How should we think about the problem of unintended consequences? And what do they mean? Unintended consequences What do you think about top-down, technocratic policy initiatives that aim to alleviate targeted social problems?
For example, we sometimes hear the argument that we need not worry too much about unanticipated consequences of interventions, because unexpected consequences are not necessarily bad; in fact, they may even be good.
Albert Hirschman made this claim in his book. The Rhetoric of ReactionIn it he makes two claims: that “purposeful social action” only “occasionally” has unintended negative effects, and that “it is clear that human actions are rife with unintended consequences and side effects.” welcome Quite the opposite.”
In his book Power without knowledgeJeffrey Friedman has argued that Hirschman misses the point on both counts: First, “Hirschman’s first argument is a generalization of naive technocratic realism. It implicitly appeals to the reader’s agreement that aggregating first-order assessments of technocrats’ wins and losses favors technocrats, and it avoids the epistemological problem by assuming the reliability of these tallies.” Given that the very ability to accurately tally such things is at issue, attempting to resolve the debate by appealing to those tallies would be a classic example of issue-evasion.
Friedman argues that while Hirschman’s second argument may provide a case for technocracy, he does not defend it adequately.
To counter concerns about the unintended negative effects of technocracy, it is important to note that unintended consequences of technocratic actions Tend Not only is it beneficial, May It cannot be beneficial. Thus, rather than claiming that “there will be many unintended consequences and side effects, and they will be welcome,” he would have had to claim that, even if policymakers were unaware of the side effects of their actions, somehow these effects would be more welcome than unwelcome on the whole. This claim would simply be unrealistic, since it would suggest a secondary factor that might explain why the unintended consequences are beneficial on the whole. But since Hirschman does not specify what this factor is, it is hard to imagine how this claim could be supported by a quasi-religious theory of providence.
In other words, Friedman must, if he wants to salvage an argument in favor of technocrats in a situation where technocrats lack what Friedman expects, It is called “Type 4 knowledge” – knowledge that the costs of a technocratic policy (including both the costs of implementing the solution and the unexpected and unintended costs) will not be higher than the costs of the original problem – it is not enough to point out that the unintended consequences could in principle be beneficial; one must show some positive reason to believe that the unintended consequences will be beneficial. Overall trends It is beneficial.
In his book, Friedman adopts a fairly modest premise: “Either the tendency for unintended consequences to be more harmful than beneficial, or more beneficial than harmful, but we do not know which…The question thus arises as to whether our ignorance of the balance is more harmful to the epistemological critique of technocracy or to its defense.” He argues that the simple fact of uncertainty is fatal to the argument for technocracy, and to argue otherwise is to “fly in the face of the rationalist face of technocracy, for it would permit the adoption of policies that are justified by hope, not knowledge, like policies drawn from a hat.” To appeal to the mere possibility that unintended consequences may be beneficial as a defense of technocracy is in fact to refute the argument in favor of technocracy.
Friedman left open the question of how to judge the valence of unexpected consequences. His argument did not depend on making a positive claim that the valence was neutral or negative. But I want to go one step further than Friedman. Is there any reason to think that unexpected consequences tend to be positive, neutral, or negative in valence? And on what basis would we consider such a claim?
Friedman argues (rightly, I think) that we need a second-order argument on this issue. A second-order argument is one that focuses on systematic reasoning about how the system works, rather than a first-order argument that tries to add up the points in each individual case. For example, one might argue that government operates inefficiently compared to market activity by first-order means. pointing The report found that New York City taxpayers spent more than $2 million to build a public restroom complex consisting of “a small building containing four toilets and four sinks,” whereas “privately maintained Bryant Park in the middle of Manhattan is much more heavily used and its recent restroom renovations cost just $271,000.”
However, the same article also develops a second-order argument for the systemic differences between how state-owned and private enterprises operate, arguing that “because governments use other people’s money, they don’t need to worry about cost or speed. Every decision is bogged down by time-wasting ‘public involvement,’ inflated union wages, and productivity-killing labor regulations.” Thus, one can distinguish between a first-order argument (examination of a particular case) and a second-order argument (comparative institutional analysis). Thus, the article uses a first-order case as an example of a government engaging in highly wasteful and inefficient activities, and also develops a second-order argument for why this kind of disparity is systematic rather than random.
In the next post, we will explore secondary arguments about the value of unintended consequences and whether we should expect them to tend to be positive, neutral, or negative.
