Left-Wing Authoritarianism Doesn't Damn Consequentialism

Forecasting subsequent-order consequences of any policy is challenging, and most people don't even try. Our brains prefer to substitute these tough deliberations with easy questions. For example, in a conversation about minimum wage, people rarely consider the elasticity of labour demand and the resulting employment impact. Instead, they ask themselves if they like the idea of low-skilled workers getting paid more. Most leftists would automatically answer "yes". 

When somebody is politically aligned in this way, fondness for government intervention usually drives any initial reaction to a proposed policy. Bryan Caplan argues we can reasonably call this an authoritarian instinct. He goes on to also implicate consequentialism. However, I often find his musings on moral philosophy and free will uncharacteristically naive. Briefly stated: he doesn't consider all the consequences nor the rational assumption that we cannot know them. In such cases relying on heuristics is perfectly justified by Bayesian reasoning. 

The most annoying argument against consequentialism is the man who turns up to the doctor with five healthy organs that could save the lives of five different people. We're supposed to take for granted that the consequences of killing 1 person and saving 5 people are self-evident. Therefore, this type of reasoning fails. But that's ridiculous. The consequences include all the people who would die because they no longer go to the doctor or trust healthcare.

Any policy justified by consequentialism that fails means that the consequential reasoning was faulty. In that case, as aforementioned, somebody ignorantly assumed it was possible to account for all of the side effects when they should have known better and relied on existing institutions and norms, like "do not give the government power unless it is demonstrably justified".