John Maynard Keynes said once that he wanted to make economics as boring as dentistry. It struck me yesterday that dentistry would be an excellent model for how statecraft ought to work.
It is practiced by competent, well-compensated professionals who follow a code of ethics whose first value is “make sure that you cause no harm.”
It is based on objective, proven science, and uses well-tested technology for the benefit of mankind.
It focuses on avoidance of harm rather than fixing of damage. It much prefers to employ technological methods to prevent decay before it ever occurs, but even that takes second place to encouraging in the general population the behaviors, habits and healthy practices that will ensure the causes of decay never get a chance to develop.
When, regrettably, surgery becomes necessary, it takes all possible steps to minimize the associated pain.
Its most respected and well-compensated specialization is one that acts early to prevent a problem that would otherwise occur at a future date, and through gentle restraint makes its patients more beautiful and healthy than could be achieved by unassisted Nature.
If only our statesmen could be dentists! But no; we’re at the mercy of quacks who sell sugar water as mouthwash and favor chewing on gravel as the way to healthy enamel, and when the inevitable results of such follies manifest themselves as suppurating abscesses and agonizing spasms, we have no painless, hygienic surgery at our disposal, but merely a grim succession of mountebanks brandishing bloody pliers. It’s enough to make a man fed up to his back teeth.
Cuardach 