The Pitfalls of Analogy

I read an article not too long ago which, though otherwise lackluster, made this interesting point: analogy is a bad tool for making policy decisions. And the reason is fairly obvious. Every historical situation involves an endless number of variables, and those variables never line up sufficiently in order to draw an analogy that is of any use to anyone. I've already blogged about what Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. thought of the Munich analogy: "I trust that a graduate student some day will write a doctoral essay on the influence of the Munich analogy on the subsequent history of the twentieth century. Perhaps in the end he will conclude that the multitude of errors committed in the name of Munich may exceed the original error of 1938." Now economist Bill Craighead writes on the folly of the "household budget" analogy: The wrong budget analogy.