The phrase “First do no harm” is typically associated with the requirements of the Hippocratic Oath, the pledge by physicians to use their training for the good of the patient. It also can be stated as “the cure may be worse than the ill.” If you aren’t careful, good intentions may lead to bad results.

Let’s imagine that you encountered a man with a severe head wound that was bleeding profusely. Stopping the bleeding would be the urgent need. If you made a tourniquet and applied it to his neck, you may successfully keep the patient from bleeding to death. Success at stopping the flow of blood with a tourniquet, however, brings with it disastrous side effects. You may stem the flow of blood, but the patient will die or suffer brain damage. The overall objective is not to stop the bleeding, but rather to keep the patient alive and well. Good intentions yield bad results when they are combined with bad methods.

The world is filled with the rubble and rotting remains of good intentions. People see bad things and want to help. That is a good thing. Those helpers need to remember, however, the physician’s credo, first do no harm. The first instinct for many sincere people when they see a problem is to call on politicians to cure it, much the same as they call on physicians to heal the body. The politicians also see themselves as doctors for the ills of society. In any case, however, neither patients nor societies can talk or legislate themselves out of problems they behave themselves into.

In virtually all cases, nations mired in poverty are the victims of oppressive dictators or hyperactive bureaucrats. Throwing hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign aid at the issue is like giving aspirin for appendicitis. As long as the infection remains, the patient can’t get better, no matter how good the intentions or how much pain killer is applied. Foreign aid is but one of the many tools which politicians can employ for good intentions to yield bad results. Others are quotas, tariffs, trade restrictions, redistribution schemes, price controls and so on. In all cases, the side effects of those prescriptions are poison. The harm they produce is worse than the harm they alleviate.

A medical patient often just needs a change of habit rather than radical surgery to overcome a health problem in the long run. A doctor who overmedicates or performs unnecessary procedures is guilty of malpractice. The patient can be made much worse off than if he was just left alone. Unfortunately for the victims of political malpractice, there is no equivalent to a malpractice suit for doctors. If the patient is suffering from over-treatment or misdiagnosis, a long vacation from the overzealous doctors is the proper prescription. The best treatment is to refrain from doing anything.

All modern developed countries are presently suffering from overmedication. People are calling on the economic and political physicians to do something, but the problems themselves are the result of politicians doing too much already. We are suffering through the effects of a major economic collapse at this time. Boom times, such as the financial and real estate bubbles of the mid-2000’s, are the result of constant stimulus from monetary authorities. It is the first part of the monetary cycle, often mistakenly called the business cycle. It is not a coincidence that the cycle of regular economic meltdown and recovery started about the same time as fractional reserve banking and central banking schemes several hundred years ago. As long as the government and the banking system artificially stimulate the economy through counterfeit money, we will have a business cycle. There is a cause-effect relationship.

People with good intentions are demanding that government do something. The fact is that government has been doing something. That is the problem. The tools they use are those of a quack, a fraudulent economic physician. What we really need is for government to stop doing something. We need them to recognize their own incompetence and incapacity to help. They need to quit distorting markets and economic relationships. They need to get out of the way and let real people solve their own real problems.

Those people with good intentions are sincerely hurting those they wish to help with feel-good politics and false charity. It is like the tourniquet to the neck. The cure will be worse than the ill. If the patient doesn’t die, it won’t be for lack of trying.