One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.

 

 

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An interview, and really, more of a conversation (remember that custom?), between Richard D. Heffner and Milton Friedman on December 7, 1975 on the show Open Mind.  The transcript is here.  

The quote is at the 2 minute mark.

One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.

The need to judge programs (and personal actions) by their outcomes rather than the intentions is profoundly true and frequently ignored.  When it is done, for example in Doing Bad by Doing Good: Why Humanitarian Action Fails by Christopher J. Coyne, it makes for sorry reading.  Our intentions may be good but reality is more complex than we understand and good intentions have near zero correlation with the effectiveness of the actions to bring about the desired future.  

We progress by constantly making assessments of present and future conditions and then updating those assumptions as we go along and new information becomes available.  Anything that impedes that reality testing and feedback loop, usually ends up failing.  

We often think of free markets as being more efficient and effective than centrally planned and executed government programs.  And that is most often true.  We also tend to think of free markets as a manifestation of a philosophy of freedom.  And to an extent that is also true.  

But one of Hayek's great insights is that free markets, and specifically the price signal, are actually an information mechanism.  Yes, they are a manifestation of freedom but in function, it serves as an information mechanism.  No one knows or controls the whole system but everyone can understand the local parts.  And as long as there is free information and free decision-making and consequences to the decision-makers, you solve the problem of knowledge.  No one knows the whole but everyone together optimizes the most efficient and effective solution to the cumulative desires, needs and constraints without any coordination or overt coercion.  

We can moralize the seeming incompetence of government initiatives, particularly those corrupted by ignorance and arrogance and self-dealing, as so often happens.  But the real problem is that coercive government programs does not have the information processing and decision-making effectiveness of the free market because actions occur separate from intent and separate from consequence to the decision-makers.

Nice to know the intentions but far better to focus on the causal mechanisms and the observed outcomes.  

As an example:  Defunding the police?  Your intentions might be good but I can guarantee that it will not reduce the amount of overall violence, it will increase the number of black deaths and it will lead to greater poverty and tragedy for the poorest and most marginalized.  Pleading that you meant well is not an acceptable excuse.  You were not willing to observe the evidence and adjust to the circumstances and respect the wishes of all those affected or bear any of the consequences for bad outcomes.  Intentions are only marginally informative. To the extent that they motivate you to problem solve based on reality, great.  To the extent that it motivates you to simply coercively impose an ideological solution without taking into account logic, evidence, empirical reality or the wishes of those most affected?  The very definition of banal evil.  

The full quote in context:

FRIEDMAN:  One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. We all know a famous road that is paved with good intentions. The people who go around talking about their soft heart — I share their — I admire them for the softness of their heart, but unfortunately, it very often extends to their head as well, because the fact is that the programs that are labeled as being for the poor, for the needy, almost always have effects exactly the opposite of those which their well-intentioned sponsors intend them to have.

 

HEFFNER: As an example, what are you referring to?

 

FRIEDMAN: Let me give you a very simple example. Take the minimum wage law. Its well-meaning sponsors — there are always in these cases two groups of sponsors. There are the well-meaning sponsors and there are the special interests who are using the well-meaning sponsors as front men. You almost always when you have bad programs have an unholy coalition of the do-gooders on the one hand and the special interests on the other. 

It is an interesting observation at the end and one now pretty well embedded in everything.  People can often be dismissive of nice sounding policies or programs.  Partly it is that they are wise to the fact that the nice intentions usually end up with bad outcomes.

But partly it is that most observers are jaundiced from the reality that so often well-meaning sponsors are indeed the accidental (or deliberate) front-men for special interests.

We are seeing that in the riots in many of our cities.  Some portion of the crowd is certainly peacefully well-intended but their very presence is then hijacked by bad actors and special interests such as Antifa (seeking anarchy) and looters (seeking profit).