Closely related to common libertarian/conservative objections to liberal (US sense) policies. I was actually taught this argument structure in law school—one interesting thing is you can lay out a whole series of policy arguments like this completely in the abstract, without reference to any specific controversy. Unfortunately, in any particular instance you can make this objection to a proposed policy, with superficial plausibility, whether or not the objection applies in that particular case.
There’s no substitute for actually figuring out whether the objections apply in a particular case.
Imagine Chopper Meme:
[Senior] We should do some policy X which will help people with problem Y
[Junior] You’ll hurt the people you’re trying to help because of prospective market incentives
[Senior] You won’t, because of market power
[Junior] You will, because public choice/the policy will be used for corruption
[Senior] You won’t, because first-order effects dominate all these downstream effects including the public choice/corruption
Closely related to common libertarian/conservative objections to liberal (US sense) policies. I was actually taught this argument structure in law school—one interesting thing is you can lay out a whole series of policy arguments like this completely in the abstract, without reference to any specific controversy. Unfortunately, in any particular instance you can make this objection to a proposed policy, with superficial plausibility, whether or not the objection applies in that particular case.
There’s no substitute for actually figuring out whether the objections apply in a particular case.
Imagine Chopper Meme:
[Senior] We should do some policy X which will help people with problem Y
[Junior] You’ll hurt the people you’re trying to help because of prospective market incentives
[Senior] You won’t, because of market power
[Junior] You will, because public choice/the policy will be used for corruption
[Senior] You won’t, because first-order effects dominate all these downstream effects including the public choice/corruption
etc etc