The law of unintended consequences, often cited but rarely defined, states that the actions of people – and especially government – always have unintended or unintended effects. Economists and other social scientists have considered its power for centuries; For just as long, politics and public opinion largely ignored them. For example, a law with the best of intentions may be implemented to help a group, but if there are unintended consequences, they could end up getting worse. It is important to note that unintended consequences can sometimes be positive. Someone may have a child because they think parenting will be a rewarding experience. If your child grows up and invents a drug that saves thousands of lives, this consequence is positive, but unexpected. Pokemon Go, strange as it may seem, encouraged players to exercise more. The creation of No Man`s Lands during conflicts can preserve the habitats of local wildlife, as happened around the Berlin Wall. Sunken ships form coral reefs where wildlife thrives. However, when we talk about the law of unintended consequences, we are usually talking about negative consequences. [quote] We must strive to avoid the worst unintended consequences instead of controlling everything. [/quote] Most modern technologies have negative consequences that are both inevitable and unpredictable. For example, almost all environmental problems, from chemical pollution to global warming, are the unintended consequences of applying modern technologies.
Traffic jams, deaths and injuries from car accidents, air pollution and global warming are unintended consequences of the invention and large-scale introduction of the automobile. Nosocomial infections are the unexpected side effect of antibiotic resistance, and even population growth leading to environmental degradation is the side effect of various technological (i.e. agricultural and industrial) revolutions. [72] The often-cited but rarely defined Unintended Consequences Act states that the actions of people—and the government in particular—always have unintended or unintended effects. Economists and other social scientists have considered its power for centuries; for just as long, politicians and public opinion largely ignored it, by Rob Norton. The Hawthorne effect takes its name from one of the most famous experiments (or more precisely, a series of experiments) in industrial history. It marked a fundamental shift in the way we think about work and productivity. Previous studies, particularly the influential ideas of Frederick Taylor, had focused on the individual and ways to improve an individual`s performance. Hawthorne placed the individual in a social context, finding that employees` performance is influenced by both their environment and the people they work with, as well as their own innate abilities.
Refusal. Just as we look for corroborating evidence, we tend to deny the existence of conflicting information. We can deny the true effects of actions. Governments, in particular, tend to focus on the positive consequences of legislation and ignore the costs. Unintended negative consequences do not always lead to change. Open-plan offices are another example; They were originally developed to encourage collaboration and creativity. Even though research has shown that they have the opposite effect, many companies continue to opt for open offices. They seem like a good idea, and airy offices with ottomans and potted plants may look beautiful, but those who continue to build them are in obvious denial.
The law of unintended consequences is the basis of many criticisms of government programs. According to critics, unintended consequences can increase the cost of some programs to such an extent that they make programs unwise, even if they achieve their stated objectives. For example, the U.S. government introduced quotas for steel imports to protect steel companies and metalworkers from cheaper competition. Quotas help steel companies. But they also make less cheap steel available to U.S. automakers. As a result, automakers have to pay more for steel than their foreign competitors.
A policy that protects one industry from foreign competition makes it more difficult for another industry to compete with imports. It`s hard to drill holes in what works best for you. Therefore, it helps to do an exercise by asking yourself, “What`s the worst-case scenario here? What are all the ways this could go wrong? Write down the best-case scenario and worst-case scenario, and then ask yourself the probability of each case. Then take the probability you wrote for the worst-case scenario and quadruple it. Is it always worth it? In CIA jargon, the term “blowback” describes the unintended and undesirable consequences of covert operations, such as funding the Afghan mujahideen and destabilizing Afghanistan, that contribute to the rise of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. [35] [36] [37] In the first half of the nineteenth century, the famous French economic journalist Frédéric Bastiat often distinguished in his writings between the “seen” and the “invisible”. What has been seen are the obvious visible consequences of an action or policy. The invisible were the least obvious and often unforeseen consequences. In his famous essay “What is seen and what is not seen,” Bastiat wrote: Unintended consequences can be divided into three types: Or you already have that big purchase you`ve always dreamed of – maybe it`s a nice car or a big house or a nice lot.
And you fantasize, dream and save, stay home on Fridays and cheat your taxes for years until you can finally afford a down payment for your Big Ass Dream Thing. And then the day comes and you buy it – but what I really mean by “buy” is that you have these massive interest payments to a bank from now until the sun supernovates and it turns out that Big Ass Dream Thing is kind of a puzzle and you don`t use it as often as you thought. And your friends certainly don`t seem to care. But here you hand over about 2/3 of your salary each month to a big bank, which you are slowly convinced is the embodiment of all evil and injustice in the universe. “Core values” were Merton`s fourth source of unintended consequences. The Protestant ethic of hard work and asceticism, he writes, “paradoxically leads to its own decline through the accumulation of wealth and possessions.” His last case was a “self-destructive prediction.” Here he referred to cases in which the public prediction of social development turns out to be wrong precisely because the prediction changes the course of history.
