Logical Fallacies 32: The Perfect-Solution Fallacy

Video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qkm6mI0EfZU&feature=watch_response

Let’s say that you are a parent and you have a child in school, and that child’s first report card of the new semester has a GPA of 2.0; a C average.  You’re disappointed, of course.  It’s not quite what you had hoped, but at least it’s a passing grade.

            So you work with your child, a few of his or her professors, and his or her counselor to find any areas in his or her study approach in need of improvement.  You find a few areas, you and your child work to improve those areas, and the next report card has a GPA of 3.0; a B average.

            You were hoping for a 4.0; an A average.  Does your expectation detract at all from the value of the improvement?  Of course not.  It’s still an improvement.

            Most of the Founding Fathers had hoped, in the act of severing our ties with Britain, that we could put an end to slavery in the colonies in the process.  But passages in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence which condemned this practice proved too divisive and had to be dropped.  John Adams originally wouldn’t have it, but Benjamin Franklin argued with him that the most important issue here was independence from Britain.  If that much was not accomplished, he argued, the rest wouldn’t matter.  “Please, John,” he argued, “now that we’ve come this far, don’t give it all up just because our accomplishments don’t include that particular one.  Don’t sacrifice all these other improvements in the situation just because we can’t make that improvement as well.  Don’t reject a partial improvement just because it’s partial.  Don’t commit the Perfect Solution Fallacy.

            Similar problems impeded reform efforts in the drafting of the Constitution.  Again, there were those who were hoping, in the process, to put an end to slavery, but again, it proved divisive enough to halt everything else and was dropped.

            Finally came the Lincoln administration which saw the end of slavery, but it was not until the Johnson administration that segregation was finally abolished.

            Sometimes, walls which cannot be jumped over can be climbed over.  Such a process requires time and patience, but it often brings results which would otherwise be unattainable.  If the Founding Fathers had remained utterly intransigent on slavery with the ratification of the Declaration, the United States would probably have never successfully severed its ties with Britain.  If this had been the case eleven years later, the Constitution would never have been adopted.  If the abolition movement had refused to accept any reform that abolished slavery so long as it still allowed segregation, slavery may have persisted decades longer.

            When the Congress was deadlocked over Health Care Reform, Democrats realized that they would never get a bill through the Senate that contained a public option.  They could get through legislation containing a laundry list of other reforms, but not that particular one.  President Obama made an urgent plea to his party.  “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” he said.  Don’t commit the Perfect Solution Fallacy.

            By the same token, there can be no reform under any circumstances that doesn’t entail unforeseen complications.  Some of those complications are bound to be at least a little unfavorable.  Rejecting such reform on this basis is the same fallacy.  A reform is worthwhile when it constitutes an improvement, perfect or not.

            I don’t remember the names of the legislators spearheading or opposing this particular argument, but in the last couple years, there has been at least one instance in which the Congress has commenced to debate the Electoral College.  So before I continue on this particular example, let me just explain in case anyone watching doesn’t happen to know what the Electoral College is.

            The Congress is a Legislative body.  That is, its main focus is making laws.  It is a bicameral legislature, meaning that it has two houses.  In one, called the Senate, each state has two seats.  In the other, called the House of Representatives, each state has a number of seats coinciding in approximate proportion with its population.  The objective, in the Senate, is to represent each state equally, while in the House, it is to represent each person equally.  The full effectiveness with which each objective is accomplished is debatable, but nonetheless, these are the objectives.

            The Electoral College is based on the Congress.  In the EC, each state has a certain number of votes coinciding with the number of seats it has in the Congress; both houses.  So Hawaii, having two seats in each house, has four votes in the EC, while Alaska, (errata ahead) being the only state in the nation with more seats in the Senate than the House, has three.

            In a presidential election, actual ballots are counted on a state-by-state basis.  This actual ballot count is the popular vote.  The candidate who has the most people in a certain state vote for him or her is the winner of that state’s popular vote.  Whichever candidate wins the biggest share of a state’s popular vote gets the entirety of that state’s electoral vote.  When the candidate in question is a Republican, the state in question is called a red state, and when that candidate is a Democrat, that state is called a blue state.

            In this case, it’s winner-take-all.  Whichever candidate gets the biggest share of a state’s popular vote gets all of its electoral votes.  Either they all go to one candidate, or they all go to the other.

            Now the biggest problem with this, at least as far as I know, is that on a national level, the popular vote and the electoral vote sometimes add up in different ways.  This is what happened in 2000 when, on a national level, more than 500,000 more people voted for Gore than for Bush.  Bush was still declared the winner because he had more votes in the EC.  Gore won the popular vote, but Bush won the electoral vote, and therefore the election.

            As I recall, it was early in 2009 when one of our legislators (I don’t recall which one) proposed an amendment to change the election system so that the popular vote would be tallied on a national scale instead of state-by-state, and then the winner of the national popular vote would be awarded all the electoral votes in the nation.  This way, the winner of the national popular vote actually wins the election every time.

            Another legislator (again, I don’t remember which) argued against this amendment on the grounds that it would bring about a state in which less populated regions are more likely to be passed over by political campaigns.

            Now I’m afraid I don’t know how else this amendment fared in the Congress, but let me just take issue with this counter-argument.  Yes, I can see how the amendment in question would have this effect, but seeing as how that’s also a problem with our current system, I don’t attach much significance to that particular observation.

            “This amendment will improve our current system in one particular way.”

            “Perhaps, but it will not improve it in this other way.”

            That’s the argument in a nutshell; a textbook Perfect Solution Fallacy.