For many policymakers, the ends justify the means.
This problem (the ends) is so big or so important, we are told, that we have to do whatever it takes (the means) to fix it. Providing affordable access to high-quality healthcare means we have to take drastic steps to change the current system. We are told that the planet has just twelve years before we reach the point of no return, so we must spend trillions of dollars on alternative energy sources, for starters. Homelessness is such an important problem that we must take forceful measures to combat it. If that means spending $600,000 per housing unit, then so be it.
A corollary implication of this tendency is that if you want to implement some set of means, then all one needs to do is to manufacture a sufficiently large target outcome and somehow staple your intended instrument to this objective. There can be a true, masked policy goal and a false, declared one.
This possibility opens up a natural avenue of skepticism about large policy objectives:
· Is gun control about reducing violence or is it about disarming the mainstream, law-abiding population?
· Is the substitution of alternative energy for traditional sources driven by a desire to reduce fossil fuel emissions or is it an effort to expand the reach of the state?
· Does homelessness policy seek to address the suffering of the people who live on the streets or is it a framework for signaling our virtue and directing funds to non-profits and others whom we deem to be on the right side?
· Was the invasion of Iraq a good faith effort to remove an impediment to the stability of the Middle East or was the US just trying to keep the price of oil down?
· Is an open border a testimony to the sympathy of Western nations for the world’s downtrodden and the weak or is it an attempt to reshape domestic demographics to suit certain interests?
· Generally, are we implementing policies to obtain a significant policy goal or are we doing so to generate a sustainable political or economic advantage for our side over the other?
There are no simple answers if we look at these through a values lens.
However, we can determine effectiveness. We can see what impact our policy has on the problem we identify. We can determine the true motivation by looking at what its effects are and inferring intent. This is especially true when we maintain (or expand) the policy in the face of widespread failure to obtain its stated goals.
For example, the homelessness problem in California is a persistent failure. It has gotten worse despite declines in poverty. Here’s Mike Shellenberger:
‘The evidence is overwhelming that the majority of people on the street are there because of untreated mental illness or addiction, which leads people to use all their money to support their drug habit and be high, rather than work.
‘People who can’t afford the rent but are able to work and aren’t in the grip of addiction or untreated mental illness find a cheaper place to live, move somewhere cheaper, or live with family and friends.
‘It’s true there aren’t enough shelter beds, case workers, group homes, and psychiatric hospitals to care for the homeless.
‘But a big part of the reason for that is that advocates for the homeless have, for 40 years, demanded that funding for dealing with the homeless go into giving people private studio apartments rather than building sufficient shelter beds.
‘They call this “Housing First,” and its record is awful. Few stay in housing, and many die because it fails to treat the cause of the problem, addiction, and untreated mental illness, rather than the symptoms.’
Organizations like the ACLU advocate successfully against hospitalization or institutionalization. Meanwhile, the number of drug deaths quadrupled in 2023 year-over-year.
The key problem with the policy?
‘Homelessness is not a fundamental problem of housing. It’s a problem of enabling addiction and untreated mental illness, both of which lead people to give up on work, lie, steal, cheat their families and friends, and live on the street, where they turn to petty crime to sustain their drug habits.
‘This seems cruel to many people, which is why homelessness has gotten worse. In other words, the reason homelessness has gotten worse is because we’ve enabled it, and subsidized it, rather than funded treatment and recovery. Nobody has subsidized homelessness more than California, Washington, and Oregon. And it’s been in those states that homelessness has worsened the most.’
Between 2010 and 2020, homelessness in California increased 31 percent versus an 18 percent decline in the rest of the country.
It’s cruel to be kind. (As an aside, it may be true that the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest had a devastating impact on policymakers that lingers long after its theatrical release.)
Shellenberger skewers the widespread assumption that those on the streets with their addiction and mental health problems are victims of an evil system. Staple on a libertarian vibe and, before you can say Don’t Tread on Me, there are those who argue that people should have the right to do what they want, even if it means killing themselves in public. They were the victims of the man, after all.
