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Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Intentions versus Results

We can argue about a given politician's intentions from now until doomsday. What must not be forgotten is that without sound social-economic theory good intentions count for zilch. We know what the road to hell is paved with.

2 comments:

Joe Cobb said...

You should have mentioned Thomas Sowell's book, "A Conflict of Visions" (1988) for the explanation of the process that mistaken people follow, making a decision with a bad result, due to "good intentions." He describes those people as "Unconstrained Vision" and it is simply not "constrained" by reality, i.e. economic analysis nor long-term planning.
Thomas Sowell points out those "Unstrained" visionaries are not able to see nor understand the combination of "no intentions" and "good results," which is what Adam Smith wrote the entire book, "Wealth of Nations," to explain. Without "good" intentions - to help people - a merchant nevertheless brings bread and wine to your family's table. Even if he were "bad" (wanting a profit), it would help your family.
But those "unconstrained" visionaries are just wishful thinkers, and in wish-fulfillment-land, you just have to tink happy thoughts.

Joe Cobb said...

I just realized there is no "edit" function for a posted comment in this software. I rely on that for correcting typo and spelling errors. I hope you can add that feature.