If the Only Tool You Have is a Hammer…
Psychologist Abraham Maslow said, “I suppose it is natural, if the only tool you have is a hammer, is to treat everything as if it were a nail.” This is really a post about two distinct forms of the same problem — having only one way to think about social problems and their solutions. The familiar saying “If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail” applies to social problems at least as much as it applies in business or in your private life.
The Hammers of Armchair Social Science:
In a previous article, I wrote about the natural tendency to explain a social problem in terms of one thing, one cause. People turn to crime out of frustration. People become addicted to opioids because they lack self-control. People across the political spectrum fall into a related error when they think about solving social problems like drug addiction or homelessness or gang violence.
I just want to mention a few hammers that come up over and over again online, in books, and on television. Let’s start with America’s favorite hammer — free markets.
What’s the solution to the soaring cost of college? Free markets.
What’s the solution for unaffordable healthcare? Free markets.
What’s the solution to homelessness? Free markets.
What’s the solution to gun violence? I think you know the answer by now.
Yes, harnessing market forces to help solve all of those problems might make sense. Those conversations seem worthwhile. The problem, the potentially disastrous problem, appears when someone tries to use market forces as their only tool.
I did a little brainstorming and came up with some additional hammers.
Socialism — Taking control of housing, the universities, agriculture, whatever is the right answer to poverty, housing shortages, overpriced college degrees and so on.
Guns — The only thing, aside from a hammer, that counts as a tool is also the solution to domestic violence, government tyranny, gangs, home invasions, armed robberies, sexual harassment, rape, cattle stealing, trespassing, and on and on.
Diversity Programs — Programs that reserve jobs, scholarship money, political offices, C-level jobs in business and so on for racial or ethnic minorities, women, LGBTQIA+ individuals, the differently-abled, and the economically marginalized will “fix” Hollywood, academia, Congress, and so on. Right? Right.
Sensitivity Training — In the 1990s this seems to have been the usual hammer that social activists pulled out whenever the threat of sexism, racism, ableism, or homophobia grew to detectable levels. You just treat it by putting students or employees through “sensitivity training” so they will learn how not to be bigoted and insensitive jerks.
Sensitivity training and all the other things might be useful, probably are. But, if you want to combat homophobia, a four-hour class might not do anything. Maybe it will. How does anyone know?
I could say the same thing about any sort of anti-harassment training or ‘consciousness-raising’ group session or economic prescription. But, can more socialism or more market freedom truly “fix” homelessness or do some people only WANT that to be true?
