All Posts Tagged With: "unintended consequences"

Unintended 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 | 7 comments | Continued

Black 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 Taleb [...]

2Mar2009 | Max Borders | 48 comments | Continued

Government 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 | Continued

Profit: 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 | 9 comments | Continued

Government-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 | 0 comments | Continued

Setting 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 the [...]

1May2002 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | Continued