In Reply to: Re: The times they are a changein' - or are they? posted by Peter Seaman on 23 March 2004 at 17:12:48:
: I don't share your faith in actuaries - didn't Equitable life act at all times on the advice of actuaries?
Peter,
I am sure they did. And the trustees who left the ASW workers in the mire took advice also. But where does the blame dissipate along this trail? The actuaries would tell you that their advice was in line with the law and with their professional standards. GG would have us lump most of the odium on the government but he would probably agree that some of it belongs elsewhere.
Talking generally about expert advice, what I see as damaging is the blurring between what could be done and what should be done. The way it works is that officialdom gets an informal idea of what it wants to do and goes to (say) the legal experts and asks "can we do this?". If the answer is "yes" the officials then say "we are doing this on legal advice". That misses the point that the legal people only said that something could be done, not that other things could not be done. What SHOULD have been done might well be one of the many other things that legal experts would have agreed COULD be done.
(Not with trustee hat on)