{"id":547,"date":"2009-08-18T21:32:29","date_gmt":"2009-08-19T01:32:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/?p=547"},"modified":"2010-03-21T14:21:50","modified_gmt":"2010-03-21T18:21:50","slug":"82008-lecture-on-unintended-consequences-and-intended-non-consequences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/82008-lecture-on-unintended-consequences-and-intended-non-consequences\/","title":{"rendered":"Lecture on Unintended Consequences and Intended Non-Consequences"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Christopher DeMuth<\/a>, former head of the American Enterprise Institute<\/a>, and now its D. C. Searle Senior Fellow, gave a lecture\u00a0 on public policy this past June.<\/p>\n

He reviewed the neoconservative and Chicago free market criticisms of government action, and focuses much of his lecture on regulatory policy.<\/p>\n

DeMuth forcefully argued that regulation frequently has unintended consequences due to it being a product of politics.<\/p>\n

I want to suggest that policies that are flaccid and porous, with lots of room for maneuver on all sides and ample opportunities for unobservable avoidance, are a central feature of modern democracy (p. 22).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even without the effects of politics, regulation, said DeMuth, is inherently problematic.<\/p>\n

[R]egulation is systematically ineffective and often perverse. The problem is inherent in the nature of regulation itself and is more fundamental than the problems of politics, program design, information, and organization (14).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He concluded:<\/p>\n

Temporizing rather than solving problems is an important attribute of modern politics. That is not all bad: problems solve themselves in many cases. But when government comes along for the ride, and pretends to be at the head of the parade, it can do substantial damage along the way. A government that was more autonomous than ours\u2014better able to give directions and less prone to take directions\u2014would be in a stronger position to solve genuine public problems but liable to other sorts of abuses. For better and worse, the government we have is characterized by big political talk and anemic policy action. In these circumstances, calling attention to the chasm between talk and action, and the collateral damage it can inflict, is a worthy task for political criticism and liberal reform (29).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is provocative stuff, although one is left wondering:<\/p>\n

(1) Under what circumstances can regulation work?<\/p>\n

(2) Are there certain types of issues where regulation tends to work better?<\/p>\n

(3) Can anything be done to up the odds that good policies will survive politics and be enacted?<\/p>\n

See the video<\/a>; read the paper<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Source: <\/strong>Christopher DeMuth, “Unintended Consequences and Intended Non-Consequences,” Bradley Lecture (Washington: AEI, June 8, 2009).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christopher DeMuth, former head of the American Enterprise Institute, and now its D. C. Searle Senior Fellow, gave a lecture\u00a0 on public policy this past June. He reviewed the neoconservative and Chicago free market criticisms of government action, and focuses much of his lecture on regulatory policy. DeMuth forcefully argued that regulation frequently has unintended […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[69],"tags":[86,108],"class_list":["post-547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-public-policy","tag-conservatism","tag-regulation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pBCzY-8P","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1023,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions\/1023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}