Best Examples of the Law of Unintended Consequences

11/28/2014
(4) What are the best examples of the law of unintended consequences in action? - Quora
QUESTION TOPICS
Law of Unintended
Consequences
What are the best examples of the law of

unintended consequences in action?
These could be from any arena -- politics, business, economics, science,
startups, etc. -- but should be actual, real-life examples, not hypotheticals.
See Unintended consequences if this is not a familiar concept already.
Behavioral
Economics
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My favorite example of the law of unintended consequences is Hoy No

Circula , the traffic rationing policy of Mexico City.
Mexico City is notorious for its traffic and the large amount of air pollution that
vehicles cause.
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What are the best historical examples of

"unintended consequences" that were
polar opposite to the intended
consequence?
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In order to stop this problem, the government designated certain days as "No
drivedays", meaning, if your car's plate number ended with certain digits,
you could not drive on specific days.
For example,
On Mondays, Number plates ending with 5 or 6 weren't allowed on roads.
On Tuesdays, 7 or 8. Wednesdays, 3 or 4, Thursdays 1 or 2, and Fridays 9 or 0.
It seemed like a neat idea, and although the move was supposed to reduce the
number of vehicles on roads and thereby reduce air pollution, theexact
oppositehappened.
The reason for that is mentioned in the book Think Like a Freak, by the
Freakonomics authors.
People in Mexico City bought cars, mostly very old second hand ones, making
sure that the number plates had different last digits from the ones they already
owned!
So now the number of cars that people owned virtually doubled.
When it was the "No drive day" for one car, people would simply use the other
car.
And because there were more old cars on road, pollution increased, not
decreased.
Hence the solution to the problem exacerbated the problem itself.
What are interesting examples of

negative unintended consequences of
laws that should make the world
better/safer (example... (continue)
What are some examples of the law of
unintended consequences in the design
and use of socio-technical systems?
Who coined the term 'law of unintended
consequences'?
Are there techniques to help identify
what the unintended consequences of
an action might be?
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Updated 23 Jul.
Upvote 3.1k
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Daniel Morgan, Business Valuator, Entrepreneu... (more)

4.5k upvotes by Charles Faraone, Randy Lynn, Robert Rapplean, (more)
One particularly famous example is the Cobra effect . From Wikipedia:

The term cobra effect stems from an anecdote set at the time of British rule
of colonial India. The British government was concerned about the number
of venomous cobra snakes in Delhi. The government therefore offered a
bounty for every dead cobra. Initially this was a successful strategy as large
http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-examples-of-the-law-of-unintended-consequences-in-action
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numbers of snakes were killed for the reward. Eventually, however,
enterprising persons began to breed cobras for the income. When the
government became aware of this, the reward program was scrapped,
causing the cobra breeders to set the now-worthless snakes free. As a result,
the wild cobra population further increased. The apparent solution for the
problem made the situation even worse.
Written 23 Jan.
Upvote 4.5k
Aaron Ellis, Screenwriter

743 upvotes by Will Wister, Bill McDonald, Colin Goltra, (more)
A twofold example of Invasion Biology.

In 1936, the giant African snail was introduced to Hawaii. These snails have
pretty shells, so they make for nice garden decorations. But within ten years,
the giant African snail became a major pest throughout the Hawaiian Islands.
To combat the damage caused by the giant African snail, in 1955 the Hawaii
State Department of Agriculture decided to introduce the rosy wolfsnail, a
carnivorous snail native to the Southern United States,
What they didn't fully realize is that wolfsnails are not just predators, but they
are voracious eaters and they're very fast (for snails, anyway). They also have a
high reproductive rate. The wolfsnail hunted the giant African snail, but they
also viciously hunted all of the local species, including the Oahu tree snail. In
less than a year, the wolf snail hunted many of the indigenous Hawaiian tree
snails to extinction.
To date, the Oahu tree snails remain an endangered species. The rosy
wolfsnails still remain a problem.
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/cerc...
Updated 12 Feb.
Upvote 743
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Luke Bornheimer, Product Designer, Nickel (nick... (more)

1.3k upvotes by Colin Jensen, Abhinav Maurya, Will Wister, (more)
In 2008, Airbus made the new A380 quieter than any previouslymanufacturered plane in an effort to improve passenger experience.
Unfortunately, Airbus didn't realize until after they shipped the aircraft that
the quieter cabin resulted in more unpleasant sound for passengers, in the
form of bathroom noise, talking and other audible sounds (e.g. coughing,
sneezing, crying). The result was a worse experience for both passengers and
pilots, and caused Airbus to recall some of the fleet and reengineer the A380
once more to add more sound back to the cabin.
More info in the following articles and posts:
gizmodo.com/5106074/airbus-a380-interior-too-quiet-eliminatesprecious-privacy
cbsnews.com/storysynopsis.rbml?pageType=moneywatch
&catid=33540478&feed_id=76&videofeed=43
seattlepi.com/business/article/The-Insider-Airbus-A380-cabin-may-betoo-quiet-1294016.php
wired.com/autopia/2008/12/a380-is-so-quie/
Written 13 Sep, 2012.
Upvote 1.3k
Jeremy Arnold, A living unintended consequence.

