Quote: Perverse Economics

Albert O. Hirschman in The Rhetoric of Reaction on 1991-03-01:

In economics, more than in the other social and political sciences, the perverse-effect doctrine is closely tied to a central tenet of the discipline: the idea of a self-regulating market. To the extent that this idea is dominant, any public policy aiming to change market outcomes, such as prices or wages, automatically becomes noxious interference with beneficent equilibrating processes.

In the book, Hirschman details three types of Reactionary argumentation. The above quote is an example of what he calls the Perversity Thesis.

It is not just asserted that a movement or a policy will fall short of its goal or will occasion unexpected costs or negative side effects: rather, so goes the argument, the attempt to push society in a certain direction will result in its moving all right, but in the opposite direction. Simple, intriguing, and devastating (if true), the argument has proven popular with generations of “reactionaries” as well as fairly effective with the public at large. In current debates it is often invoked as the counterintuitive, counterproductive, or, most to the point, perverse effect of some “progressive” or “well-intentioned” public policy. ... Everything backfires.

The argument, when deployed without any evidence or data, is inherently structural. A simplistic "nuh uh" of an argument — all your attempts at change are doomed to backfire. "Don't attempt to change anything, because you'll make things worse." I really appreciate the example from capitalism, as the religious belief in the invisible hand often goes hand in hand with perverse reactionary argumentation. Nevermind the mountains of evidence that self-regulating markets are the spherical cow of economics, if we dare to regulate anything on our own, we will actually do much worse harm to people than if we just left it alone...