On things not working

In case you were wondering, here is a list of things that don't work:

• Prison
• Criminal profiling
  
• Universal basic income
• Diversity training
• Sexual harassment training
• "Brute force" climate policies
• Therapy

Don't work for what you might ask? Well you're one step ahead of half of these articles. How often is it that someone suggests that something doesn't work, and lists the effect of that thing, only for you to wonder what possible link these things might have? How often does someone simply imply what the goal of a certain thing is, when that goal is not so clear?

Take the prison article from the Guardian - the article starts off:

   We would have funds for better preventive measures if we stopped seeing imprisonment as a default solution

This seems to imply that prison is supposed to be a preventative measure for crime. However, is this really the goal of prison? What of someone who wants to punish criminals? Or someone who believes in a theory of justice - giving people what they deserve. Would prison work then? Is crime prevention the only privileged goal in this case?

The second Guardian article is an even worse example. The post claims:

A study of UBI trials concludes that making cash payments to all is no solution to poverty and inequality

However, just three paragraphs in, it admits:

Giving small amounts of cash to people who have next to nothing is bound to make a difference – and indeed, these schemes have helped to improve recipients’ health and livelihoods. But nothing is revealed about their longer-term viability, or how they could be scaled up to serve whole populations.

Further more, on the Alaska Permanent Fund, which pays out a small sum to all Alaskan citizens every year:

The scheme is popular and enduring; it has been found to produce some positive impacts on rural indigenous groups, but it makes no claim to sufficiency and has done nothing to reduce child poverty or to prevent widening income inequalities.

So halfway through the article, and we've already learned that in fact UBI has positive effects. Why then does the Guardian claim that it doesn't work? The Guardian waffles. On the one hand,in the above paragraph on the Permanent Fund, it seems that the issue is simply that it is not a panacea. However, later on:

As this week’s report observes, “If cash payments are allowed to take precedence, there’s a serious risk of crowding out efforts to build collaborative, sustainable services and infrastructure – and setting a pattern for future development that promotes commodification rather than emancipation.”

 The Guardian is simply concerned that people might be able to control their own decisions rather than allowing the government to solve their problems for them.  No news as to whether health, and education spending, which the article later claims to be obvious candidates for such spending, would themselves completely eliminate child poverty and inequality, an obvious isolated demand for rigour.

So next time someone claims that we know that something does or doesn't work:

1. Try to pin them down on what exactly that thing is supposed to work for.
2. Challenge them on the idea that this stated goal is the one true objective to whcih we should be striving.
3. Push them for evidence concerning the effects which the thing in question have, and evaluate whether real progress is made towards that objective.
   
4. Keep your criteria consistent when evaluating alternatives.