All Posts Tagged With: "unintended consequences"
Making Whistle-Blowing Pay
The federal bureaucracies are hard at work churning out rules to implement the Dodd-Frank financial “reform” act. In May the Securities and Exchange Commission announced rules for its new whistleblower program, which rewards individuals who provide the agency with “high-quality tips that lead to successful enforcement acts.” The minimum amount of recovered funds that can [...]
21Sep2011 | Warren C. Gibson | 2 comments | ContinuedRichman, FEE Mentioned at Forbes.com
Art Carden, economics professor at Rhodes College and a Freeman contributor, quotes Sheldon Richman in his blog post at Forbes.com: The Foundation for Economic Education’s Sheldon Richman once said that advocating policies when you don’t understand their unintended consequences is “the intellectual equivalent of drunk driving.” You can read Richman’s full article here.
8Jul2011 | Tsvetelin M. Tsonevski | 0 comments | ContinuedSafe Food at Any Cost
We all want safe food. Question is, how do we get it? “There oughta be a law” seems to be the generally conceived approach, as evidenced by recent passage of the now-famous food safety bill. A tidy and altogether comforting solution: Simply slay the beast of dangerous food with the bludgeon of enlightened bureaucracy. But [...]
21Apr2011 | Paul Schwennesen | 1 comment | ContinuedNFL Overtime and Economic Policy
People who “think like economists” recognize that we have to trace the unintended consequences of both individual action and the policies of governments. Good intentions are not enough to ensure good outcomes.
4Mar2010 | Steven Horwitz | 6 comments | ContinuedUnintended Consequences
In two earlier Freeman essays, I explored the idea that “ought implies can” and the role of profits in providing knowledge about how best to serve others. Both insights rely on the foundational idea that intentions and results are not the same thing. Thinking we ought to do something does not mean it will have [...]
24Feb2010 | Steven Horwitz | 31 comments | ContinuedUnintended Consequences in Energy Policy
On the first day of every economics class I teach I start with The Ten Pillars of Economic Wisdom. This is a list I have put together of the ten most important principles in economics. Pillar number six is, “Every action has unintended consequences; you can never do only one thing.” U.S. energy policy illustrates [...]
2Mar2009 | David R. Henderson | 11 comments | ContinuedBlack Swans, Butterflies, and the Economy
One side blames the market. The other blames government. We get two causal stories going in opposite directions and a lot of animus. But both perhaps are missing something important in this titanic debate about our current financial crisis. It’s time we exposed a complicated truth about the economy of the 21st century. Nassim Nicholas [...]
2Mar2009 | Max Borders | 62 comments | ContinuedGovernment Schools and the Housing Mess
The Law of Unintended Consequences is a fascinating thing. You can never be entirely sure what the second-, third-, etc.- order effects of any action will be. This is especially so with government policy because centralized decision-making can do so much damage to so many people. That ought to humble the politicians and bureaucrats, but [...]
1Jun2008 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedProfit: Not Just a Motive
One of the more common complaints of critics of the market is that “the profit motive” works at cross-purposes with people and firms doing “the right thing.” For example, Michael Moore’s film Sicko was motivated by his desire to take the profit motive out of health care because, in his view, the ways people seek [...]
1Mar2008 | Steven Horwitz | 34 comments | ContinuedGovernment-Mandated Fuel-Efficiency Standards
Government mistakes have long lives. In response to the energy crisis of the 1970s, Congress passed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act. This legislation had two major objectives: 1) Reduce our overall consumption of petroleum and 2) reduce our dependence on foreign oil (meaning OPEC). The means to accomplish this was CAFE, Corporate Average Fuel [...]
1Sep2006 | Michael Heberling | 3 comments | ContinuedLaw and Good Intentions
Americans, not just classical-liberal ones, have an almost instinctual distrust of government. Our nation began in a revolt inspired partly by the “Intolerable Acts” of King George III and taxation without representation. The Declaration of Independence recited a lengthy list of grievances against the British government, summarized as “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, [...]
1Jun2005 | Andrew P. Morriss | 2 comments | ContinuedFeeding Bread to Pigs
Years ago a Detroit newspaper reported that in the countryside of the former Soviet Union there were billboards that read, “Comrades, it is unpatriotic to feed bread to your pigs.” As a guy who grew up in rural Nebraska, I found my curiosity aroused. I know something about the eating habits of pigs. They’ll eat [...]
27Jan2003 | Dale M. Haywood | 2 comments | ContinuedSetting Up Pigeons
The anti–free-market crowd is cackling over Enron. But who’s really entitled to say, “I told you so”? Is this the result of unbridled robber barons? Or the predictable outcome of the regulatory regime? There is only one sure consequence of pervasive regulation: a blunted wariness born of a false sense that government watchdogs are on [...]
1May2002 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedScapegoating Gun Owners in South Africa
A small neighborhood grocery store had just opened for business. Without warning five armed men entered and started shooting randomly. Agostino De Andrade was hit by a bullet, but he managed to draw his gun and fire back. Store manager Nelson De Freitas drew his .45 pistol. He said: “Three men were shooting my boss. [...]
1Feb2002 | James Peron | 0 comments | ContinuedThat’s Not What We Meant to Do: Reform and Its Unintended Consequences in Twentieth-Century America by Steven M. Gillon
The art of economics, as Henry Hazlitt might put it, is to uncover the unanticipated effects of an act. In “That’s Not What We Meant to Do,” historian Steven M. Gillon details the history of five federal acts. He states, “My goal is fairly modest: to tell a few stories of how unintended consequences occur, to speculate about their significance, and to inspire more research and discussion about this often mentioned but infrequently explored theme.”
1Jul2001 | Philip Murray | 0 comments | ContinuedIncentives and Disincentives: They Really Do Matter!
“If you encourage something, you get more of it. If you discourage something, you get less of it.” Whoever first said that deserves a medal for putting to words one of the most profoundly important elements of human nature. Human beings respond—often powerfully—to both incentives and disincentives. An understanding of this great truth is critical [...]
1Nov2000 | Lawrence W. Reed | 3 comments | ContinuedIt’s the Margin That Counts
Economists, like everyone, have opinions about how the world should be. And it would be disingenuous to claim that economists never let their opinions influence their conclusions and recommendations. But the power of economics is in fundamental concepts that prevent economists from letting their imaginations obscure reality. They may wish that scarcity didn’t exist, that [...]
1Jun2000 | Dwight R. Lee | 16 comments | Continued-
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