https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/study-of-the-i... (page 12)
They also tried quitting more often (p=0.013)
“That’s why the worst possible reaction to a failed intervention is resignation. We may not know enough to improve our lot right now, but perhaps we could figure it out, if we tried.”
From reading the whole post, I gather that he’s truly not advocating some libertarian angle, he really is writing on the observation that policy is hard, and it’s nearly impossible to actually predict all the effects of societal intervention.
From my reading, I’m not sure even sure that he’s advocating caution or reluctance to social policy. Just goat sacrifices!
It is saying, acts must be done to reaffirm the commitment to the goal, the goat is a litmus test as to whether the goal is worth it. Not to abandon the goal, some things are worth the sacrifice, but to be aware of it.
His whole thing is "we don't understand the world remotely as well as we think we do, and we need to be trying more diverse things (and reliably measuring the outcomes) so that we can understand it better"
There was a post here about Mississippi miracle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_miracle recently which was due to one of the programs mentioned in the original post claiming it produced no improvements.
As in the original post is flat put lying to push an agenda. You can google for like 2mins on many of the points and see counter evidence.
It's a bit discouraging that there's no clear answer to that question even on this relatively well-studied intervention.
To be clear, I don't want to play the game of paper vs. paper. I simply think there is more depth of detail here than can be nicely summarised in a comment.
You can still try and revert back if it fails.
It is not a surprise that when people are given virtually no power to do anything, they have a hard time accomplishing very much.
Unintended consequences are inevitable. The danger isn't that they'll exist - it's that they'll be ignored entirely or ignored until they cannot be, that the desire for panacea produces a willful blindness to their existence or myopic fixation on their effects to the point where the value of the intended consequences are ignored.
Another relevant example here is vaping: an amazing win for harm reduction in existing smokers, but an attractive on-ramp to the addiction for some who would have avoided it otherwise. No panacea.
Yes, usually there are unintended consequences. The most important unintended consequence here was the anti-vaping sentiment engendered by the anti-smoking campaign choosing to conflate nicotine with the harms from inhaling combustion byproducts and tacitly embracing a cateforical, puritanical morality regarding substance use.
This is documented, but it is not clear how much this is due to packaging vs. Australia having the highest tobacco tax in the world.
> and to smoke more
{{Citation needed}}
This claim is directly contradicted by this Cochrane review. https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...
"Findings were mixed amongst the four studies assessing consumption, with some studies finding no difference and some studies finding evidence of a decrease."
This also ignores that the intervention was intended to reduce the number of people taking up smoking and to encourage current smokers to quit, which appears to have happened.
> In response to the policy, smokers switched from more expensive to cheaper cigarettes and reduced their overall tobacco expenditure and expenditure intensity. However, as smoking became less costly, smokers consumed more cigarettes.
And yes, even if that's true, it's separate from the question of how effective it was as stopping nonsmokers from starting.
I mean I think that's definitely true in some cases but it's a wide wide world out there, and the universe of things that count as "social programs" is impossibly vast, and some of them are quite well researched and simply work when rolled out. Congestion pricing in NYC for instance was the product of policy nerds and seems like it simply worked.
I completely agree there's unintended consequences and regulation can make things worse but not to the point of a universal anti government ethos.
E.g. if the tobacco industry is forced to choose between either hard bans on smoking, or a highly visible but largely symbolic measure like changing the packaging, they will probably choose the latter.
Want to cut a social program because you don't want to pay for it, but don't want to look overtly evil? First, shoot out the kneecaps in the name of efficiency. Second, notice that it can't walk anymore and cut it entirely. Optional third step: give a high-minded speech about how attempts to solve problems are doomed so we shouldn't even try, or shouldn't try without an infinite amount of meetings first.
This happens a lot.
This example provides an easily understood illustration of why so many social programs fail. Simply put, the people proposing and creating the programs have zero understanding of the people whose lives they are trying to influence and control. Like generals ensconced in their offices located not even on the same continent as the front line they study maps and tables and hear the advice of experts with even less direct experience than themselves and then dispatch orders that arrive too late and attempt to command a reality that does not exist. The reports they receive back show nothing has changed or the situation has got worse and yet they never adapt or see their own fault. Why should they? They've suffered no consequence.