107 upvotes by Ian McCullough, Boris Krstic, Samuel Yusim, (more)
Howaboutthegreatestbitofironyinmodernhistory?
Afailedentrepreneursawagoldenopportunity.Areluctant
institutionneededhishelp.Theresultruinedbothofthem,and
changedtheworldforever.
In the 1430's, the Catholic Church had a growing problem. One of its primary
methods of fundraising was the sale of indulgences. The trouble was that these
physical certificates were slow to produce by hand. Given that every able scribe
in Europe was already fully employed, they were running out of options.
In 1439, a plucky little fellow named Johannes was having his own troubles.
His most recent endeavour had been creating "special" mirrors to sell to
pilgrims. He claimed they mystically reflected "holy light" from religious relics.
He expected to sell out easily.
It so happened that a large collection of relics was due to show in Aachen that
year. Johannes was, as it were, cashing in on a fad. Sadly, due to a confluence
of circumstances, the pilgrimage never happened and his mirrors didn't sell.
This created a problem. Johannes had funded the mirrors with someone else's
money. Without revenues, he had no means of repayment. That said, he was a
crafty sort, and he soon found a way out. He told his investors that, though he
was penniless, he had a valuable "secret" he could share instead. There was a
sure windfall to be made, and he had the inside track.
Johannes, it seems, had realized the church's plight. And it just so happens that
he had been exposed to various technologies that he realized could be tied
together to solve their problem -- and, in doing so, make him a very rich man.
So with the help of a few rounds of investment, his little printing start-up got
rolling. By no later than 1454, he was helping the Church to produce
indulgences by the boatload. Given that their average cost was about 1/400th
of a hand-drawn alternative, they sold very, very well. Some single prints were
of as many as 200,000 copies.
Johannes had nobler ambitions, too. In 1455, he began putting the finishing
touches on his magnum opus: the 42-line Gutenberg Bible. Some 180 copies in
all. He knew they were masterpieces unlike the world had ever seen. With just
a handful left to complete, he would soon sell them for a king's ransom and be
a debt-free man.
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Then, drama suddenly ensued. Before he could sell the Bibles, his primary
investor called in his loan, claiming that his funds had been misspent and that
interest payments had gone unmade. Johannes was taken to court to pay back
a little over 2,000 guilders. Given that the average annual salary of his day was
10 guilders, he was ruined.
The investor won the suit and walked away with a promise for partial
reimbursement, along with complete ownership of the physical printing-press
and the mostly-completed Bibles. He then hired Johannes' old apprentice and
set up the world's first publishing-house. The Bibles, unsurprisingly, sold
quickly and for high prices. Johannes, meanwhile, faded to relative obscurity
(in his own day).
One side-effect of the lawsuit was that Johannes' printing-press design went
public. Unable to protect it, copy-cats began popping up all over Europe. There
was a huge pent-up demand for printed goods: books, flyers, contracts -- and,
of course, more indulgences. Orders couldn't be filled fast enough.
Fast forward to 1517. In the German town of Manz, where Gutenberg had
founded that first print-shop, young Albert of Brandenburg had just gotten
himself set up as a Cardinal. This was good for his career, but extremely
expensive. To repay the fees associated with buying the position, he had to
make a special deal with the Pope.
The pontiff of his day, Leo X, was heavily focused on the construction of St.
Peter's Basilica in Rome. It was a massive, costly enterprise. So Leo agreed to
let Albert sell heavy amounts of indulgences within his diocese, so long as half
the money raised found its way back to support the building project.
Albert was delighted. He immediately procured the assistance of professional
middle-man John Tetzel to get them selling hot-and-heavy. It worked. The
sales campaign that Tetzel came up with was so successful that Germans came
in droves from nearby areas (where indulgences weren't allowed for sale) to
buy them.
Many of these buyers were from Wittenberg, the home of a young monk named
Martin Luther. He noticed the proliferation of these paper pardons, and it
angered him greatly. His response was to draft a detailed argument against
them, in the form of 95 theses.
Whether Luther intended it or not, copies of his grievances were reprinted in
massive quantities and spread across Germany like wildfire (using Gutenberg's
handy printing-press). The events that followed triggered the Reformation and
the overall transformation of European society in general. The Catholic Church
gradually lost its influence, while the rise of nationalism, individualism, and
denominationalism had begun.
So there you have it: an entrepreneur just wanted to find a way to get rich,
while the Church just wanted to accelerate its fundraising. The result left one
bankrupt and the other broken, and the world has never been the same since.
As Paul Harvey would say, "and now you know the rest of the story."
Updated 11h ago.
Upvote 107
Mark Binfield, BS in Economics

593 upvotes by Len Gould, Paul Denlinger, Charles Faraone, (more)
The employer-based US health care market is a perfect example.

