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.
