I was reading an article about the french riots and the core liberal philosophy underlying french society and government. The french believe (rightly) that all people are equal and that race, color, ethnicity shouldn’t matter. As a result, they don’t measure any of their social outcomes by race, color or ethnicity.

No data on whether there are particular ethnic or racial segments of society that are having major problems? No way to fix these problems. If you’ve read the papers at all in the last few weeks, you know what I’m talking about.

Not sexy, but true (to me anyways). You achieve what you articulate and focus on. You fix problems you see. You improve metrics you measure and report regularly.

So why the hell is this the subject of a blog? Well, I’m not sure this is going to be a crowd-puller, but I was reading an article my boss sent me from the Wall Street Journal and I’m feeling validated (enough to share anyways!). The article is about Michael Walker, founder of the Fraser institute in Canada. A few snippets from the article which I totally agree with:

“A debate about government policy isn’t likely to be settled around values. But when there is objective measurement, resolution emerges”

“The dirty little secret of Canada’s single payer health system: that care is rationed through time rather than price”

“I firmly believe that you become what you think about, and that is as true for countries as it is for individuals”