The people who build housing and the leaders of the homelessness industrial complex of non-profits and others to whom the state outsources provision of services are the principal economic beneficiaries.
Everyone else gets to chirp sympathetically for the downtrodden, as if such emoting has value. If we actually wanted to solve the problem, we would address the cause without spending so much onanistic energy in a circle of mutual morality washing. The poor, the homeless, the underclass? Their misery is the currency in a callous market for power between competing bands of the elite.
This leads to a broader question. How do we think about optimizing policy? We’ve spoken about policy reform here and here. What is a framework that we can use to think about policy?
An article in the Regulatory Review talks about just such a mental construct.
Cary Coglianese, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, talks about two dimensions: the “means-end” and the “macro-micro.”
The means-end dimension describes policy spectrum based on the relative emphasis it places on the actions of regulated entities or the outcome we want to obtain. Think of the means as the how and the end as the what. Policy is a linear combination of how and what. The weights differ, though.
The macro-micro spectrum is a separate policy spectrum. At one end, the regulation focuses on the problem. At the other end, the regulation focuses on the contributor. We distinguish policy by the degree to which it focuses on the person being regulated.
Combining these two lines, give us a two-dimensional representation of policy space with four polar combinations.
Prescriptive regulations (means-micro) are appropriate when the problem or risk is common across those being regulated and the problem is stable. It directs behavior at the level of the target “regulatee,” i.e., the subjects of the regulation. A prescriptive regulation tells us what to do. You must wear a seatbelt when you drive. Everyone in a car faces the same risk of injury in an accident, something that has changed little since the introduction of the automobile. If everyone wears a seatbelt, then the risk of injury falls significantly.
Performance-based regulations are ends-micro rules. We tell the regulatee what outcome we want. Imagine a factory that emits noxious gases. The regulation is specific to them as contributors but it is not prescriptive. Instead, the regulator declares that the objective is a lower threshold of emissions, but it is up to the factory managers (the contributor) to decide how they get there. This approach requires monitoring to ensure that the outcome is met. Without measurement, the regulatee could argue that they have complied when they have not met the standard.
Management-based regulations are means-macro rules. Coglianese gives the example of a food processing plant. The desired outcome is a reduction in food safety risks. The problem is industry-wide weakness in risk management. The regulatory approach requires the regulatee to put into place internal procedures for measuring and approaching food safety risk. The regulator specifies the how (generally, not prescriptively), but the emphasis is on the problem, not the contributor.
Finally, ends-macros rules or what Coglianese calls “general duty clauses” or we might think of as “Big Boy clauses.” If the actions of the regulatee lead to an undesired outcome, then the regulatee is on the hook for penalties and lawsuits.
Returning to our homelessness example, cycling through the four options, we could have:
· Means-Micro: requiring homeless individuals (micro) to undergo mandatory mental healthcare and addiction treatments (means)
· Ends-Micro: giving individuals (micro) on the street the flexibility to choose their own rehabilitation path adjusted by their success in getting off the street (ends)
· Means-Macro: directing the homeless to the ultimate causes of their addiction and mental health problems (macro) and steering them in the direction of recovery with strong suggestions as to the individual’s course of action (means)
· Ends-Macro: letting people live on the street but arresting them for any violation of the law, leading to imprisonment or forced treatment
Just as we can use this framework for designing new policy, imposing rigor on our thinking, we can apply it to the evaluation of existing policy.
One characteristic of a bureaucracy may be a history of not evaluating their performance against the objectives they claimed to want to obtain. The promoters of regulation may not have quantified or qualified what success would look like at the beginning of the project. Regulatory reform can include periodic assessments of efficacy that pay attention to the input of the community of regulatees. Ideally, regulatory reform adheres to a conscious process for rule design.
Wouldn’t that be something?