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Published on Sunday, November 6, 2016

The Law of Unintended Consequences

Two days from now, the United States will elect a new government. The U.S. may still be the world’s most powerful nation. In budget, weaponry, and personnel, America has roughly the military power of all the rest of the world combined. But I doubt if it is still the most influential nation. The recent electoral campaign has knocked it off that lofty pedestal, perhaps forever. But there's no doubt that the coming change in government will have profound implications for all other nations. As the voting date draws closer -- somehow, the saying about the light at the end of the tunnel being an onrushing freight train comes to mind -- political pundits seem to agree that the nation is deeply divided. They also seem agreed that, no matter who wins the White House, the country will remain deeply divided. Trump’s legions, in particular, will insist that the Washington establishment rigged the election if he loses; I doubt if Clinton supporters would be any more tolerant of a Trump presidency. Therein lies the problem.

Increasingly, voting patterns suggest that voters no longer vote for something -- a person, a platform, a philosophy -- but against something else. Trump built his whole campaign on opposition, inciting hostility against not just the Washington elite (personified as the Clintons), but against anyone who wasn’t an angry white male -- Mexicans, Muslims, African-Americans, and women. Similarly, the Brexit referendum was less about a vision for a future Britain than against unrestricted immigration from Europe. More accurately, perhaps, immigration via Europe from the Middle East and Asia. Canada’s election of Justin Trudeau's Liberals, last year, wasn't so much that Canadians wanted the Liberals in -- the Liberals collected almost the same percentage of votes as the previous Conservative government -- as that they wanted Stephen Harper out. Antipathy, unfortunately, tends to become an all-consuming passion that ignores the Law of Unintended Consequences. Yes, there is such a law. No, it's not something enacted by any government. It's a law in the sense of observed truth, like the law of gravity, or the laws of chemistry and physics -- discovered rather than invented, verified rather than legislated. American sociologist Robert Merton coined its name in a paper published in 1936. But the concept goes back farther. Adam Smith, the founder of modern economics, seems to have acknowledged it when he wrote that an individual, motivated only by selfishness, “is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.” In enriching oneself, Smith believed, the individual will enrich a whole society. The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics offers this definition: “Actions of people -- and especially of governments -- always have effects that are unanticipated or unintended.” Note that little word, “always.” It goes on: “Economists and other social scientists have heeded its power for centuries; for just as long, politicians and popular opinion have largely ignored it.”

The Law of Unintended Consequences is close cousin to Murphy's Law -- “anything that can go wrong, will” -- but Murphy assumes only negative effects. The Law of Unintended Consequences permits positive results, too. In general, the Law of Unintended Consequences predicts three outcomes: • • Benefits: Medical science has reaped huge benefits from NASA’s space race. • • Problems : Big Oil didn’t recognize, or admit, that fracking to free trapped oil could cause a rash of earthquakes -- or that fracking chemicals could poison groundwater. And Otto Daimler certainly never anticipated that his automobile would lead to suburbia, teenage pregnancies, and Walmart. • • Reversals: Also known, loosely, as “backfire” -- when an intended solution makes a problem worse. Samsung equips its latest generation of smartphones with a new improved battery that explodes, thus fostering distrust in its entire product line. I could argue that all new developments have all those effects, in varying levels. Antibiotics, for example, gave us huge benefits. But overuse -- both in humans and in animals -- led to the development of resistant superbugs, which could, theoretically, lead to a pandemic that would kill more people than antibiotics saved. Everything has both a good and a bad result. The bad results, according to studies of unintended consequences, typically result from ignorance (which is perhaps forgivable), stupidity (harder to deal with) or willful blindness (a refusal even to consider any facts other than one’s own obsessions). In the current U.S. election, I see abundant evidence of all of those factors. So, although I cannot predict the results of the election itself, I can safely predict an abundance of unexpected consequences.

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Author: Jim Taylor

Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: unintended consequences

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