31
Aug
Jonah Goldberg on how the government has helped create both fat peple and those pernicious 527s:
But the point is that when social engineers attempt to make things better, they’re just as likely to make things worse or create new problems. This is more than the law of unintended consequences, because “iatrogenic government” implies that our political physicians can’t stop meddling with the patient, even when their meddling is causing the problems.
I’ve always hated the phrase “unintended consequences.” It implies that the consequences are out of the hands of the culprit. I have no doubt that the consequences are not the goal of the social engineers, but in most cases the consequences are foreseeable. And if you know something is likely and you plow ahead anyway, you shouldn’t come back later and say the harm was unintentional.