Much of the pathological health care system operating today in the US can be
traced back to two government decisions. The first was the decision to impose
wage and price controls during World War II. This had the unintentional effect
of causing employers to begin offering health care as an alternative form of
compensation to attract top workers. The second was a 1951 decision by the
IRS to treat health insurance as a deductible business cost. This had the
unintended consequence of making it cheaper (due to the tax deduction) to
provide even routine medical care through an insurance model rather than a
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fee-for-service model.
Insurance, as a payment system, only makes sense for large unexpected costs.
After 1951 the entire health care system was slowly taken over by insurance, to
the point where we think of not having health insurance as being almost
equivalent to not having access to medical care.
As a result we live with all kinds of inefficiencies and unfairness. Pricing is
utterly opaque. Choices are limited. Incentives are distorted. The system is
bloated with administrators whose only job is to decide who pays for what
services (a moot question in either a fee-for-service or a single-payer model.)
And all this from what seemed like sensible enough answers sixty years ago to
wartime inflation and an arcane question of tax policy.
ThankstoMurrayGodfreyforprovidingcorrectionsandadditionalcontext
inthecommentssection,whichI'veincorporatedabove.
Updated 20 Nov, 2013.
Upvote 593
Jann Hoke, Writer. Movie/Book critic. Emp... (more)

1k upvotes by Pranav D Agrawal, Jaime Fuhrman, Charles Faraone, (more)
Unintended consequence: Screwing up the native fish population in Flathead

Lake.
Method: Trying to feed them.
This is gorgeous Flathead Lake, about 100 miles from Missoula, Montana. It is
one of the cleanest, most pristine lakes in the world. Bigger than Lake Tahoe,
Flathead Lake is the largest natural freshwater lake west of the Mississippi
River (in the lower 48.)
Flathead Lake is famous for its clear water. You know all those cool shots on
Tumblr of really clear water? Many of those were taken at Flathead Lake:
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Since it's so gorgeous, as well as home to lots of very cool species of fish, the
lake is a huge attraction for fishermen and brings in beaucoup tourist bucks for
the state.
In 1905, TPTB (The Powers That Be ) thought it would be a great idea to
introduce Lake Trout to Flathead Lake.
For decades the Lake Trout existed as a minority fish species alongside the
native Westslope Cutthroat Trout:
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and the (now endangered) Bull Trout:
Things went along swimmingly in Flathead Lake for most of the 20th century.
Then, about 30 years ago, TPTB had another good idea. They thought that fat
fish would equal happy fish, so they introduced Possum Shrimp into Flathead
Lake as an additional food source for all those trout.
The problem was that Possum Shrimp were sort of ambitious. They didn't
want to be just a trout treat. They wanted to eat, too. Their food of choice was
Water Fleas.
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And they didn't eat just a handful here and a handful there, those Possum
Shrimp devoured Water Fleas to the point that other smaller organisms took
over the fleas' spot in the ecosystem. This threw everything off.
It turned out that the native Westslope Trout and the Bull Trout really didn't
care too much for Possum Shrimp, but the non-native Lake Trout just adored
them. Soon the foreigners (the Possum Shrimp and the Lake Trout) were
taking over, crowding out the native trout, which are now struggling to survive.
And what's more, the Lake Trout have now taken to traveling up to the streams
in the Glacier Park area, which is worrisome for the ecosystems up there.
The experts are attempting to extricate Flathead Lake from the decline of its
native fish population, but efforts thus far have been expensive and largely
futile.
Certainly this is a sad example of the law of unintended consequences.
(I already knew this story from dating a graduate assistant involved in studying
Flathead Lake, but my memory was jogged by looking through the Wikipedia
article on the lake and by reading a story in Popular Mechanics about current
eradication efforts directed toward the Brown Trout and the Possum Shrimp.
All photos from the Internet.)
Updated 27 Jan.
Upvote 1k
Brian O'Conaill, journeyman lawyer/coder/MIT ad... (more)

