I AM just a former investment banker and adviser. I am not an economist, nor a PhD or academic. I do not claim any special expertise outside of my field, but enjoy listening to classical music and reading literature a lot more than most, and have benefited from that. One of my aspirations from the latter is to try to use precise language and accurately (hence my irritation with the grammatical monstrosity “Ma’am, Sir,” and the inexplicable except for intellectual laziness misuse of “breach” by editors and journalists in the Philippines who should know better. For “breach,” I wonder if it is stubbornness from misplaced pride and insecurity about admitting mistakes or just intellectual sloth.
My aim to use as accurate and precise language plus fondness for high-end literature led during Covid to my being introduced to two words which I now use — recrudescence (introduced in a masterly translation of Camus’ seminal novel “The Plague,” which I reread during the pandemic, and the other is “psittacism,” which was used in a quite literate French TV show I also watched at that time.
Now thanks to Larry Summers analogous use of it, there is “iatrogenic.” A medical term which he adapted to describe Trump’s tariff policy and its potential effect on the American and secondarily global economy with devastating accuracy. To repeat, an iatrogenic effect is when what is supposed to help or cure you is what hurts you. Like going to a hospital to be cured of something and getting an infection while there from being exposed to the germs. During last week’s Wall Street Week, he expanded on his prior use of iatrogenic, this time explaining iatrogenic volatility in the capital markets, thanks to the US government’s policies.
I had been planning to write on traffic for some time but kept putting it off as I felt it would come off as too much of a rant, but the recent recrudescence of traffic plagues made me reconsider how so many of our traffic issues are iatrogenic though individual and collective violators, and violations are not lacking either. Also, others like Robert Siy write about it on Saturdays in this paper with much more expertise than me.
Let’s pursue the most egregious example of a traffic problem and an iatrogenic response. Our drivers seem to be incapable of voluntarily following traffic rules as simple as staying in lane. Hence, dividers and so on to prevent for example vehicles turning left from blocking all lanes of a road and preventing the majority who may be going straight from proceeding. Same way until major roads like Ayala Avenue were divided with barriers, buses would stop in the middle of the street to pick up and discharge passengers. Then how many motorcycles are not satisfied with darting and cutting between lanes, and go over to the other lane where opposing traffic flows? Massive, yet go to other analogous countries like Indonesia and Vietnam, which also have heavy traffic, and their drivers stay in lane and motorcycles don’t cross over to the lanes for the opposite direction. Why do they follow rules with all horrible traffic while having even denser motorcycle density? Simple, traffic rules are enforced and followed.
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What do we do? Some solutions are practical and make sense like having a grid of one-way roads as one sees in Salcedo and Legaspi Village, BGC and Ortigas Center. Something normal in Hong Kong and Singapore as well as New York and London. Some other solutions are practical and make sense like having bus lanes on EDSA and segregating wider streets to have lanes where buses must stay. But they assume noncompliance with traffic rules and make doing that impractical.
What is an example of an iatrogenic traffic action? Making four-way intersections have motorists from one side go and turn left at the same time. This is because the government basically has given up on enforcing traffic discipline by having vehicles stick to the left lane to turn left, and the rest stay clear for those going straight. That practice lets all the vehicles in that direction stop or move together. The result is instead of close to 50 percent of traffic moving in two-way traffic you have 25 percent moving as only one of four sections are moving due to the go-and-left turn moving together, and the other three sections waiting. The problem of blocking lanes is not solved as in exchange for 25 percent, which all those in one direction moving, about 75 percent of which are the other three sections that are not moving. And of course, then the other three sides get backed up. Then add another iatrogenic practice, letting one side finish up before going to the other three instead of letting all move without too much wait. This exacerbates the pileup of traffic in the three of the four directions given the long waiting time until it is their belated turn.
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This defeatist approach to traffic is kindred thinking to how our economy fared under the Washington Consensus and “leave it to the private sector” chicken out from taking the tough but necessary approach to traffic policy, management and enforcement. What the government does is lousy and inefficient, so get the government out and leave it to the private sector’s nihilist approach as result? Not enough developmental infrastructure or safety nets, and of poor quality at high cost. Infrastructure only works mostly when it is left to profit requiring private concessionaires, thus insufficient developmental infrastructure.
What is the analogy to this in traffic? Our drivers don’t follow rules, and the State is lousy at enforcing them. So, let’s not bother with enforcement and just work around it even if it means inefficiency like using 25 percent of the road at a time given bad driver behavior.
My counter to the Washington Consensus’ legitimate complaint about the quality of our government is not to abandon government action but to do the difficult and challenging work necessary to make it better as there are certain essentials that cannot be just left to the private sector for progress and a civilized society. Same thing with traffic management and planning, if it is lousy, then do the hard work to improve it, and enforce traffic rules and practices comprehensively and consistently, rather than give up and just do what we can to work around it.
