I wouldn’t say proudly, but I do say “easier to ask for forgiveness than permission” semi regularly. But it’s never in the context of like, regular interpersonal relationships. It’s work stuff, usually. I could write a report and beg my superiors for their input and budget for some initiative, or I can just go do the goddamn thing and get it done in a quarter of the time it would take to get the first leadership meeting on the calendar.
Strong Towns is another useful example. They make cool, good, human-centered urban developments. When the mayor or whoever shows up to check it out, they go “wow this is fantastic!” and the organizers THEN say yeah, these are the 70+ local zoning ordinances we broke to make this happen. Then a bunch of nonsense pro-suburbia rules get lifted to enable more cool stuff.
If it were only always used to bypass bureaucracy and do beneficial things.
Downside of that rule is that people or businesses can do a lot of damage if the “forgiveness” has a lower cost than the profits to be had by skipping the permission part.
Yeah there’s a lot of moral/ethical calculus that should be done when attempting to circumvent rules. Unfortunately, people who are looking to circumvent rules are not usually the people who would reliably do that calculus.
Kind of the same thing for political revolution. If you’re willing to go beyond the state apparatus to achieve your ends, are you also going to be dedicated to rule-following after the revolution is done? It’s a tough thing.
I wouldn’t say proudly, but I do say “easier to ask for forgiveness than permission” semi regularly. But it’s never in the context of like, regular interpersonal relationships. It’s work stuff, usually. I could write a report and beg my superiors for their input and budget for some initiative, or I can just go do the goddamn thing and get it done in a quarter of the time it would take to get the first leadership meeting on the calendar.
Strong Towns is another useful example. They make cool, good, human-centered urban developments. When the mayor or whoever shows up to check it out, they go “wow this is fantastic!” and the organizers THEN say yeah, these are the 70+ local zoning ordinances we broke to make this happen. Then a bunch of nonsense pro-suburbia rules get lifted to enable more cool stuff.
If it were only always used to bypass bureaucracy and do beneficial things.
Downside of that rule is that people or businesses can do a lot of damage if the “forgiveness” has a lower cost than the profits to be had by skipping the permission part.
Yeah there’s a lot of moral/ethical calculus that should be done when attempting to circumvent rules. Unfortunately, people who are looking to circumvent rules are not usually the people who would reliably do that calculus.
Kind of the same thing for political revolution. If you’re willing to go beyond the state apparatus to achieve your ends, are you also going to be dedicated to rule-following after the revolution is done? It’s a tough thing.