Taking More Risks Because You Feel Safe (And the Failure of Government Intervention)

Washington Post ^ | 6 June 2008 | By Shankar Vedantam

[shrinkermd]

Trying to fix problems that affect vast numbers of people has an intuitive appeal that politicians and policymakers find irresistible, but several warehouses of research studies show that intuition is often a poor guide to fixing systemic problems. While it seems like common sense to pump money into an economy that is pulling the bedcovers over its head, the problem with most social interventions is that they target not robots and machines but human beings -- who regularly respond to interventions in contrarian, paradoxical and unpredictable ways.

"How well does government do in helping the market to improve what it does?" asked Clifford Winston, an economist at the Brookings Institution and the author of the 2006 book "Market Failure Versus Government Failure." "The research consistently finds that, in fact, government efforts to correct market failures have little effect, or actually make things worse."

"There is a tendency for people to say, 'If things are safer, then I will take more risk,' " he added. "It does not have to involve government interventions: Drugs are developed to reduce blood pressure, so people say, 'Okay, I can eat more, and it does not matter if I gain weight, because I can take this pill.'"

Previous research has shown that people drive faster in vehicles that feel safer, attempt to bike on more dangerous terrain when they wear helmets and pay less attention to infants being bathed when the children are in seats that are said to reduce the risk of drowning.

[shrinkermd]

What you always believed is now proven true.

[Raycpa]

It is true only if the Washington Post or the NYT’s says so.

[dynachrome]

“The research consistently finds that, in fact, government efforts to correct market failures have little effect, or actually make things worse.”

Paging Captain Obvious.

[coloradan]

That this is obvious to you and still a newsstory indicates as clearly as anything the ideological gulf between socialists and limited-government types. Their existence is predicated on their belief in the ability of government to solve problems, and ours is based on the belief that it can't and shouldn't even try.

Recipe for absolute tyranny:

Given: The solution to any problem is government intervention, e.g. additional laws, regulations, or direct action.

Step 1. Is the world now perfect? Absolute peace and utopia? No.

Step 2. Enlarge government or the scope of government to fix the as-yet unsolved problem(s).

Step 3. Go to step 1.

This has no end, because there will always be some crime, or misery, or poverty, or disease, or hunger, or bad weather, or lack of education ... ergo, the expansion of government under the given assumption will never end.