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Thomas Sowell
Over the years, the phrase "unintended
consequences" has come up
with increasing frequency, as more and more wonderful-sounding ideas
have led to disastrous results. By now, you might think that people
with wonderful-sounding ideas would start to question what the
consequences would turn out to be and would devote as much time to
discovering those consequences as to getting their ideas accepted and
turned into laws and policies. But that seldom, if ever, happens.
Why doesn�t it? Because a lot depends on what
it is you are
trying to accomplish. If your purpose is to achieve the heady feeling
of being one of the moral elite, then that can be accomplished without
the long and tedious work of following up on results.
The worldwide crusade to ban the pesticide DDT
is a classic
example. This crusade was begun by the much-revered Rachel Carson,
whose best-selling book "Silent Spring" was based on the premise
that
DDT�s adverse effects on the eggs of song birds would end up wiping
out these species. After that, springtime would no longer be marked by
birds singing; hence the silent spring.
Rachel Carson and the environmentalists she
inspired have
succeeded in getting DDT banned in country after country, for which
they have received the accolades of many, not least their own
accolades. But, in terms of the actual consequences of that crusade,
there has not been a mass murderer executed in the past half-century
who has been responsible for as many deaths of human beings as the
sainted Rachel Carson. The banning of DDT has led to a huge resurgence
of malaria in the Third World, with deaths rising into the millions.
This pioneer of the environmental movement has
not been judged by
such consequences, but by the inspiring goals and political success of
the movement she spawned. Still less are the environmentalists held
responsible for the blackouts plaguing California in the past year or
the more frequent blackouts and more disastrous economic consequences
that can be expected in the years ahead, despite the key role of
environmental extremists in preventing power plants from being built.
The greens have likewise obstructed access to
the fuels needed to
generate electricity, run automobiles and trucks, and perform
innumerable other tasks in the economy. Nationwide, the greens have
been so successful in preventing oil refineries from being built that
the last one constructed anywhere in the United States was built
during the Ford administration. But environmentalists are seldom
mentioned among the reasons for today�s short supplies of oil and the
resulting skyrocketing prices of gasoline.
Advocates of rent control are not judged by the
housing shortages
that invariably follow, but by their professed desire to promote
"affordable housing" for all. Nor are those who have promoted price
controls on food in various countries being judged by the hunger,
malnutrition or even starvation that have followed. They are judged by
their laudable goal of seeking to make food affordable by the poor
even if the poor end up with less food than before.
Some try to argue against the evidence for
these and other
counterproductive consequences of high-sounding policies. But what is
crucial is that those who advocated such policies usually never
bothered to seek evidence on their own and have resented the evidence
presented by others. In short, what they advocated had the intended
consequences for themselves making them feel good and there was far
less interest in the unintended consequences for others.
Even before the rise of today�s many social
activist movements,
T.S. Eliot understood such people and their priorities. Writing in
1950, he said: "Half the harm that is done in this world is due to
people who want to feel important. They don�t mean to do harm but the
harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it
because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of
themselves."
There is little hope of changing such people.
But what the rest
of us can do is stop gullibly accepting their ego trips as idealistic
efforts for others. Above all, we need to stop letting them morally
intimidate us into silence about the actual consequences of their
crusades. The time is long overdue for us to insist that they put up
or shut up, in terms of hard evidence about results, rather than the
pious hopes that make them feel so good.
Thomas Sowell is a nationally syndicated columnist.
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