Good Intentions

A search for “good intentions” at www.google.com led to a review of The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.  The book is by Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton.  The review was by John J. Miller.

Miller states, ”The authors of The New Color Line return with another libertarian polemic, this time taking aim at a justice system that has lost sight of its most important goals.  Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton warn of a ‘police state that is creeping up on us from many directions.’  There's the war on drugs, which makes it possible for federal agents to investigate people simply for carrying large amounts of cash.  There's the crusade against white-collar crime, which has turned the plea bargain into an enemy of the truth.  And there's outright misconduct, abetted by prosecutors more interested in compiling long lists of indictments than ensuring the fair treatment of all suspects.  The Tyranny of Good Intentions is replete with examples of how government treads on freedom through ill-willed prosecution and faceless bureaucracy.  The book's overpowering sense of disaffection sometimes leads to alarmist prose:  ‘We the People have vanished.  Our place has been taken by wise men and anointed elites.’  The authors are swift to suggest that America, barring ‘an intellectual rebirth,’ may yet go the way of ‘German Nazis and Soviet communists.’”

Miller continues, “Yet The Tyranny of Good Intentions is nothing if not well intended; it is full of passion and always on the attack, whether the writers are taking on racial quotas, wetland regulations, or any number of policies they find objectionable.  In a jacket blurb, libertarian icon Milton Friedman calls it ‘a devastating indictment of our current system of justice.’  Roberts and Stratton, although right-leaning in many of their political sympathies, will probably find plenty of fans on ACLU-left--and anybody who cringes at the thought of unbridled state power.  If the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions, consider this book an atlas.”

Whether you are “right leaning” or “ACLU-left” you must occasionally have noticed that society becomes frustrated as repeated attacks on deficiencies in social systems lead only to worse symptoms.  Legislation is debated and passed with great hope, but many programs prove to be ineffective.  Results are often far short of expectations.  Indeed, government programs often cause exactly the reverse of desired results.  Similar observations were made by Jay W. Forrester in 1971.  A somewhat updated version of his classic “Counterintuitive Behavior of Social Systems” is available at http://web.mit.edu/sdg/www/D-4468-2.Counterintuitive.pdf.

Perhaps one reason good intentions often lead us astray is that the human mind is not adapted to interpreting how social systems behave.  Forrester states that social systems belong to the class called multi-loop nonlinear feedback systems.  Until very recent historical times, it was not necessary to understand complex feedback systems.  Forrester believes that new methods developed over the last 30 years will lead to a better understanding of social systems and thereby to more effective policies for guiding the future.

Forrester’s approach utilizes “system dynamics.”  His approach uses computer models extensively.  One of the founding members of the Operations Research Society of America (now INFORMS), Russell L. Ackoff described large complex problems as messes in his 1974 book Redesigning the Future.  The book is out of print but used copies are available at Amazon.com.  Another book by Ackoff, Ackoff’s Fables:  Irreverent Reflections on Business and Bureaucracy, is available at Amazon.com.  The publisher, John Wiley & Sons, describes it as “’Nothing is as obstructive to satisfaction of human needs and desires, let alone human progress, as bureaucracies.'  So goes Russell Ackoff's philosophy on human development. While relating wry observations made during a long career promoting human development, Ackoff demonstrates how most systems created to foster development actually prevent or retard it. You'll laugh at these war stories, but more importantly, you'll learn how to maximize your own personal development or that of your company by beating obstructive systems.”

The common theme is that “good intentions” are a poor guide to good policy in today’s world.

The first two paragraphs of  Forrester's 1971 paper appear very relevant for today:

This paper addresses several issues of broad concern in the United States: population trends; the quality of urban life; national policy for urban growth; and the unexpected, ineffective, or detrimental results often generated by government programs in these areas.

The nation exhibits a growing sense of futility as it repeatedly attacks deficiencies in our social system while the symptoms continue to worsen. Legislation is debated and passed with great promise and hope. But many programs prove to be ineffective. Results often seem unrelated to those expected when the programs were planned. At times programs cause exactly the reverse of desired results.

We should go slow and try to avoid knee jerk reactions which lead to counter-productive government actions.