"The Good Intentions Paving Company"
Joseph Epstein writes in the WSJ that this term may have come from Saul Bellow -- who may have picked it up elsewhere.
The phrase derives of course from the proverb holding that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.ObamaCare is a nearly perfect example of the Good Intentions Paving Co. at work. A president and the leadership of his party decide that it would be a fine thing to bring universal health insurance to the nation--what a sweet notion, really--except when they enact the law it turns out to bring in its trail confusion, anxiety, probable loss of employment, added personal and public expense, and aggravation all round.
One might think the board of directors of the Good Intentions Paving Co. are all liberals, but they are not. One of the firm's most impressive undertakings was hatched in the Oval Office among George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Why not, they decided, knock off a wretched tyrant and bring democracy to a Middle Eastern country and thereby stabilize the region--all in one bold action? Tens of thousands of violent deaths and many billions of dollars later, with car bombs regularly exploding in downtown Baghdad, and with Sunni and Shiite hatred not in the least abated, the Good Intentions Paving Co. deserves to take another bow.
The Good Intentions Paving Co. has a highly efficient public-relations department, which is especially good at giving its projects promising titles. Consider affirmative action. The firm's executives who put that intention into play thought that by lowering college-admission standards for members of minorities, injustices would be redressed and the climb to equality secured. How could the Good Intentions executives have known that colleges would in turn lower their academic standards?
...Only because it encourages--one might even say incites--feelings of virtue in those who are swept up by its projects does the Good Intentions Paving Co. stay in business. Meaning well, after all, ought to count for something. Unfortunately, when it comes to public policy, good intentions are only slightly better than bad intentions, and not always even that. The reason is that the Good Intentions Paving Co. has never been greatly interested in side effects, in the collateral damage that good intentions so often bring with them. Nor has the firm's record been notable for taking into account human nature, with its obstinate refusal to obey the dreams of politicians, however alluring they may seem.
Good intentions are far worse than bad intentions. If someone is being evil, others are willing to work against them. If someone is (at least pretending) to be good...not so much.
I am reminded of this every holiday season by all of the charities that want donations. Many of them are inefficient, almost all of them do work that is ultimately counterproductive to their stated goals.
If the charities had stated goals like "starve children and make them die of exposure", you could drive them out of existence. Instead, because they want to feed and shelter children - even though they ultimately achieve the opposite - it is socially unacceptable to criticize them.
It is exactly the same with government. If politicians outright admitted that they were corrupt or stupid, we could be rid of them. Instead, they create feel-good programs like Obamacare - out of self-interest or idiocy - but preventing or ridding ourselves of these programs is nearly impossible.
a_random_guy at January 1, 2014 5:40 AM
Well-put, a_random_guy, on good intentions allowing things to continue.
PS Telemarketing calls for charities never tell you how little of the money goes to the actual charity (if any).
Amy Alkon at January 1, 2014 7:15 AM
The other side of that most people don't realize is that What is granted by someone can be taken away almost as easily.
Things like Social Security, Medicaid/Medicare, Section 8 housing, food stamps. Hell even non-entitlement things like military retirement can be fucked with.
Jim P. at January 1, 2014 9:03 AM
The biggest puzzle to me is how fans of any current Administration will eagerly blame the previous one for any failures or encroachments on human rights, while going to any length to excuse "their" guy - who is, of course, in position to stop the ongoing wrongs, and supposedly has a duty to right them.
Two wrongs do not make a right. Stop that.
Radwaste at January 1, 2014 10:48 AM
I'm sorry, what?
I would be willing to say good intentions, but that would grant the writers of this monstrosity with actually having good intentions. I posit that the law as written had one aim: the destruction of the current insurance regime. When it fails - and it will - they'll come back with "we have to fix it" and by "fix it" they mean "single payer" - the government.
That was always the end game. They just knew that it would never fly in 2010, so they had to manufacture a crisis of which they would not let go to waste.
Which will be the pretext for the government getting more into bed with each every one of us. They will regulate what you ingest, how much you sleep, and what "dangerous" leisure activities you may engage in. Because doing so "bends the cost curve down".
I R A Darth Aggie at January 1, 2014 4:06 PM
There's an swfully fine line between a do-gooder and a Dolores Umbridge (go read the Harry Potter books). And most people who start out as the former seem to transform, sooner or later, into the latter. That's why you always need to be wary of do-gooders -- when their schemes fail to bring out the utopia they desire, they'll seek an external entity to blame, and it will be you if you're in range.
Cousin Dave at January 2, 2014 7:00 AM
I finally just watched the whole Harry Potter series of movies and she showed strongly in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix first as a professor then turned headmaster.
All I could think is that she was inspired either by Bloomberg or Cindy Sheehan with power and was being listened too.
I liked how she ended up in the end. ;-)
Jim P. at January 3, 2014 12:05 PM
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