271 upvotes by Mallika Mathur, Will Wister, Paul Denlinger, (more)
TheTreatyofVersailles
In 1919 following the end of WWI, elements among the victorious powers
wanted to ensure Germany was as they saw it suitably punished for
instigating the devastating conflict.
Among the provisions of the Treaty was a guilt clause whereby Germany had
to acknowledge fault for starting the war; a limitation of the German army to
no more than 100,000 men; financial reparations and the surrender of
significant parts of its territory (the Rhineland, the Saar, the Sudetenland,
Danzig among them). The overall intent was a punishment that would ensure
Germany would be unable to mount a military threat for the foreseeable future.
The Germans delegation thought the treaty was manifestly unfair, but that they
had no choice other than to sign. There was significant dissatisfaction and
lingering resentment about it from the beginning. There spread in Germany a
stab-in-the-back myth that the German army hadnt lost the war militarily but
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rather had been betrayed on the home front, especially by the overthrow of the
monarchy.
The economy was in ruins and failed to recover for over a decade. Harnessing
resentment of the treaty and the conditions it imposed upon the nation, a
particularly indignant young Corporal named Adolf Hitler manipulated and
lucked his way into power in 1933.
Over the next half decade Hitler incrementally, with growing public support,
ignored/eroded the terms of the treaty. Even many who had been initially
skeptical of him, and indeed remained so throughout, felt a grudging
admiration for the manner in which he restored German dignity and redressed
the shame of Versailles as they saw it. The stab-in-the-back myth helped
undermine support for democratic political process and assuaged the process
toward ultimate dictatorship.
With every breach of the treaty (up to the invasion of Poland in 1939) Hitler
became further entrenched in his initially precarious position ultimately
leading to the total war that was World War II, and of course the Holocaust.
So a treaty intended to neuter Germany militarily and bring about a prevailing
peace in Europe, played a large part in precipitating the most devastating
conflict the world has ever seen, as well as one of the most unimaginable evils
ever promulgated by humanity.
As far as unintended consequences go, I would have to say that Versailles
should rank pretty high on the list
Written 9 Aug, 2013.
Upvote 271
Nate Anderson, Cofounder, CEO of ClaritySpring

819 upvotes by Tatiana Estvez, Carl Anthony Jr, Barry Hampe, (more)
The D.C. local government is a constant source of unintended consequences.

Here is a great one-- recently D.C. banned the sale of single beers for the
following rationale:
More often than not, single sales of alcohol are bought so they can be
consumed as soon as you walk out the door turning alleys and backyards
into public restrooms and leaving empty bottles strewn through our
neighborhoods."
When the law passed liquor stores immediately responded with this:
The twopack.
Priced more competitively than a single, so vagrants can get twice as drunk -for less!
Updated 27 Jul.
Upvote 819
Imal Agazadeh
607 upvotes by Joan Hoffman, Stephen McInerney, Jann Hoke, (more)
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Narrow,tiny,thinandsmallhousesinAmsterdam.
In Amsterdam (the dutch capital) there are plenty of narrow and thin houses,
especially in the 'old city'. This is due to a law from the 1500s. The dutch
government wanted to increase the tax from rich people, so they started to
collect tax based on the width of the houses.
Theresult?
The results were fairly predictable: Amsterdam's inhabitants began to build
houses, which had a narrow facade to the street, but instead went in depth.
Funfact:Still today, some of the stairs in these small houses are so narrow,
that the furnitures must be flown in through the windows with a winch on the
facade.
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Written 1 Sep.
Upvote 607
Adrian Stone, AngelCube | Investor - From Fo... (more)

382 upvotes by Greg Self, Kelly Erickson, Bruce Hubbell, (more)
There is a story that Johnnie Walker Black Label was the #1 selling scotch
whisky in Japan. The marketing brains decided that lowering the price would
increase volume.
Instead, sales plummeted.
It seems that, in Japan, lists are produced of the Top 10 in each category. The
category is sorted by price. Whereas Johnny Walker used sit in the #1 spot on
that list it had fallen down to a lower price-point on the list.
So, why did sales fall instead of increase?
Because the list serves to define social status of the customers: if you buy
somebody the #1 item on one of these lists it promotes your status as well as
theirs ("Look how important I think you are because I am giving you the #1
scotch on the list. Please be nice to me in return!").
Johnny Walker quickly raised prices and their scotch reverted to the top of the
list, as did sales.
Updated 23 Jul. Suggestions Pending
Upvote 382
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Andy Micone, Futures adviser for TechCast G... (more)

