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Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Consensus And Constitutional Order, Part Five: Unintended Consequences
In the previous essay in this series, I posited that even a majority that virtually any commentator would call “overwhelming,” were it an electoral tally, can be inadequate support for a proposed law. A number of readers wrote to ask why this should be. One particularly plaintive note ran as follows:
I know the whole idea of elections is to remove force from the transfer of power, but still, a big majority represents a big force. Why shouldn’t an 88% degree of support for the drug laws be enough?
Many Americans are asking the same question. They’re up against a pair of hard truths, which interlock to form a nearly impenetrable barrier against the good-intentions-powered legislation proposed by social engineers of all stripes:
- You can never do only one thing.—Marc Steigler, David’s Sling.
- Living systems don’t react to your thrusts according to what you want; they react according to what they want.—Your Curmudgeon, Eternity Road.
In combination, these truths give us the great and unrepealable Law of Unintended Consequences.
John Ross’s novel Unintended Consequences depicted a lethal and effective minority revolt against the federal government, propelled by legislation which commands the support of a substantial majority: the restriction of the production and sale of automatic weapons. Though barely plausible in its details, Ross’s fictional revolt does stand on firm ground in the most important particulars: it emphasizes the use of automatic-weapons restrictions by power-mongers and government careerists as a vehicle for advancing their own interests, and it depicts its “gun culture” characters as ingenious in finding ways to pursue their trades and avocations despite the tightening demands of the federal organs of gun control. They who passed the National Firearms Act and the Volkmer-McClure Act most certainly did more than one thing, and the “living systems” that populate the “gun culture” have most certainly reacted according to their own interests, rather than those who would control them.
Take special note of this: firearms control laws were passed to restrict practices that made a few people very unhappy, a far larger body uncomfortable in a theoretical way, and a small group of targets furious. The gun-culture groups are powerfully motivated to overturn those laws, or failing that, to find ways around them. The abuse of the law has stoked their fires still higher. As with all special-interest situations, their short agenda and high motivation gives them a critical edge over the larger, weakly motivated group that supports firearms control. In consequence, even though as activists they’re a minority, gun enthusiasts are becoming ever more successful at their political efforts: to overturn or repeal laws that infringe on Second Amendment guarantees, and to remove legislators opposed to those guarantees from office.
Most conservatives would find the above scenario to their liking; most liberals would not. On subjects such as drug abuse, pornography, and the availability of abortion, the distribution of opinions might be different. However, the results of legislative initiatives to control these things would not. Those who want drugs, porn, or abortions want them very, very much—and they would display great ingenuity at getting them without incurring a legal penalty.
The Law of Unintended Consequences is impersonal, reliable, and value-neutral. It operates at all times. There are no loopholes.
Unintended consequences aren’t confined to social legislation, of course. In fact, when one starts to look for them, they seem to be everywhere.
A personal favorite of mine concerns high-speed roads and zoning. On Long Island, zoning boards have compelled commercial concerns to concentrate in designated areas. The “industrial park” is one consequence of this; the multi-lane highway, nominally designed to support high speeds but in practice always bogged down because of stop lights and shopping traffic, is another. When these two effects converge, the weeping and the gnashing of teeth begin. Those who wish to travel quickly to their jobs must contend with others, less speed-minded, who are looking for a particular store, or who are engaged in multi-stop shopping that involves what Long Islanders derisively term “north-south driving on an east-west road.” The close crowding of stores around the roadsides precludes capacity expansion. Re-timing the traffic lights brings no relief. No one is happy about it.
Yet this was not what the zoning boards intended. They simply wanted to keep commercial concerns from invading residential areas, where the traffic they draw and the effluents they produce would be major nuisances or worse. At that, they succeeded—but the Law of Unintended Consequences didn’t care about their primary aims. It functions regardless of whether or not one’s primary aims are achieved. Indeed, sometimes the side effects are worse specifically because the primary aim was achieved.
One final example, again from Long Island traffic. Many of our roads were built twenty-five to thirty-five years ago. At that time, automotive engineering was at a much lower state than it is today, which is difficult to appreciate properly even for those of us who’ve been driving all that time. Today’s cars are smoother and quieter at higher speeds, brake and handle better, and can endure far more lateral acceleration than the cars of 1970. Their drivers have tended to respond to the improvements by pushing them faster and harder. But a road engineered for a typical transit speed of 45 MPH in 1970 is unsuited to 60 MPH transit even by the cars of 2004, and it will remain unsuited until it has been ripped up and redesigned, perhaps even re-routed. In consequence, we experience a lot of accidents that stem from drivers pushing the capabilities of their higher-performance cars on our somewhat lower-performance roads.
The world’s automotive designers didn’t have any of that in mind. They just wanted to build better cars, and they did. Their drivers have responded in a way that no one intended.
Marc Steigler’s observation that “You can never do only one thing” gives rise to another maxim, most closely associated with the medical profession, but well suited to those who seek to impose their values or preferences on others: First, do no harm. In the realm of legislation, this is a prescription for humility. Unfortunately, that’s a virtue to which the typical office-seeker is indisposed.
Comments
Again, brilliant exposition.
I don’t know if you “do requests,” but I’ve been thinking about an essay you wrote, some time back, that described a man waving a gun around at an NRA meeting to illustrate a situation in which the urges of common sense and ideology are at odds. And I think this relates, somewhat, to the current series, where you’re examining criteria for legislatability and enforceability.
Continuing in the same vein, have you considered writing something about mechanisms encouraging or militating against deliberate legislative compromise? It seems as though the current, polarized political situation exacerbates partisan antipathies and oversimplifies issues to such an extent that people have lost the ability to find and invest in common ground. The result vilifies progressive compromise legislation, like that banning assault weapons or partial-birth abortions. And it creates an atmosphere where the majority of partisans—people who might concede the intelligence of compromise legislation on the merits—are induced to defend it on principle.
Posted by on 10/19/2004 at 11:41 PM... abhor it on principle. (blush)
Posted by on 10/19/2004 at 11:42 PMI absolutely hate this series of posts Fran. It is repugnant, but damn you, you’re right.
Posted by Lana on 10/20/2004 at 12:15 AM
