“Which are the arguments and how many are there? I must have an inbred urge toward symmetry. In canvassing for the principal ways of criticizing, assaulting, and ridiculing the three successive "progressive" thrusts of Marshall's story, I have come up with another triad: that is, with three principal reactive-reactionary theses, which I call the perversity thesis or thesis of the perverse effect, the futility thesis, and the jeopardy thesis. According to the perversity thesis, any purposive action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic order only serves to exacerbate the condition one wishes to remedy. The futility thesis holds that attempts at social transformation will be unavailing, that they will simply fail to “make a dent.””

— Albert O. Hirschman, book The Rhetoric of Reaction

Finally, the jeopardy thesis argues that the code of the proposed chafe or reform is too high as it endangers some previous, precious accomplishment.
The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy (1991), Ch. 1 : Two Hundred Years of Reactionary Rhetoric.

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Albert O. Hirschman6

German-American economist; member of the French Resistance 1915–2012

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“Such is my thesis, that the licensing of weapons is subversive of liberty and self-defeating in its pious purpose.”

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Context: Criminals are never materially handicapped by such rules; the only effect is to disarm the peaceful citizen and put him fully at the mercy of the lawless. Such rules look very pretty on paper; in practice they are as foolish and footless as the attempt of the mice to bell the cat. Such is my thesis, that the licensing of weapons is subversive of liberty and self-defeating in its pious purpose.

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Albert O. Hirschman6

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