201 upvotes by Joan Hoffman, Erik Halberstadt, Melissa Wood, (more)
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My favorite is the story of when old fashioned, energy inefficient traffic signals
that were hung in the middle of intersections in the Northeast were replaced
with energy efficient LED lights, it caused a rash of traffic accidents at the
beginning of winter, but not for the reason you would think. It seems the old,
energy inefficient incandescent bulbs, since they had the secondary effect of
giving off infrared light (heat), were defrosting the traffic signals during the
winter months. When winter hit, the LED lights, that only give off light in the
visible spectrum, became so frosted over that the weight of the frost and ice
caused them to come crashing to the ground in the middle of the intersection.
Written 26 Apr.
Upvote 201
Arjun Subramaniam
2.7k upvotes by Neha Dar, Kelly Huang, George Bradbury, (more)
ThestoryofIgnazSemmelweismightbethegreatestexampleofthe
lawofunintendedconsequencesinaction.
Today, childbirth is a relatively routine process, with the current rate of

maternal death in developed nations being a mere nine women out of 100,000.
But times weren't always so good. In the 1840s, childbirth was extremely risky,
due to a condition now known as puerperalfever.Healthy women would
arrive at the hospital, contract the raging fever, and die within days. This
condition flummoxed even Europe's best hospitals at the time, including
perhaps the finest hospital of the time, ViennaGeneralHospital.
The statistics at the time were terrifying. From 1841-1846, 20,000 babies were
delivered at Vienna General, with nearly 2,000 of the mothers dying. The
situation worsened in 1847, with 1inevery6womendying of puerperal fever.
Then a young man joined Vienna General. His name? - IgnazSemmelweis.
His name might not be familiar to you now, but he probably saved billions of
lives with a quick, clever change to the system.
Semmelweis was deeply distraught at all the deaths from this strange disease,
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and conducted an investigation in the hospital. From his early research, he
gathered that while different doctors provided a variety of explanations for the
condition, from foul air in the delivery wards to the presence of male doctors,
none of them really knew what was going on.
So Semmelweis turned from doctor to data detective. He was attempting to
solve this troubling puzzle: When women delivered babies at home or with a
midwife, they were sixtytimesless likely to contract puerperal fever than with
a trained doctor or medical professional. After analyzing data from his own
hospital, Vienna General, which had two separate wards for delivery, one
staffed with midwives and female trainees, and another with male doctors, he
found that average death rate in the doctors' ward was more than twice as high
as that in the other ward.
Having discredited all the other ridiculous theories floating in the air,
Semmelweis proceeded to establish some facts.
Even the poorest women who delivered their babies and then came to the
hospital did not contract the disease.
Women who were dilated for 24 hours almost certainly contracted the
disease, as opposed to those who were dilated for a shorter time.
The disease could not have been contagious, because the doctors did not
catch it from the mother or the newborn.
But as much credit should go to Semmelweis for his remarkable analysis, his
realization came by accident. An older professor and a friend of Semmelweis
suddenly died by a freak accident. As he was leading a student through an
autopsy, the student's knife slipped and cut the professor on the finger.
The professor suffered a series of grave maladies before dying, which
Semmelweis noted, were almost identical to those inflicted on mothers with
puerperal fever. There was no ambiguity about the professor's cause of death.
It was caused by "cadaverous particles introduced into his vascular system."
The cat was finally out of the box. In recent years, first-rate hospitals like
Vienna General practiced autopsies as a method of studying anatomy. What
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better way to study illness than to sift through the diseased, malfunctioning
organs in question? At Vienna General, every single deceased patient was taken
to the autopsy room for examination.
But the doctors and medical students who came from the autopsy room went
directly to the maternity ward with at best, a quick washing of their hands. The
germs from the autopsy carried themselves all the way to the maternity ward,
where the constant prodding and poking of the uterus by the doctors allowed
them to fester and cause puerperal fever.
Semmelweis immediately ordered all doctors and medical students to disinfect
their hands in a chlorinated wash after autopsies, to make sure that all germs
were rid of. The rate of maternal death dropped to a whisper above one
percent, saving millions, perhaps billions of lives in the process.
But where does the law of unintended consequences come into all of this? It's a
piece of sheer irony that doctors,inthepursuitofmedicalknowledge
thatcouldsavethousandsoflives,conductedautopsyafterautopsy,
which,inturn,ledtothelossofthousandsoflives.
[1] SuperFreakonomics
( SuperFreakonomics:Chapter4).
N.B.Someofthedataistakenfromtheabovesource,butthetextisoriginal.
Updated 15 Sep.
Upvote 2.7k
Tim Scott, Software Developer, Entrepreneur

