The road to hell

Intentions and results

A few years ago, before I become tired and retired, I went into my 8:30 am Monday morning class.

As we waited for the last few stragglers to show up right at 8:30, one student politely asked how I was doing that morning.

“I’M GRREEAATTT!” I said with enthusiasm. “Never better!”

The students all looked a little surprised. This level of enthusiasm seemed a bit excessive for 8:30 on a Monday morning.

The polite student asked, “What makes today so good?”

I explained that I had a condition called Sleep Apnea. In order to sleep properly, I needed to use a medical device called a CPAP machine.

“I don’t know if you noticed me really dragging my butt last week,” I said. “That’s because my CPAP machine conked out. I got a new one on Friday.”

“And that’s why I feel great. I got a really good night’s sleep last night.”

Everyone nodded. This made sense even to 19-year-olds.

Then I got loquacious.

“And it’s the most amazing thing. I was looking at the labels and tags on the CPAP unit. It’s incredible. It was made by an Australian company, but the electronics were assembled in Singapore. The carrying case was made in Vietnam. There’s a little water tank to control humidity. It was made in Malaysia. The hose apparently came from Bangladesh.”

“Just think. People from five different countries worked together so that I could get a good night of sleep. It’s just amazing. I’m so grateful.”

The students looked at me as if I was insane.

The polite one said, “But I’m sure that was not their intention.”

I replied, “Bf course it wasn’t. They have never heard of me. They were just earning a living. That’s what makes it so wonderful. People in five countries worked together to give me a good night’s sleep and by buying their product, I helped them feed their children. It’s the most wonderful and amazing thing.”

Now the students were looking at me as if they were wondering whether they should call in the guys with the butterfly nets.

I decided to go full bore I, Pencil.

“But that’s not all. There’s not a single person in the world who knows how to make a CPAP machine all by themselves. By working together, people from five countries – who have never met each other – can make one.”

This drew a protest.

“But someone has to know how to make them.”

I countered. “By design and assembly, sure. Someone – some one person – figured it out. But I am going a bit deeper. The electronics contain metal that had to be mined, plastics that had to be made from dead dinosaurs, and computer chips made from silica dust. The case seems to be made from jute. That means someone had to know how to grow the Corchorus plant and someone else had to know how to process the fiber. Then someone else had to know how to weave the fiber into cloth. Someone else had to sew it. And that’s just the carrying case.”

“There’s not a single person alive who knows how to do all that stuff. But by the magic of the market place and globalization, all this knowledge came together so I could get a good night’s sleep.”

“What’s more amazing and wonderful than that?”

The students all scowled. They all suspected me of trying to mess with their minds – as if that was something I would ever do.

After a bit of silence, one student asked, “So you are saying that all these people were doing something good for you by giving you a good night’s sleep?”

“Precisely.”

“But they weren’t trying to give you a good night’s sleep.”

“So, what does that matter,” I responded. “I slept like a baby. Or rather, I didn’t sleep like a baby. Last week, without my machine, I woke up every hour and cried with frustration. Last night I slept right through. What does it matter that this was not their intention.”

We batted this around for about half the class. I’m just going to say that while my arguments were clever, they were not convincing.

The students remained convinced that for good to be counted as good, there had to be specific good intent.

Bad intentions and good results

My students had nothing against people in Vietnam, Singapore, or Bangladesh earning a living through honest toil. They did not take condemn their actions.

My students just thought these workers deserved no moral credit for the happy outcome of making their instructor more cheerful because he got a good night’s sleep.

Let’s now take this one step further.

Can we acknowledge and give credit for good outcomes that come from evil intent?

Let’s look at one example.

Saving the whales.

Here’s what Greenpeace has to say about this on its website.

“On April 27, 1975, Greenpeace launched the world’s first anti-whaling campaign from the docks of Vancouver. The mission would become the spark that ignited a global “Save the Whales” movement and eventually helped secure an international ban on commercial whaling.”

Good intent, good result.

Right?

If you thought I was going to attribute bad intent to Greenpeace on this one – that I’m going to argue that their intent was generate blubbering about blubbering in order to create a fundraising platform that generates tens of millions in donations every year and allows them to pay its leaders salaries in the high six figures – you are wrong. Such an attribution of evil intent would be churlish and wrong. Let’s take people’s stated intent at their word.

