On unintended consequences

[nancylebov]

the most powerful “perverse consequences” tend to come not from some single, unified umbrella political drive, but through the small initiatives of powerful official actors who are given tremendous autonomy to act independently, to enact some body of social theory or some aesthetic principle held by a visionary.

This sounds plausible to me, but any opinions about how solid it is?

Comments

[siderea]

My first thought was "Prohibition would seem to be a counterexample", and my second thought was "but the categories of 'powerful official actors' and 'unified umbrella political drive' are probably fungible for them to define away any inconvenient examples".

I'm certainly willing to agree that "many eyes make bugs shallow", and having more people check a doctrine/policy/approach out for sanity is better than fewer. But mass movements can also be insane, and have horrendous inertia, and the great mass of people aren't particularly good at anticipating definitionally hard-to-anticipate consequences.

[nwhyte]

Well, of course. If anything it's a particular case of Margaret Mead's "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." I can't think of any historical examples of a "unified umbrella political drive" that have not in the end depended on the quality of leadership displayed by the individuals in charge.

[madfilkentist]

Unintended consequences arise from centralization of authority in general, because the decision-makers don't and can't have the knowledge to anticipate all the results of their actions. Sometimes the rule-makers try to get around this by giving flexibility to the rule-implementers, and this results in "powerful official actors who are given tremendous autonomy." But both rigid rules and flexible delegation result in unintended consequences.