72 upvotes by J.T. Kim, Mark Binfield, Miguel Valdespino, (more)
Foreignaid.
The past half century of foreign aid (from Western "rich" countries to "poor"
countries around the world) has produced mostly unintended consequences.
Some specific ones are:
1.Suppressnormaldevelopmentofsustainablelocaleconomies. A
temporary flow of aid acts like dumping or predatory pricing and destroys
nascent local businesses and keeps local populations economically anemic and
dependent on sporadic aid.
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2.Propuptyrantsandthwartprogresstowardsdemocracyand
liberty. It's not just that dictators and warlords skim huge amounts off the
top, which they do. Tyrants actively suppress local economic development in
order to preserve people's dependence on their dispensing aid. For example,
Robert Mugabe has been able to guarantee his own re-election by using food
aid to effectively buy votes.
3.Createanaidestablishmentwithperverseincentives.Armies of
people work for huge NGOs, which would have to shrink and die if the problem
gets solved. All organizations resist dying. According to a World Bank study,
sixty percent of aid money never leaves the rich donor country.
4.Divertattentionfromessentialstructuralreforms. Political
liberalization, property rights, rule of law, and enforcement of private contracts
together comprise a well-known formula that ensures economic development
leading to independence. Everything about modern aid system drains focus
from these essential structural reforms.
Written 20 Jul.
Upvote 72
Brian Grimmer, Why not

85 upvotes by Marie Stein, Adisa Nicholson, Michael McGraw-Herdeg, (more)
The Streisand effect is a primarily online phenomenon in which an attempt to

hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of
publicizing the information more widely. It is named after American
entertainer Barbra Streisand, whose attempt in 2003 to suppress photographs
of her residence inadvertently generated further publicity
Upvote 85
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Diana Creu, Photo spammer @ http://dianacr... (more)

251 upvotes by Charles Faraone, Claus Appel, Michael Ames, (more)
The unintended consequence that I am about to contribute here is a little
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different, but I think is worth sharing.
Most of us are aware of a system that is in place in many parts of the world,
where an old person with no family or relatives will employ someone for help /
nursing until they die and then leave them their house as compensation.
In 1965, Jeanne Calment , a 90 year old French lady who had no heirs signed
a contract of such kind with a 46 year old lawyer. He would get her house after
her death, and in the meanwhile he would give her an amount of 2,500 francs
monthly. Even if she lived to be 100, getting that house was still a very nice
deal.
Except she lived a little longer. She lived to be 122 years, and had the longest
(confirmed) lifespan of a human. The contract lasted for 32 years, she actually
outlived the lawyer who died of cancer at 77, and his wife continued paying the
2,500 francs until the end, amounting to over $180,000, a lot more than what
the house was worth.
No such thing as a sure investment.
Written 15 Sep.
Upvote 251
Rakesh Agrawal, CEO, reDesign mobile

399 upvotes by Tim Haines, Adam Bossy, Aaron Quinn, (more)
When San Francisco banned givingawaytoyswithhappymealsthat

exceeded a certain percentage of fat, McDonald's responded by offering the
toys with purchase of a happy meal and a 10 cent contribution to charity. They
also stopped selling the toys without happy meal purchase, meaning you now
have to buy the meal to get the toy. http://www.businessinsider.com/m...
Back when hotels were struggling with explosion of dial up traffic, many
implemented a $1 surcharge on local calls. The hope was to deter calls.
Instead, where people previously would check email and logoff, they started
keeping the line open indefinitely to avoid subsequent $1 charges. This ended
up putting much more stress on the phone systems. (When AOL had issues
with busy signals, people would likewise line camp, exacerbating those issues.)
Colorado tried to use affiliates to create a taxable nexus for salestax
purposes. Rather than subject all Colorodans to sales tax, Amazon got rid of
Colorado affiliates. Not only did Colorado not get the sales tax revenue, they
lost income tax for those affiliates.
This doesn't always backfire. New York passed a similar law and Amazon still
has affiliates there.
The essentialairservice program was designed ostensibly to bring air
service to rural communities. It subsidizes airlines for flying unprofitable
routes. in order to get the subsidy, carriers must fly. Often they will fly empty
planes back and forth. Not only does this waste money, it is terrible for the
environment. it also exacerbates congestion at hub airports.
The higher terminationfeesforruralphonecompanieswere supposed
to offset higher costs of operating in rural areas. Instead, these companies have
exploited the system to offer free conferencing services, free international calls,
etc. Customers in cities end up subsidizing these services that weren't the
purpose of the program.
Useitorloseitbudgetpoliciesostensibly lead to more efficient
distribution of company resources. In reality, it's not uncommon for managers
to blow year end budgets on frivolous purchases so that they don't lose it next
year.
Passwordpolicies which require people to use mixed case, special
characters, numbers, not vary old passwords, etc. Passwords that follow these
rules are theoretically more secure. But because people can't remember them,
they write them down or store them in a text file - both of which are less secure
than letting the user pick a password he can remember.
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Updated 2 Dec, 2011.
Upvote 399
Andy Warwick, I voted once

