Again, great article.

- ability / competence
- acting in others best interest

Poor outcomes don’t care which caused them…

Why do we trust politicians?

I have much sympathy for sincere benign intent combined with genuine ignorance – which generates unintended, and unforeseen, consequences.

Wilful ignorance is however another matter, because there is no excuse for unintended, but still foreseen, consequences. If they are indeed foreseen, they cannot by definition be unintended.

Criminal law tends to confuse the issue further: much is made in law of intent as the ultimate test of a criminal act, and if intent to do wrong is not found, whatever the consequences of the act, the absence of malign intent is regarded as a mitigating factor, sometimes leading to complete exoneration. Still , the law is not all bad – even in the absence of malign intent, culpability and restoration of losses borne by third parties who suffered as a result of the act remain the responsibility of he who ‘meant well’.

But somehow, notwithstanding the dictum that all should be equal before the law, those holding office are wholly exempt from personally bearing the consequences of their policy decisions in all but the most extreme milosevichian cases. No, we tend to erect statues in their honour instead. ( which, incidentally, makes me wonder whether the apparently coincidental similarity between the words ‘statute’ and ‘statue’ is really an etymological accident. The same goes for the first four letters of ‘analyst’ too, but I digress…….).

The politicians calling for yet another stimulus are, at best, negligent and incompetent.

Reading through the comments, the article goes perfectly with the “Does the Fed need an Exit Strategy?” article.

Indeed, and I have done so.

“Exploitation! As if people are “drawn” against their will…”

A strange choice of words. It is not an issue of will. Any acting human can make their own choices. The better informed they are, the better choices they will make, that is all. That is what this web site is all about.

Each person can judge for himself.

“[T]his commenter appears to be simply trying to exploit the popularity of this web site to draw traffic to his own.”

Exploitation! As if people are “drawn” against their will…

This proposed relationship between the article and the comment seems tenuous to me.

“Linking is a “misuse”?”

Linking information on another web site is not a misuse in general. But, in this case the commenter is posting previous written information as a complete comment to this item.

What I am looking for when I follow the comments link is _specific_ commentary on this article. As a part of that commentary, inclusion of a link to other relevant content is appropriate.

In this case, this material was not what I was looking for.

I stand by my original characterization — this commenter appears to be simply trying to exploit the popularity of this web site to draw traffic to his own.

We’re not suppose to say these things out loud Gary …

We’re not suppose to say these things out loud Gary …

Indeed? Both deal with the concept of “unintended consequences.”

“Please suggest to this commenter that the purpose of the article comments is not to try to draw traffic to another website, and that doing so is a misuse of this privilege.”

Linking is a “misuse”?

Please suggest to this commenter that the purpose of the article comments is not to try to draw traffic to another website, and that doing so is a misuse of this privilege.

Do liberals resemble Chait’s portrait of them? Consider the nature of economic debate to date. Free-market economists still explain why, for example, the minimum wage won’t help the poor, and “practical effects” liberals still respond that we need the minimum wage because the poor need help. So, does the hope that it helps the poor prove that it helps the poor? Does it prove at least that liberals are good people? (It is beyond the pale to speculate whether liberals are limiting their benevolence to the special interests of Big Labor.) Can liberals “be convinced [such] programs [have] failed to achieve their intended goals”? In his Everything for Sale (which contains just such an it-helps-the-poor-because-the-poor-need-help advocacy of the minimum wage, including a total failure to address any of the arguments against it), Robert Kuttner seems to regard the law of unintended consequences not as a sober reality, but as a self-evident absurdity, which he mocks as the “Perversity Thesis”: Claim a law will do something and “conservative” contrarians reflexively assert it will do the opposite. (Kuttner and kind might care to ponder the late-2007 AP reports that the “shortage of National Health Service dentists” in the U.K., which began when “[m]any dentists abandoned Britain’s publicly funded health care system after reforms backfired in April 2006,” has left a “growing number of Britons without access to affordable care.” The reforms, e.g., a guaranteed income for dentists, were an “effort to increase patients’ access.” Even more thought-provoking is “Health Status, Health Care and Inequality: Canada vs. the U.S.” from the National Bureau of Economic Research.)

So now the question about “bigger government” liberals becomes: Is there no “deeper belief” — the immorality of a “common good” that’s only the “sum of selfish individual goods” (Kuttnerese for any values pursued by free individuals) and the superior ethic of a “collective good” (ditto for anything imposed by majoritarian state coercion); uniformity of wealth/poverty; punishment for the sins of “materialism” and “greed”; or the above implied — buttressing their position?