Mothers Against Drunk Driving is in the news, as a result of a Toronto Star investigation that revealed that something like 81 cents of every dollar donated to this charitable organization goes to fund telemarketers and door-to-door fund raising campaigns. I can't say as I'm surprised. I first wrote in November of 2004 that MADD had reached the asymptotic end point of its effectiveness. It was inevitable that the shift would occur from fighting drunk driving to fund raising.
From the Toronto Star, MADD is revealed to be mostly about the fundraising:
A Star investigation published Saturday delved into MADD's internal financial statements and revealed that only about 19 cents of every dollar goes to victim services and the fight against drunk driving. The charity, which has for many years been telling the public that most of its money is spent on charitable programs, has been counting as charity the work of professional telemarketers and other fundraisers. MADD does this, [Chief Executive Officer Andrew] Murie has said, on the theory that their calls for cash are also spreading the message that drinking and driving is a criminal offence with sometimes fatal consequences. The federal charity regulator does not condone this practice.
Of course this happens. I wrote two years ago how any single-issue movement like this is doomed to be a victim of its own success. Getting rid of most drunk drivers will cost a certain amount. The remainder though will require more effort, therefore more money. As you chase 100% success, you find that you need to spend even more effort (and therefore money) to achieve tiny incremental improvements as you close in ever so slowly to 100%. Of course, you can never reach 100%, so the money problems will never end.
Gee, sounds like I nailed that one.
Here is the original piece, republished. Enjoy.
The progression from mainstream agitator to fringe radical happens to a lot of legitimate single-issue movements. It happens because they become victims of their own success.
Take MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) for example. They won! A drunk driver has shifted entirely from an amusing buffoon to social leper in less than a generation.
So MADD should just go away, right? Or just throttle back to maintain a quiet vigil to make sure we don't slide back? But you get addicted to the thrill of it - the marches, the meetings with powerful politicians, the appearances on Oprah.
Check out this page from the MADD web site. Look at the "problem" -- drunk driving deaths have dropped dramatically, but have stalled. Since 1999, alcohol-related fatalities have dropped just 3% despite their best efforts. Any engineer will tell you that in most systems you can only approach zero asymptotically. This means you creep closer to zero, but never reach it, and each step closer is more difficult than the last. This is because any complex system will suffer from "noise" -- the little random fluctuations that result from the unpredictable and unmanageable interactions of the system with its environment, and from higher order interactions between components of the system itself. After you get the system working, you optimize it to reduce the noise (ideally reduce it to zero), but an engineer knows it won't go away altogether. Getting rid of noise is asymptotic. At some point, a balance between the cost to reduce the noise and the ability of the system to tolerate it is reached, and you stop fiddling with it.
It's one of those rules of life - there will always be noise in the system. But MADD doesn't know it. They say that this problem is "100 percent preventable".
In the US you have something like 220 million adults over the age of 18. And I dare say all of them have heard the message from MADD, and by far most of them take it seriously. But even leaving out the incorrigible drunks, is it reasonable to assume that of the remainder, not a single one will ever get into a car after having one too many? I don't think it is. Human behaviour is one of those incredibly complex systems. Its internal complexity (the rate at which alcohol is metabolized, for example) combined with external interactions (the lights, the music, the dancing, the good friends at the local pub) means that for any large population of humans out drinking on a Friday night, there will be number who will, stupidly but inevitably, misjudge their alcohol intake, not get noticed by their friends, and get into a car. It won't even be the same people from week to week. But on any given Friday night, some of these otherwise responsible people will hurt themselves or someone else.
The law will deal with them. Society will demand restitution, and the guilty will pay. But MADD has the laudable, and lofty, goal of getting 100% of the drunks off the road. How do you achieve 100%?Well, they won't give up, no matter the cost. So MADD wants more police doing more spot checks. And interlock devices on vehicles (breathalyzer you need to pass before the engine engages). And increased beer excise taxes that we'd all have to pay. And more money, more money, more money for something called the National Traffic Safety Fund.
Heck, they've even cast this issue in terms of Homeland Security. There ain't no way that they are going to be told that this problem, at its current level, is less important than terrorism, thank you very much.
A lot of money spent to reduce the noise in the system to zero. And no guarantee it can work. Actually, I can almost guarantee it won't work. It shows all the hallmarks of an asymptotic process -- spending more to catch the last 10 than it took to catch the first 90. And then you'll only catch 8 of the 10. You'll have to spend even more to get the last 2 than you spent to get those last 8 (and then you'll only get 1 of those 2).
So when will MADD become radicalized? Probably when they realize the asymptotic nature of the problem, and throttle back. When the moderates realize that they will have to put up with a certain amount of noise. But then there will be those who will not accept anything less than the ideal solution. They will break away, accuse the original organization of losing the faith, and then proceed to act without the moderating influence of the full organization. Reduce the noise! What can we do that we were never allowed to do before? Slashing tires in pub parking lots? Setting up their own checkpoints? Harassing people who have been convicted, or even just charged, with drunk driving?
Sounds silly, I know. And maybe MADD won't go down this path. But if it does one day, I won't be surprised.
But then maybe it has started. A backlash organization called Responsibility in DUI Laws has formed, taking issue with, among other things, the statistics MADD uses. If MADD has been cooking the numbers, then it suggests that they've already started down that path.
