Building Bridges

The following is a passage in a book I recently started reading.

A bridge is built. If it is built to meet an insistent public demand, if it solves a traffic problem or a transportation problem otherwise insoluble, if, in short, it is even more necessary to the taxpayers collectively than the things for which they would have individually spent their money had it had not been taxed away from them, there can be no objection. But a bridge built primarily “to provide employment” is a different kind of bridge. When providing employment becomes the end, need becomes a subordinate consideration. “Projects” have to be invented. Instead of thinking only of where bridges must be built the government spenders begin to ask themselves where bridges can be built. Can they think of plausible reasons why an additional bridge should connect Easton and Weston? It soon becomes absolutely essential. Those who doubt the necessity are dismissed as obstructionists and reactionaries.

The last half of this paragraph really caught my attention, from right around the part right where the author (Henry Haslett) begins to discuss a bridge built to provide employment. I would like to blankly look at a couple points in his argument for a minute.

* When (Fill in the blank with your goal) becomes the end, need becomes a subordinate consideration.
* “Projects” have to be invented.
* Can they think of plausible reasons why (said project now needs to be completed to achieve your goal)?
* It soon becomes absolutely essential.
* Those who doubt the necessity are dismissed as obstructionists and reactionaries.

Okay, so necessity becomes a secondary concern, things are invented, plausible (not factual but plausible) reasons are generated, those plausible concerns become absolutely essential and naysayer’s are dismissed as fools. (Note how in the fifth point “necessity” has suddenly become the key word when in the first point it was said how it was actually a subordinate concern.) Am I the only other person who drew the correlation between the authors comments (written in 1988) to a series of events occurring today? No it’s not the government creating jobs but the model for this argument sure fits with a today’s popular “bridge” being built.

By the way have you read this great posting by John Coleman.