The Clear Cost and Uncertain Benefit of Creating the Future - We Still Haven't Experienced All the Benefits of Lincoln and FDR's Policies

I was listening to Kensy's latest podcast and his guest was talking about the tradeoff species make with brain size. Brains use a lot of energy and while a big brain might be advantageous, it is also costly: it takes more calories for a brain cell than other cells. But I thought, well, a smaller brain might be able to calculate the cost of a larger brain but wouldn't be able to properly assess the benefit. The smaller brain by definition could not conceive of what a bigger brain could do, what possibilities would open up.

One of the things that made Lincoln and FDR such great presidents is that they created a new world full of new possibilities.

Lincoln introduced something the country had never before experienced: income tax. He also set in place legislation that made it easier to create big, successful corporations and invested in universities and infrastructure like the transcontinental railroad and state universities. Lincoln's policies helped to enable the progress that put electricity and running water in homes and gave us radio, automobiles, and thousands of other products.

The folks outraged at Lincoln's policies could assess the cost. "Income tax! That is unconstitutional!" folks protested. But while they could easily count the cost, they could not count the returns on this investment. Progress takes us to a future different enough from our present that we can never properly assess it.
Politics has plenty of folks who lobby for existing industries. Coal, for instance, still has strong lobbying efforts to change public opinions, block legislation and divert public money into the support of this old industry that employees very few people. (How old? The commercial coal industry dates back to the 1700s - the same era that gave us powdered wigs. How few people? Yoga employs more people than coal.)

The past still has folks who fight for it. It is not clear who is lobbying for the future, for possibilities still unrealized. We know the costs. We can't imagine the benefits.