What the Greenpeace celebration of its noble activity misses is the reason there were any whales left to save in 1975.

For this, one man was most responsible.

A good argument can be made that this man did more to save the whale from extinction because of human hunting than any other person in the history of the world.

John D. Rockefeller.

Senior.

You know. The quintessential “Robber Baron” of the gilded age. The ruthless capitalist. The exploiter of workers, crusher of competitors, corruptor of politicians and gouger of consumers.

Yeah.

That guy.

The one who actually saved the whales.

To understand this, we need to go back to the mid-1800s.

People wanted more light. Printing presses were getting better. More people were reading. Others wanted to just to do something other than sleep from dusk till dawn.

The most important source of artificial light was wick lamps consisting of an oil reservoir, a wick, and a glass enclosure to protect the flame. Adjusting the length of the wick could change the burn rate and hence the amount of light thrown off. The lamp could be set on a table, or carried/hung by a hopped handle.

The best fuel for this remarkable, state-of-the-art, oh-so-modern lamp was whale oil. The resulting demand for whale oil combined with the technological innovations of the steam ship and the rocket harpoon let to an industrial scale slaughter of whales. Moby-Dick is generally considered one of the greatest American novels written. It’s about a whale fighting back against the whale-genocide that was occurring.

John D. Rockefeller cratered the whaling industry. Boats were grounded and harpoons where sheathed. It didn’t quite end – but the number of whales murdered for their oil dropped by over 90 percent by the turn of the century.

Here’s the story of how and why Rockefeller saved the whales.

In 1859, a guy named Edwin Drake drilled an oil well in North-West Pennsylvania. He’d figured out that that black sticky stuff could be turned into kerosine and industrial lubricants. (This was before the internal combustion engine. Gasoline was an unwanted by-product of the refining process).

Drake’s well sparked the world’s first oil boom. Lots of wells were drilled. Lots of oil (not a lot by today’s standards, but still enough to make lots of people lots of money) was pumped. In nearby Ohio, about 40 refineries were constructed to turn out kerosine.

In theory, the new-fangled kerosine was better lamp fuel than whale oil, but there were two problems. The first was price. The refineries were inefficient. Kerosine cost a lot. The second was quality. Some refineries made a quality product. Others – well, no so much. Their kerosine didn’t burn properly. Expensive lamps were ruined. Sometimes they exploded.

A young John D. Rockefeller got a bookkeeping job in Cleveland. He saw opportunities in oil. He wanted to own it. All of it. At least all the refineries. In 1870, Rockefeller formed Standard Oil and started refining. He offered to buy out other refiners. Those who accepted his offer got a fair price. Those who did not were driven out of business. As Rockefeller got larger, he could muscle railways into giving him cheaper freight rates that allowed him to undercut his competitors. By 1900, Rockefeller was the world’s first billionaire. Standard Oil controlled 90 percent of the oil refining capacity in the United States.

Rockefeller’s business model did some positive things. He improved the quality of kerosine and made it consistent (that’s where the name “Standard Oil” came from – it was all the same standard). He lowered the price of kerosine. Consumers actually benefitted.

And – by improving the quality of kerosine and lowering its price – Rockefeller saved the whales. Whale oil became uncompetitive. Whalers – instead of whales – went the way of the dodo bird.

But Rockefeller got no credit for the good he did. In addition to being the richest man in America, he was the most unpopular. He was a devout Baptist. At once point, he tried to donate a million dollars to the Baptist mission society. They refused his money as being tainted. That’s being unpopular.

Whatever good Rockefeller did was offset by his motives. He was not trying to do good. He was trying to crush his competitors and own it all. That combination of effective, ruthless pursuit of ruthless motive made him hated.

Except by the whales. But nobody asked their opinion.

Bad results from good intentions

Up till now, we’ve been looking at one part of the equation between motive and result. We discount actions that have good results when the motive for these actions is morally neutral or morally reprehensible.

We have trouble seeing that good can come from bad (or even indifferent).

But there is a bigger problem with our tendency to equate motive with result. It’s that we seem peculiarly reluctant to understand that bad things can come from good intentions.

Last year I was teaching a class on Social Problems. On an exam, I had a bonus question. Students had to complete the sentence”

The road to hell is paved with ____________________

Only five of 62 students got the bonus mark. We once accepted the fact that bad things could come from noble motives. That’s being lost in the 21^st century.

