A Grand Social Experiment (I)

This will be a part of a series of posts on a inquisitive concept: Can you experimentally govern?

As you most likely know, last month in the UK there were horrific riots. Riots the likes of which American hasn't experienced since the Civil Rights movement, or the anti-war protests during the Vietnam War.

The reasons for these riots are convoluted, and quite frankly as an American, I can never fully understand the UK political system. (Anyone who hasn't lived there a substantial amount of time and says that they do, is lying.) Informed opinions on the riots vary from economic grievances in the age of austerity, to young nihilistic hooligans, to the anger over police shootings, to people wanting more consumer goods at a substantially reduced price. (zero)

David Cameron, the UK Prime Minister, not only claims to know the basic underlying problems which caused the riots. His coalition government has identified the 120,000 problem families which are ruining UK society. Let me rephrase that in an American conceptualization. (*Ahem* *Cough*)

Headline: "Barack Obama has Identified 2 million Americans as the Cause of America's Financial Crisis."

Can you now imagine the political context now? (And the frenzy that headline would cause.) I'm talking about a strict identification of 0.6% of the population, and then laying a large societal problem at their feet. Not only did Cameron identify, but he promised to transform these problem families in order to make them more productive citizens. Thus improving the stability and health of society as a whole.

What Cameron is suggesting be done with these people is targeted reformations to change them into a higher class of citizen. In contrast to Nixon, who would proclaim a "silent majority" was quietly appalled at the hippie and beatnik protests, Cameron believes the opposite: this rabble-rousing minority is at fault.

Whether or not you buy into his conclusion, you have to admit that his administration's targeted approach is something unique. In a grand sense, he wants to heal society by fixing this subset of the population in particular. He vows to turn this subset around, and indirectly solve a grander societal problem. In other words, an experiment.

An experiment to improve these individuals' lives through government policy which is specifically targeted to them, perhaps not discriminately so. An interesting and ambitious sociological idea which I will dive into on the subsequent posts.

For now, tell me what you think about singling out individuals from society and proclaiming them the problem. Can you make a utilitarian argument that the greater good should be used to justify action in order to improve them?

Notes:

That "silent majority" had the obvious characteristic of being silent. Therefore readily available to apply attributes to without objection.

Also, I used the term "rabble-rousing minority", I think the British version of saying that is "feral underclass". Again, I'm not from the UK, but love that terminology.

In the next part, I'll discuss further what an experimental system would look like and how it could work. Even more posts will look at historical examples and outcomes, as well as another post discussing the ethics of social experiments on this type of scale.