459 upvotes by Charles Faraone, Jim Seidman, Jon Mixon, (more)
Mao Ze Dong and his Chinese Communist Party have proven themselves
masters of this particular law on occasion, with several policies that started out
with good intentions only to spiral out of control. Here are a few:
1.The"FourPests"Campaign
During the Great Leap Forward Mao introduced a new hygiene initiative that
targeted rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows. The latter were considered a pest
because they fed on grain, which the farmers obviously sowed in their fields.
Mao thought this was a waste and was causing yields to be reduced. He thereby
ordered that all sparrows be culled. Doing so however meant that there were no
birds to eat the locusts that fed on the crop as it grew. Nobody had noticed that
the sparrows found them a delicacy too. By the time the CCP realised its
mistake it was too late. Locust swarms had taken over the country, devouring
entire crop fields as they went, resulting in mass starvation. Epic fail.
2.BackyardFurnaces
Mao insisted that steel production be increased so as to catch up with the
industrialized world. Nice idea, except that in order to meet his high steel
production targets ordinary people were roped in and made to melt down every
scrap of metal that could be found in small furnaces. Targets were met but
most of it was worthless metal, and it left people without pots and pans in
which to cook, not that that mattered because they had nothing to eat anyway.
Having diverted so many millions of farmers from their fields for his steel
drive, crop production dropped drastically and further added to the already
desperate food shortages. They'd also cut down trees and used the wood from
people's houses to fuel the furnaces, resulting in an increase in homelessness.
Epic fail.
3.OneChildPolicy
Chinas one-child, family-planning policy may have seemed like a good idea,
but its led to all manner of social problems since. The population was booming
and resources in short supply, so a policy that could curb the birth rate was
proposed. Although it was never, as is often erroneously believed, applied to
everyone, it's been widely-implemented enough to have prevented an
estimated 400 million births (this is the uppermost estimate). So, it would
seem to be a success, wouldn't it? Well, it is if you disregard the fact that, owing
to a cultural preference for boys, it's led to a rise in female infanticide,
dangerous backstreet abortions (and government forced abortions) and child
abduction. In turn this has caused a gender imbalance of roughly 120 men for
every 100 women. That's a lot of guys who are never going to get married or
find girlfriends. There's also the phenomenon of the "Little Emperors" as
Chinese kids get spoiled and don't learn to stand on their own two feet, which
can't be good for their development, and that one child has to provide financial
support for two elderly parents alone whereas previously the burden would
have been shared among the siblings. Moderate fail.
Updated 18 Sep, 2012. Not for Reproduction.
Upvote 459
Downvote Share 1
Oby Sumampouw
466 upvotes by Kayce Basques, Charles Faraone, Kayomars N. Batliwalla, (more)
I thought this story is pretty cute.

In 1950s, a malaria outbreak occurred among Borneo's Dayak people. The
World Health Organization (WHO) tried to alleviate the problem by spraying
the Dayak people's thatch-roofed huts with DDT. The DDT killed the malaria
bearing mosquitos but also killed the parasitic wasp that kept thatch-eating
caterpillars under control. At nightfall the buzz of the malarial, bloodsucking
mosquitoes was stilled, but sharp cracks and then wild screaming followed as
people's roofs caved in.
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But this was hardly the end of the problem. The geckos ate the toxic mosquitos.
Normally these lizards can race over water for yards. They reeled like drunks
on a DDT Saturday night. The neighborhood cats, after seeing all these drugged
geckos couldn't help but stuff themselves full of geckos.
Then the cats died.
Thus the rats rejoiced. With their primary predators gone, their population
exploded. Rats were everywhere and they were all scurrying over and through
the Dayak's roofless hut. The rodents were a greater threat than the mere skincrawling, toe-biting mosquitoes. The rats are known to carry diseases like
bubonic plague - a condition that's more serious than malaria. (hundreds of
millions of people in Europe died because of this plague. see Black Death )
So what was the World Health Organization to do? They were afraid of
additional disasters that might occur if they poisoned the rats.
Someone finally had the bright idea that what was needed was to reintroduce
the natural predators of the rats. They needed cats. New cats. A lot of new cats.
But how could the WHO transport thousands of cats into a remote section of
Borneo?
Introducing: Parachuting cats!
One morning as the Dayak people awoke and came out of their dwellings, they
heard the droning of a slow-flying aircraft. Soon the sky was littered with
parachuting pussycats. Operation Cat Drop rained 14000 felines down on
Borneo. As soon as the cats hit the ground -- undoubtedly, on all four legs -their ears went up, and they raced to an undisclosed location (for reasons
known only to cats -- or the aliens who control them). Before too long, the cats
got around to the business of mousing, or in this case, ratting and the Dayaks
were saved from mosquitoes, rats and the World Health Organization!
--Paraphrased from The good life by Charles Colson.
Written 22 Aug.
Upvote 466
Tyson Rosage, It doesn't matter how smart yo... (more)