Let’s look at one example.

In the spring of 2021, Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa tried to do good – as he saw it. He looked at the country’s balance of trade and currency reserves. Both were bad. One contributing factor was that Sri Lanka was spending $400 million USD per year on fertilizer. What’s more, people were telling him that chemical fertilizers were bad for the environment, causing an epidemic of a chronic kidney disease, and increasing the number of suicides. Rajapaksa was told that moving to organic farming would save the country money, protect the environment, prevent kidney failure, and stop people from killing themselves.

Lots of noble motives, right?

So, President Rajapaksa banned chemical fertilizers.

Rajapaksa was lauded by environmentalists around the world. Strong decisive action to achieve good noble goals. Why couldn’t other politicians be as noble and brave?

Then the first organic crop came in. Rice yields dropped by 32 percent. Prices shot up and people started to go hungry. Tea yields – the country’s largest source of export earnings – dropped by 18 percent.

In July of 2022, Rajapaksa fled the country after a massive lynch mob broke through police lines to storm the Presidential palace. Rajapaksa fled the country on a naval boat. When he got to the Maldives Islands, he sent a letter of resignation back home.

The ban on chemical fertilizers was lifted. Sri Lanka had to borrow $1.2 billion USD to pay for emergency rice imports. Even after a government aid package to farmers, hundreds went out of business. A survey of Sri Lankan farmers conducted last year showed that only three percent of them think that organic farming is a good idea.

Even the most ardent supporters of organic farming were forced admit that ban on chemical fertilizers was a disaster.

In this case, the disjunct between good intent and bad result was so quick and catastrophic that even the most ardent supporters of organic farming were forced admit that ban on chemical fertilizers was a disaster. However, acceptance was grudging and conditional. For example, Greenpeace summed up the adventure by saying, “organic farming should not be blamed for the problems that happened after the policy to ban fertilizer. It was, rather, the speed at which it was implemented and the lack of support to transition to organic farming that was the issue.” Good intentions, it seems, must eventually lead to good outcomes even if the evidence clearly shows otherwise. If you don’t succeed in getting good results with your good intentions, try, try again. Because good intentions have to be attached to good results.

And hey.

President Rajapaksa’s intentions were good.

In other cases, the effect of good intentions can be less dramatic – and hence longer lasting.

Let’s look at the ban on plastic straws in many places including in Canada as of June 20, 2022.

The movement to ban plastic straws has been attributed by students of such things to two events.

In 2011, nine-year-old Milo Cress started his own “Be Straw Free” campaign to publicize what he saw as the hazards of plastic. Cress estimated that 500 million straws were used every day in the United States. Weirdly enough, this guesstimate by a nine-year-old became accepted as fact in media coverage ranging from The New York Times to USA Today. It’s even been cited as established fact (without attribution) in government publications. That’s one thing about good intentions. People believe any “evidence” – real or imagined – which lines up with their idea of good.

Regardless of the accuracy or inaccuracy of his numbers or his assessment of the harm caused by plastic straws, young Milo did not get carried away with his good intentions. His “Be Straw Free” campaign was educational. He tried to convince people to stop using straws whenever they had a drink. Personally, I’m with him on this. I think lips work perfectly fine to drink liquid from a cup.

But then something changed in in the good intentions department regarding plastic straws.

Four years after Milo came up with the 500 million number, marine biologist named Christine Figgener filmed her team pulling a plastic straw out of the nose of a turtle. She posted it on YouTube. You can see it here, although it’s kind of disgusting to watch. But that was the point. The video has had over 35 million views. Suddenly, all good people demanded that plastic straws be banned.

On June 20, 2022 Canada joined the movement. Environment Minister Stephen Guilbault announced a ban on plastic straws. (There was an element of dishonesty in the announcement – it was really a partial ban. We’ll come to this in a moment.)

To save the turtles.

I’m all in favor of taking reasonable and effective measures to protect sea turtles.

But I’m still having trouble figuring how using a plastic straw in Regina, Saskatchewan can end up in the snout of a sea turtle – even if it is carelessly discarded. According to Google, Regina is 1,159 km to the nearest point on the Hudson Bay, 1,736 km from the Pacific Ocean, and 3,653 km from the Atlantic.

