The Wondering Mind

If you thought the laws in the U.S. were crazy, and they are, it’s not all that comforting to find out that they can be just as crazy in other countries. Take Sweden for instance.

Normally a picture of prosperity and progressivism, where the biggest problem seems to be that no one else speaks their language, they have a little scandal going on over there concerning their medical students.

Call me old fashioned, but I think it’s a big problem having a neo-Nazi convicted murderer in medical school. As the article points out,

Another concern is the threat he might pose to patients who are immigrants, or their families — long a target of neo-Nazi vilification. Even as a student, he will have access to electronic medical records, which could potentially be misused.

That sort of thing could put the whole medical profession in disrepute. As one medical student put it,

Pontus Andren, 23, said the issue was one of trust. “If a rapist or a murderer with neo-Nazi motives can study to become a doctor, that causes a crisis that affects the entire medical profession,” he said. “When you arrive at a hospital or an emergency room, you might not be alert or even conscious as a patient, and that puts you in a really vulnerable position.”

Now this is making a lot of assumptions about Karl Helge Hampus Svensson, the student under question, which has not been helped by the complete silence from all the parties involved. As another medical student put it,

But Gustav Stalhammar, 25, said Mr. Svensson should be allowed to become a doctor. “Who is to say that he might not become a great doctor, even if it in some ways would feel wrong or awkward to have a murderer for a colleague?” he asked. “It is not fair to have preconceptions about his character.”

Thing is, this misses the point, especially when looking at this from the perspective of law and order. Karl Svensson was convicted of a murder and there is no doubt of his guilt. Nor has he publicly expressed any remorse for his past misdeeds. We do not have a preconception of Svensson’s character: we have a conception of his character which is the result of Svensson’s own murderous past actions.

That does not mean that he has not reformed, as Mr. Stalhammar suggests. But Stalhammar is just guessing. He has absolutely no basis to suppose there has been any reform on the part of Svensson. Which is not to rule it out, but it seems perfectly reasonable and rational for people to assume Svensson is a less than savoury character without evidence to the contrary.

Which is not to say he is not entitled to redemption and a second chance. But it is up to him to regain the trust of others. He has to earn it. And falsifying his educational records, or at least lying about it, is not how he does that.

All this is not that important unless you happen to live in Sweden, in which case you may now be a lot more nervous about your next doctor’s visit. What struck me about this article was Mr. Stalhammar’s comment.

It was reminiscent of some of the criticisms I’ve heard about Geithner and gang. Obviously they are not doctors, and no one is accusing most of the people working in finance of any crime. (You may think what they did should be criminal, but that is a separate issue.)

There are many people who have already criticised the plan unveiled on Monday by Geithner. Nobel-laureate Krugman for one, and here’s another rather trenchant critique.

The details of these criticisms are technical, but the real problems seems deeper than that to me. It is like the problem with Svensson. Geithner and gang want us to believe that the only way we can get out of the current mess is to trust that the very people who put us in this mess, the Wall Street bankers, will get us out of it. But only if we hand over a bucket load of money to them to do it.

Aside from the fairness issue, these are people who in the minds of the public are convicted and guilty (and justifiably so) of breaking the economy and screwing millions of hard-working people. They have absolutely no currency with the people any more. They have to regain the trust of the public by earning it.

Unfortunately, but predictably, they have not only not worked to earn any trust, they belligerently criticise the public of being stupid, not understanding what’s “really” going on. At least Svensson had the sense to keep his mouth shut.

And the issue of fairness cannot be cast aside as easily as I might have suggested earlier.

All these “smart” people in government, being economists and lawyers, think primarily of maximising utility (in the economic sense). Of maximising the measure of “well being”. Money, being easily measurable, is the metric they usually focus on. But it is not the only valid measure of a person’s utility.

A sense of justice can, and often does, confer a tremendous utility to most people. And a lack of that sense can generate a tremendous amount of disutility. Just ask the people swindled by Madoff.

But Geithner and friends just can’t see this. They see the bankers as miscreants in all this only in the abstract sense, just as Mr. Stalhammar sees Svensson’s criminality as only some distant idea; immaterial, impersonal, and not all that important.

President Obama is right to caution that we should not govern out of anger. We should not cast aside laws for the expediencies of vengeance. But laws without justice are merely instruments of tyranny.