Inevitable unforeseen consequences

The first incarnation of this site was

DAYTIME - day job or destiny? 

which died of loneliness it seems. 

As time goes on however the dysfunctional nature of bureaucracies, whether governmental or mercantile, becomes ever more obvious - to those of us who care to stop denying the truth anyway.

Karl Popper's reasoning about forms of government led him to see the fundamental  problem with non democratic social structures is that they cannot deal fairly and effectively with the unforeseen negative consequences of laws or policies. Furthermore, the underlying reason for this is that nobody knows the future. 

I have seen a honcho shake her head at this idea - that nobody knows the future, but I'm sure that being female had nothing to do with it. I think many of our leaders and corporate superstars will want to assert that 'we *can* make reasonable predictions!' and this is true, after all that is what they are highly paid for. Popper's insight though is that, no matter how good the policy, there will always be unforeseen consequences because in any particular situation there will always be more things that can happen then we want to occur, and very often there will be more things that can happen, sooner or later, than we can possibly know about before the event. And as KP pointed out there is as much chance of an unforeseen outcome being negative in effect for some one or more people as of being positive. 

'So what?' you ask, and the answer is simple: any unexpected positive outcome is a bonus proudly adopted by the authors of the policy if ever they hear about it, but negative outcomes are not so easily acknowledged by those in charge. This is true not just for those at the top of a command structure but usually applies right down the ladder also because nobody likes to give their boss bad news. Even in the most benign of organisations something not going right with the system means extra work for whoever 'touched it last'.