Banning straws in places like Regina does nothing – and I mean nothing – to protect sea turtles.

But hey.

Stephen Guilbault’s intentions were good.

Good intentions and coercion

The banning of chemical fertilizers in Sri Lanka and plastic straws on the Canadian prairies reveals an essential truth about politicized good intentions.

Good intentions almost inevitably lead to coercion.

Someone says, “This is good. Everyone should do it.”

People with good intent first tried to convince farmers in Sri Lanka or fast-food customers Canada to “do the right thing”. Quit using that terrible fertilizer or plastic straws. End the kidney disease or save the turtles.

But inevitably, some people are recalcitrant. Maybe they don’t share the same idea of good. Maybe they think the idea is stupid and won’t work. Maybe they just can’t be bothered or have not heard the news about what is to be considered good behavior needed to implement someone else’s good intent.

So, the people with good intent quickly get frustrated. People are not shaping up and flying right. That means they must be stupid at best or evil at worst.

The expression of “This is good. I should do it” is transformed into “This is good. Everyone should do it.” The next – very short – step is to say “there ought to be a law.”

And often there is.

In mind-numbing volume, complexity and detail.

I downloaded SOR 2022-138. That’s the regulation (law) banning plastic straws, shopping bags and eating utensils. It’s 12 pages long and includes specification on which laboratories are to be accredited to determine whether a plastic straw is a plastic straw according to the terms of the regulation. Such things are complicated. There is an accompanying 25-page document of “Technical Guidelines” to help people conform to the regulations. For you and me, there is a two-page fact sheet.

For example, apparently it makes a difference whether the straw is flexible or not. Flexible straws “means a single-use plastic straw that has a corrugated section that allows the straw to bend and maintain its position at various angles.” Good to know. For reasons that are mysterious to me, flexible straws are treated more leniently than non-flexible straws. They can be used in health care institutions and private homes. You can buy them, but only if you know to ask. Retailers cannot display them or include them on product lists but can display a notice indicating that the straws are available upon request. Even the number of straws allowed in a package is specified. Again – that’s all for flexible straws. It’s much simpler for straight straws. Those are just banned.

There are about 450 Statutes (Acts) in force in Canada. They run to about 13,000 pages. These are backed up by about 3,000 regulations comprising about 30,000 pages.

That’s just for the federal government. Each province and municipality has its own collection of laws, by-laws, and regulations.

About ten years ago, I sent a letter to every Justice Minister in Canada (ten provinces and federal). I asked, “how many specific acts are prohibited by law or regulation in your jurisdiction?” About half ignored the request. The other half wrote back to say something along the lines of, “That’s an interesting question. I have no idea. If you can figure out a way to find out, let me know.”

A few minutes ago, I asked the Google AI program the same question. It replied, “It is not possible to provide a specific, single number for how many acts are against the law in Canada, as the law is vast and continuously updated.”

I’ll offer my own estimate of the number of things that are against the law – the number of things we are told we either cannot or must do.

A lot.

If there are more laws than can be counted, there are more laws than can be obeyed. What’s more, some are contradictory. We are all inevitably and intrinsically lawbreakers.

The most charitable explanation of this vast and uncountable collection of laws is that they represent a collection of good intentions.

Someone wanted to make sure something good happened (or something bad did not happen). Unsatisfied with persuasion, education, or moral example, they got a law passed.

But here is the thing.

This collection of legally enforceable good intentions is choking us. Too many good intentions have led to our sclerotic politics, stagnating economic growth, and a cantankerous feeling amongst a lot of people. We all have some instinct to tell others that “you are not the boss of me.” Those who can translate their good intentions into the coercive power of law are saying, “but yes I am.”

Good intentions and long articles

Yikes.

I’m now at 3,273 words.

When I started this, I had the good intention of keeping it short – something like a thousand words.

So much for good intentions. There oughta be a law limiting the length of Substack posts. Maybe my wife will get on this one since she thinks my articles are too long.

To head this off, I’m going to cut this article off right here. We’ll end with the charitable explanation for the volume of our laws and regulations – that they represent good intentions run amuck.

But put a pin in this thought.

Sometimes people just pretend to have good intentions in order to justify bad acts.

What happens then?

How do we discern the difference between genuine good intentions and bad intentions in disguise?

Does intent matter at all?

All questions for another day.