The following is the last of my Misconceptions column. It was written over a year ago, but never published.
“Hell is full of good meanings, but heaven is full of good works.”
Intent certainly matters, especially concerning law and punishment. Involuntary manslaughter is considered less severe (and rightfully so) than voluntary manslaughter. A man that knocks you over because he tripped and fell into you is an entirely different scenario than when a man intentionally pushes you over.
Results also matter, of course. Knocking someone over, whether intentionally or not, is still a negative. Although mistakes are, by definition, unintended negatives, they are negatives nonetheless.
This all seems so self-explanatory and universally accepted that it need not be stated. But for some reason, as soon as we enter the field of politics, this completely changes. To so many people, intentions are far more significant, while results are almost meaningless. If one has good intentions, they must be right. If one has good intentions, and someone else holds a different viewpoint, they must be evil.
Part of this seems to be due to the seeming obviousness of politics. To the average person, medicine is not simple. They would rely on their pharmacist or doctor for information, and with the exception of politicized topics (like masks), they would generally avoid engaging in a heated debate over proper treatment of a disease or the efficacy of a certain drug, and would avoid calling someone that disagreed a horrible person. The average person wouldn’t hold any strong views in this field outside personal experiences (a procedure that saved their life, for instance).
The opposite is true in politics. Supporting an increase in the minimum wage makes you a good person, because supporting workers is a good thing. The first assumption people make when you disagree is not that you might have different information or that you support workers, but have come to a different conclusion regarding the economics of the minimum wage. Instead, it is assumed you must be against workers, and therefore you are a bad person.
Even if you were to explain your position to the other person, and they cannot refute it, their mind is unlikely to change. You may have convinced them that the situation is more complicated than they previously assumed, but their mind is unchanged. Why?
It could be because supporting an increased minimum wage seems like the right thing to do. This view naturally seems like the situation backed by good intent. Loads of people want to help workers, and want to raise the minimum wage by doing so. Meanwhile, their opponents keep talking about economics and money and things that often come across as less humane. They could just be sophists backed by big business. Even if this isn’t true, we know that the people that support raising the minimum wage have good intentions. It’s at least the safe position. If they’re wrong, at least they were on the side of good intentions.
This is not limited to the minimum wage, of course. In The Vision of The Anointed, Thomas Sowell chronicles case after case of policies implemented by people with good intentions but totally unconcerned with results. A policy is implemented with the goal of helping people, then research is done to determine the effectiveness of the policy. By the time enough research has been done to argue the policy was at best ineffective or at worst counterproductive, the advocates have already moved on to another issue, totally unconcerned about the effects of their actions.
An emphasis within free market economics, at least as far back as Adam Smith, is the emphasis on unintended effects that our actions have on society. The baker bakes bread so that he can sell it and feed his family. Every transaction is a benefit to himself. However, every transaction is also a benefit to his customers, whether that is his intent or not. An entrepreneur that focuses on profit, that builds a company and provides jobs, that is efficient and invests his profits into growing a company that employs more people, is helping many people. He is helping far more people than the political activist that lobbies for state intervention. But it is the latter that is praised because he wants to help people, regardless of the damage he is doing.
Yes, intentions matter. A man that sets out to do good and does so deserves praise, likely more than the man that does the same amount of good by pursuing his own profit. But a man with good intentions that causes harm is worse than any Scrooge.
All of this goes without taking a moment to actually question what is meant by good intentions. Who has good intentions? Does the young political activist have good intentions if he supports every popular cause without putting the slightest effort into figuring out the real effects of what he supports? He may have convinced himself that he has good intentions. But the man that devotes time and effort to learning about what he is promoting, and whether his intentions actually produce good outcomes, surely has good intentions as well.
Those that face the consequences of those good intentions would be far more grateful for a Scrooge that may indirectly and unintentionally help them, rather than an activist that defends the damage he has done on the basis of his good intentions. C.S. Lewis put it best:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time more likelier to make a Hell of earth.
For the full archive of Misconceptions, click here.