PRODUCTIVITY GAINS. Today's Quote of the Day comes from Douglas Kern at Tech Central Station (via Electric Commentary).

But my pessimistic conservative friends overlook the extraordinary American capacity to compensate for massive stupidity. Dummies at the fast food joints? No problem -- we'll put up pictures of the meals for the illiterate, and install clever cash registers to make change for the mathematically-addled. Knuckleheads controlling the public schools? We'll devise standardized tests to identify and promote the genuinely gifted. Nincompoops at the voting booth? Behold the butterfly ballot -- an instant IQ test to weed out the votes of the extraordinarily dull-witted. Is it any wonder that a best-selling line of books in America is titled "________ for Dummies?" In America, stupidity is no bar to the pursuit and achievement of excellence.

We have moron-proofed our society. We have sanded off the rough edges of most sharp corners in American existence. From welfare to mandatory helmets to childproof caps, we've trapped stupidity in a tight little cage. Why can't we do the same for Social Security?

It's entirely possible to contrive a private investment fund guaranteed to turn a reasonable profit for as long as Western Civilization does us the favor of not collapsing.

The context for the post is the creation of private retirement accounts that would genuinely be secure, and it draws a distinction between uninformed decision-making and wilfully wishful decision making. But the article illustrates a more important point: human progress is the story of protecting us from our own ignorance: how many of us could dig our own wells and distinguish the poisonous from the safe mushrooms, let alone cast our own frying pans?