The ‘ awful idea of accountability ’ : inscribing people into the measurement of objects

“Goodhart’s Law’ ~ that every measure which becomes a target beco mes a bad measure — is inexorably, if ruefully, becoming recognized as one of the overriding laws of our times. Ruefully, for this law of the unintended consequence seem s so inescapable. But it does so, I suggest, because it is the inevitable corollary of that invention of modemity: accountability." Accountability is more than, indeed systematically different from, responsibility. The latter entails, literally, being liable to answer for duties defined a s yours. Responsibility implies stewardship, the proper conserving and use of t hose things charged to you, whether by an owner, a sovereign, or a metaphysical authority such as God, or the people. Responsibility entails the discharge of one’s charge: it demands a reckoning, and in that sense an accounting for how you have conserved an d used the things with