A man walks into a Perkins restaurant, and orders an omelet, juice, and coffee. The order arrives promptly. After a while, the waitress checks on him, and asks if he’s finished eating. One would expect the man to answer the waitress’s question with either “yes, thank you’ or “no, not yet, thank you.” One wouldn’t expect the patron to say that he’s “87% finished,” let alone “87.1% finished.”

That’s because people don’t typically describe tasks with such nicety. They don’t do so because they’re not sharp enough, but because they are sharp enough: they know that such supposed accuracy of measurement is a fiction.

(Looking at an omelet, and all items ordered, and then fixing the quantities involved so as to reduce consumption to a nice percentage isn’t believable. Trying to determine the exact quantities of the meal by glancing at the plate, the coffee cup, etc., and assessing progress as a definite percentage is a dubious task.)

So, if the man were to answer not merely that he was eighty-seven percent finished, but eighty-seven-point-one percent finished, the waitress would have every reason to think the patron was teasing. (52 and 52.0, for example, aren’t the same; they represent different degrees of measurement. If someone telling you he’s 52% done seems overdone, it’s more so when someone tells you he’s 52.0% done. )

If the patron were serious, somehow, the waitress would have sound reason to skip that table during his next visit.

Perhaps, I’d guess, it’s all meant to sound impressive, scientific, the height of positivism. By contrast, I’d suppose that even Comte wasn’t that much of a positivist.

Is using silly percentages like this a defensive technique? That is, if a person said he was ‘mostly done’ he might fear a question or two, but by answering “I’m 87.1% done” he feels he’s safely beyond inquiry. After all, isn’t someone who answers so exquisitely seem a man of science, like, say, Isaac Newton? Someone might question an ordinary man, but not a seemingly scientific man.

(That’s a false idea of science, and scientists. I’ll bet anything that Newton, himself, would never have answered a waitress with a percentage.)

One has no reason to be deterred upon hearing a flimsy percentage in the place of a straight-forward answer.

Here’s the final part of a series of posts on Whitewater’s 2010 City Performance Plan. Parts 1 and 2, and the document itself, appear in the preceding posts.

Far worse than a ginned-up success rate, or a shameless claim about tax incremental financing, is the apparent expectation that residents should believe these shady statements.

I am quite sure we, common residents of Whitewater, are sharp, capable, sincere. This is the foundation of libertarian thinking: that people — as individuals — possess admirable skills and abilities that they have a right to exercise free of coercion, trickery, or the guidance of a selfish political vanguard.

Those who say otherwise do so, often, merely to flatter themselves.

Beside my desk, just an arm’s length away, I have a collection of American political writings, from the earliest settlement of this continent until much more recently. In those books, one finds some — but only the smallest part — of Americans’ thinking across these centuries. There’s hope and confidence for anyone who reads those thoughts, preserved and enduringly vibrant even for us.

So many of those great men and women loved and respected common men and women, common as we are. They saw people as capable and responsible. Seeing them that way, they knew the futility of dribbling child’s lie upon child’s lie on the heads of their fellow citizens. On the contrary, their love and respect for each person made that ill-treatment impossible.

We are not so fortunate. Rather than embrace our long tradition of honesty, integrity, and dedication to humble service, so many of our town squires seek only their own positions, as ‘people of influence.’ They believe in nothing so much as in their own self-importance. Their only cause is to find a chair before the music stops.

In thinking that way, they separate themselves from America’s long and worthy political tradition. They condescend when they should consider, self-promote when they should quietly serve. They see — in vivid colors — their own supposed successes; invisible to them are the struggles of many others in the city. No bureaucratic hand has helped our fellow residents; no quotation book has lessened their burdens. The grand projects of the city are not for them, but are only ornaments to selfish bureaucrats’ pride.

These last several years have been among the city’s worst, and conditions for a time may grow even worse.

And yet – cause for optimism. Circumstances will improve after that, when so much of the dumb show, all mugging and jazz hands, no longer crowds the stage.