ground by demonstrating their commitment to the “right side of history. Symbolic victories are highly visible, especially in the age of social networking and immediacy, while their perverse effects are harder to observe and more diffuse: the gradual increase in truck traffic and deterioration of residents’ quality of life weigh little against a nice victory announcement on the 8 o’clock news.
They’re easy to sell – Categorical solutions are easier to “sell” because they’re quick and easy than pragmatic, on-the-ground solutions that take years to implement.
They’re cost-effective – It’s better to fully satisfy a small, motivated, and influential group than to negotiate a compromise in which no one is fully successful and everyone is somewhat frustrated and disappointed. In short, it is more profitable to feed your tribe than to improve the savannah.
Their failures are inconsequential – The failure of categorical solutions is often not apparent until years later, if at all. Their proponents can easily blame external factors (lack of funding, public opposition, etc.) instead of rethinking the solutions themselves. No one has paid a political price for the dismantling of the French nuclear industry, which has brought us to the brink of disaster in 2022, just as no one is paying a price for the failure of the “war on drugs” waged since… 1970.
Thinking in terms of trade-offs
For Sowell, the real world must evolve on the basis of trade-offs and compromises. It is not full of “problems” to be “solved,” but of people to be made to live together. Arbitration means taking into account several variables, not just one, when making a decision, and recognizing that none can be maximized at the expense of the others. Specifically, an attitude of compromise means first and foremost recognizing the complexity of social issues: they are the product of multiple factors and require nuanced choices. They are subject to perverse effects: any decision that produces results necessarily produces disadvantages, which must be assessed as far as possible before the decision is made. Today’s solution may create tomorrow’s problem. This means using empirical evidence, basing decisions on what actually works rather than ideological commitment, and taking a step-by-step approach: small, tested improvements (small victories) often produce better long-term results than large-scale reforms.
The danger of categorical thinking
Sowell warns against an overly ideological approach to dealing with complex problems because it leads to ineffective and even counterproductive solutions. Worse, these solutions create a sense of injustice. They represent a KO victory by one group, usually small and militant, over another, usually the necessarily less organized population. Yet sociological research has shown that people are more sensitive to the way a decision is made than to the outcome of the decision itself. One of the most important perverse effects of the categorical approach is that the victims of this type of “solution” gradually disengage from the collective process, feeling that the system no longer takes their interests into account. The collective is no longer regulated, it is divided. In a world where simplistic, global solutions use moral arguments to impose themselves without discussion, even as they continue to demonstrate their harmful results, Sowell’s plea for a more cautious, fairer approach should be more widely heard.
🔎 Source: Thomas Sowell The Vision of the Anointed (1995)
🇫🇷 A version in French of this article is available here.
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