Blame

 

The Name Game

Billy, Billy, bo-gil-ly, bo-na-na
Fanna, fo-fil-ly,
Fee fi mo-mil-ly, Billy!

The Name game is harmless fun.  Can we say the same about the Blame game?

When  you try to assess blame you are looking only at the past.  You look at a harmful act that has already occurred and try to assign responsibility for that harm.  But if those harmful actions were random, or you can not determine the cause of the harm, it may be tempting to assign blame to an individual.  But assigning blame to individuals who are not responsible for that action can’t prevent those harmful actions from occurring again.  If an investigation does correctly assess blame, and that blame is criminal, penalties can be  imposed to prevent that action from occurring again or make the individual who is responsible mitigate that harm.  Either the individuals who are responsible can be prevented from undertaking take that harmful action again, or those who might have considered such an action are deterred from that harmful action because the costs of that action outweigh the benefits.

But if those individuals are not responsible, punishing those individuals serves no purpose. It does nothing to  prevent the action from happening again.  The purpose of an investigation should be to prevent that action from occurring again.  If you assign blame incorrectly and punish the wrong individuals, those resources can not go into actually identifying the correct cause and possibly preventing such an action from ever occurring again.  Blaming the right person only has a benefit if it deters the harm attributable to that person in the future.  Blaming the wrong person can not deter harm in the future. Doing the right thing in response to a tragedy may be commendable, however doing the wrong thing is worse than doing nothing at all. Finding out correctly who, or what, is responsible is productive.  Simply assigning blame, particularly if that blame is assigned incorrectly, is not.