Risk and Reward
Peg on Aug 18 2008 at 2:02 pm | Filed under: Law, Libertarianism, Media, Peg's Page, Philosophy, Society, regulation
Many of us, when we hear the phrase “risk and reward” think of Wall Street. Or business in general.
But in reality, “risk and reward” affect us throughout our lives.
Our parents take a risk when they conceive us. They hope that we will provide them with more joy and satisfaction than heartache and pain. They pray that we will be born relatively healthy rather than sickly.
As we get older, parents do their best to provide a fine environment for us to learn and grow. What some adults seem to have forgotten, however (if they ever knew at all) - is that all gain requires some risk. It is impossible to achieve rewards without taking on chances of failure. Parents want to keep us safe. Yet, too many protections and too much removal of risk can oddly enough produce difficulties.
Safety is meaningful only in the context of other benefits and risks. Safety always involves trade-offs — of opportunities, of scarce resources and, especially in the case of children’s play, of learning to manage risk. The question is whether the trade-off makes sense. Soft rubber matting will cushion any fall. This is probably a good thing, at least in situations where children may fall on their heads. But rubber matting also gets hot.
There’s only one solution. Someone on behalf of society must be authorized to make these choices. Courts must honor those decisions. Otherwise, the pious accusations of safety fanatics, empowered by the nearly universal fear of being sued, will guarantee a cultural spiral downwards toward the lowest common denominator.
For America’s children today, that means spending more than six hours per day staring at a screen. Is that the way we want our children to grow up?
Philip Howard of The Common Good lectured several years ago at The Center of the American Experiment, and it was my pleasure to be able to hear him then. Mr. Howard and his organization are battling to return common sense to everyday society.
None of us want a dangerous place for our children - or for adults! Still, we must never forget that a risk-free society is impossible to achieve. The removal of some risks must be weighed against what we are sacrificing by removing that risk. While sometimes we agree that the risk of harm is too great - other times we can see that the purported removal of risk actually heightens the odds of other, not immediately obvious, forms of harm.
If we never forget that reward entails some risk, then we all will be better served.
