If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It
I ran errands today. Every step helped to clarify a
distinction between conservative and liberal values that has been itching in
the corners of my mind: Conservatives
like to harvest what they can; they tend to avoid risk and evade personal
responsibility for needed change. Liberals like to create and build; they tend
to take personal and collective initiative when change is needed.
I live in a conservative rural area and do business in a
nearby conservative town. Everywhere I stopped to take care of an errand, I met
a situation that needed improvement and people who felt no responsibility for
making things better.
My wife, Dianna, and I had decided to cancel our regional
newspaper subscription. The circulation representative told her that it was
easier if we just let funds, already in our account, run out and so we agreed
to accept daily delivery of birdcage liner for another six weeks. Naturally, we
were surprised to receive a renewal notice in the mail. I took the invoice into
the circulation department. A slightly huffy lady told me not to worry, that I
had a stop-date card in the drawer and that’s just the way their computer
works. I was irritated but held my tongue. I’m a retired computer systems
manager and have strong sensibilities about responsible data management.
My second stop was to drop off ten shirts to be laundered on
hangers with starch. My receipt was almost illegible; the thermal print head
had probably been going bad for several years. I pointed out that the ticket
indicated “boxed, no starch.” A clearly indifferent young woman told me not to
worry, that she makes notes on the tickets, that’s what they go by and that’s
just the way their computer works. I rolled my eyes and started feeling more
than a little disenchanted.
My third stop was to pick up piano method books for one of
Dianna’s music students. A regional music company keeps a branch store in town
and we generally like to patronize local businesses. They didn’t have
everything on my list but agreed to do a computer search of inventory at the
main store. As the process dragged on, the clerk looked sheepish and said, “The
database is usually kind of slow.”
As we waited, I copped a glance at the connectors on the
back of the computer; it was pretty old. The printer used a Centronics parallel
cable. You can go into a computer store these days and the typical kid at the
counter has never heard of “Centronics.” I asked the clerk what operating
system was on his machine. It was Windows 95.
We looked into each other’s eyes with the comprehension and
compassion of beleaguered and impotent men. I offered, “I guess your computer
department doesn’t love you.” He lowered his eyes in shame. It was a truth that
would have been better left unspoken. We eventually gave up waiting for his
computer to finish the search. That evening, I got a better price and faster
shipping from Amazon.
Stop number four was to pay my monthly rental for a piece of
medical equipment. I could have mailed-in a check but I prefer to do on-line
transfers, which this company’s systems don’t support.
Besides, they were on my
route; I would deliver their money in person. The invoice I held was printed on
tractor-fed, fan-fold, three-copy, carbonless self-duplicating paper. They
stamped the back copy with a “Paid” stamp and returned it to me. I could read
the stamp, but the print was illegible. By now, I was filled with the glorious
fire of righteous intolerance. I asked to see whomever made decisions about
computer technology. It seems I needed to talk to Michael.
“Michael, thank you for seeing me. I’m a customer here and
rent a C-PAP machine. I’m also a writer and preparing an essay on business
technology. Has anybody ever suggested updates such as using a laser printer to
produce legible invoices?”
“Well yes, that has come up several times and several
companies have tried to sell us new systems. But, what we have has been working
for us since 1980 and, you know, ‘If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.’” This was an
obvious false premise. It might still be in harness but, of course, it was broken.
My realization blossomed into the radiance and certainty of
a full epiphany. I was swimming in the evident demonstration of one of conservatism’s
cardinal characteristic concepts – the faulty foundation of fundamentalism’s
flawed fallacies. Conservatives prefer to collect and consume instead of
creating or constructing. They will even, with unsullied conscience, harvest
resources held in common and generated by the labor or loss of others. They
prefer to exhaust a resource until, finally, they are forced by desperate
circumstance to improvise in an emergency. It goes against their grain to
anticipate future or collective problems and take personal initiative or work
as part of a community to prepare for needed change.
Another realization erupted to compound and confirm my fresh
insight. I used to work as an instrumentation and control system craftsman at a
gasoline refinery. The place was rusting in place and, quite literally, falling
apart. We were often denied budget money to replace or repair aging equipment. Management
usually preferred to pay extra to use an emergency appropriation when pieces of
equipment inevitably failed.
For instance, we couldn’t get money to repair a gas flare
ignition system. Instead, a member of the fire crew would be sent up the hill
to dip an arrow into a bucket of oil, light it, and shoot it over the top of
the flare tower. Employees and neighbors started saying the company should just
shut the place down.
As it turned out, senior management was planning exactly that.
One manager eventually stopped my persistent pleas for maintenance funding by
admitting that we were running under a policy of “deferred maintenance.” Oh, I
realized, they weren’t all crazy-stupid; they were co-conspirators in a deliberate
and dangerous plan to harvest the remaining capacity of the equipment until it
(and possibly some expendable personnel) died.
The company built a special machine to add contaminated dirt
to coke and asphalt products while staying just within maximum permissible “ash”
content. They bought and demolished homes surrounding the refinery as people
found gasoline seeping into their basements. They eventually closed the place
altogether, wrote-off decommissioning expenses against taxes, and actually made
money by drilling shallow wells and recovering old spilled oil.
Considering these as typical examples, the policies and
platforms of the current Republican Party begin to make sense. For instance, they
prefer to avoid investing in infrastructure – “kicking the can down the road”
instead. This feels very much like my refinery’s policy of “deferred
maintenance.” This feels very much like the operating tactics of private equity
“vampire capitalists.” Will businessmen actually be allowed to run this country
into the ground, extracting all possible capital, before moving on to new
profit opportunities?
You stop investing in something when you decide you don’t
need it. You start to choose hospice and palliative care when Grandma no longer
has sufficient value. You stop planting trees on a mountain when you plan to
scrape off its top for mining.
Conservatives often covet the profits from privatizing
public services. Instead of trying to make government work better, conservatives
try to obstruct our government to make it look worse. It is easier, in the
short run, to harvest and consume existing resources than to invest in
rebuilding systems to be useful or sustainable into our children’s futures.
This is exploitation, not conservation as you might expect from the core concept
of the word “conservative.”
Would you trust your future to people whose values still include,
“I saw it first – finder’s keepers;” “It’s not my responsibility;” “If it ain’t
broke, don’t fix it;” “Well, you’re not using it;” “Take what you can now and
screw the future?”
David Satterlee
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