Tornado Alley (PROG)

[SilverSurfer]

sortagreen, iatrogenics deniers = proof Einstein was right...

"A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of the truth."

Government intervention, no matter what its form or intention, causes iatrogenics — unintended negative consequences that hurt the very people they’re intended to help.

(This article explains it so well - see more Einstein below)

Even left liberals are coming to realize that Obamacare is fatally flawed. Perhaps this is because fewer people will be insured at the end of the year, under Obamacare, than at the beginning of the year as insurers are forced to drop coverage. Stories of such cancellations to cancer-stricken children certainly don’t help matters. For a program whose expressed purpose is to bring insurance to more people, this irony seems even too much for the interventionists to stomach.

Obamacare’s negative effects, however, are simply a microcosm of government policy in general. Virtually all well-intended (assuming they are in fact well-intended) government policies bring negative unintended consequences that hurt the very people they intend to serve. The prevalence of this paradox, called iatrogenics (originally used in the medical context to refer to doctors’ actions that hurt patients), should give pause to those who favor government intervention to solve societal problems.

Take rent control policies, for example, intended to make housing more accessible to those with lower incomes. In reality these policies shrink the amount of available housing because potential landlords have less incentive to rent out, and developers have less incentive to build new, units. As a result, less housing is available for those with lower incomes. Just look at the apartment shortage in New York or San Francisco, the two cities with the most stringent rent-control policies, for proof.

This process of iatrogenics also exists in financial regulation. Polemicist Nassim Taleb has illustrated how increased financial regulation intended to prevent another financial crisis has actually made one more likely. Regulations entrust the fate of the financial system to a handful of big banks because they are the only ones who can afford to comply with them. This consolidation of power among the big banks makes the financial system riskier because if one of these few banks fails the damage will be much greater to the economy than from the failure of one small bank among many. “These attempts to eliminate the business cycle,” says Taleb, “lead to the mother of all fragilities.”

In terms of protecting society’s most economically disadvantaged, sociologist Charles Murray chronicles, most recently in his bestseller Coming Apart, how the federal government’s war on poverty paradoxically hurts the poor. He explains that though welfare benefits are well intentioned, what they in effect do is pay people to stay poor, hurting the very people they intend to help. These misaligned incentives are a leading reason why $15 trillion in welfare spending over the past 50 years has perversely resulted in a 50-year-high poverty rate of 15.1 percent.

Those currently advocating for a raise of the minimum wage should first examine its iatrogenic history of bringing about negative unintended consequences to the very low wage people it intends to help. Minimum wage increases actually hurt low wage earners because business owners lay off staff and cut back on hours to try to recoup their losses from such mandated wage increases. This leaves those with a tenuous grasp on the labor market in an even more precarious position. “Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws,” says economist Thomas Sowell, “and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they either lose their jobs or fail to find jobs.”

Of course it’s not only left liberal policies that generate negative unintended consequences that hurt the very people they’re intended to help, but also conservative ones like the war on drugs and the war on terror.

The war on drugs intends to help drug-blighted communities by enacting and enforcing strict penalties on drug use. What it in effect does is hurt these communities by making criminals out of a significant portion of its inhabitants. Drug users now make up nearly 25 percent of federal and state prison inmates, many of whom go in for simple possessions and come out hardened criminals wreaking untold damage on their communities. Even those who do not run afoul with the law again face a lifetime of job and social struggles with a criminal record attached to their name.

The same iatrogenic story exists in the war on terror, which intends to keep us safe by waging a multipronged offensive against potential terrorists and the geographies they may inhabit. Unfortunately, as former CIA intelligence officer Michael Scheuer has illustrated, some of these prongs, such as aggressive drone warfare and support for apostate regimes, actually fan the flames of US hatred making us less safe. “It’s American policy that enrages al-Qaeda,” says Scheuer, “not American culture and society.”

Government intervention, no matter what its form or intention, causes iatrogenics — unintended negative consequences that hurt the very people they’re intended to help. Nowhere is this better exemplified than with Obamacare, a policy intended to bring insurance to all that has in effect taken it away from many. Perhaps the growing coalition of people recognizing this paradox will take this revelation and apply it to other policy arenas as well. For the affected classes, we can only hope.

http://mises.org/daily/6623/Obamacares-Many-Negative-SideEffects-Should-Surprise-No-One

(from Einstein quotes)

All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.

Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex ... it takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.


It is characteristic of the military mentality that nonhuman factors (atom bombs, strategic bases, weapons of all sorts, the possession of raw materials, etc) are held essential, while the human being, his desires, and thoughts - in short, the psychological factors - are considered as unimportant and secondary...The individual is degraded...to "human materiel".


It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry for what this delicate little plant needs more than anything, besides stimulation, is freedom. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.


Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be. We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy? Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.


The state exists for man, not man for the state. The same may be said of science. These are old phrases, coined by people who saw in human individuality the highest human value. I would hesitate to repeat them, were it not for the ever recurring danger that they may be forgotten, especially in these days of organization and stereotypes.

Any power must be an enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by terror and force, whether it arises under the Fascist or the Communist flag. All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded to the individual.


The crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a perparation for his future career.

Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police.

http://www.quotes.net/authors/albert%20einstein

A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of the truth.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/12/einstein-foolish-faith-authority-worst-enemy-truth.html