167 upvotes by Eugene Lubomir, Stephen McInerney, Marie Stein, (more)
The 1973 US Endangered Species Act imposed heavy land use restrictions on
property where endangered species inhabited. These restrictions devalued the
property which incentivized land owners to kill the endangered species found
on their property in order to mask the appearance of their inhabitence. This
practice was often referred to as "shoot, shovel, and shut up."
Updated 23 Jul.
Upvote 167
Caroline Zelonka, thinks science is cool.

74 upvotes by Mark Binfield, Charles Faraone, Joseph Boyle, (more)
When Seattle joined the anti-smoking ban bandwagon a few years ago, it added
a new wrinkle to the law, which was designed to prevent any errant smoke
from wafting in to the establishment where smokers would gather.
The law stipulated that smokers cannot simply smoke right outside of the place
they were working or visiting (the ban prohibited indoor smoking in any public
place or workplace.) Instead, they were required to move at least 25 feet away
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from the building.
First off, this prohibition was almost impossible to enforce reasonably in areas
where people were likely to do the most smoking; namely districts with lots of
bars and restaurants. Moving 25 feet away from the bar where you were
drinking often meant you'd be smoking right in front of another bar. So the law
didn't effectively work. Smoke could still waft in, it just would be produced by
non-patrons.
That was the first unintended consequence, which wasn't so bad. C'mon, in a
cold-climate city like Seattle where doors and windows are shut most of the
time, how much smoke is really going to waft in?
But the second consequence of the 25 foot rule is that it made it impossible for
restaurants and bars to provide ashtrays or cans for butt collection. Instead,
many smokers chose to litter the streets and sidewalks with their butts, which
did not make the owners very happy. (Note that we don't have regular, citywide
street cleaning in Seattle.)
In some cases, the owners actually went out in the mornings and swept the
streets, it was so bad.
Since this, the law has been amended from "25 feet" to "a reasonable distance
away," which seems reasonable. And though I don't smoke, I have seen
ashtrays and the like outside businesses, including my own employer.
Updated 24 Jun.
Upvote 74
Gil Yehuda
201 upvotes by Oleh Kovalchuke, Charles Caplan, Will Wister, (more)
Dan Ariely includes some examples in "Predictably Irrational" and "The Upside
of Irrationality" http://danariely.com/the-books/ as does Duncan Watts in
"Everything is Obvious Once You Know the Answer"
http://www.amazon.com/Everything...
My favorite example is the study of a bunch of day care centers in Israel. The
day care providers were upset that parents come late to pick up their kids -thus extending their day without fair compensation. They implemented a
small late fee at some of the day care centers to see if charging the parents for
coming late would reduce the lateness rate.
As it turns out, those centers that charged a fee had their late-rate jumpup
considerably. The parents apparently felt less guilty about showing up late
since they were paying the fee. Moreover, when they stopped the fee a few
weeks later, the late rate at those centers remained as high, since the social
stigma of being one of those late parents wore off.
Note: a better fee structure would have been to increase the charge by the
minute -- so rather than a fixed charge for being up to 15 minutes late, and
perhaps a larger charge for more than 15 minutes -- they should have
experimented with $1 for the first minute, $2 MORE for the second minute ($3
total), $3 MORE for the third ($6 total), etc. This way late fees could be a
revenue generating scheme as well as a punitive measure!
Upvote 201
Kannan Ganesan, Quizzer and now a Quoran

1.1k upvotes by Ram Kumar Krishnan, Victor Lee, Svan Nathan, (more)
TataMotorsmarketingTataNanoasthe"Cheapestcar"
Tata Motors created a ripple in the automobile market in 2008 by
manufacturing a car "Tata Nano" which can be sold for 1 lakh rupees ($2000).
It became the cheapest car in the world. It was expected to be a car for the
masses especially for the people for whom car was a luxury.
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I remember that it became a worldwide phenomenon when it was launched

and there was a lot of coverage from western media. Nat Geo channel even did
a Megafactories episode on its production.
But one thing Tata motors didn't expect was their marketing campaign going
awry. They marketed the car as the "cheapest car" and it quite literally became
a cheap car (in terms of value) in the minds of people.
They failed to understand the mentality of Indians in general and why cars
were a luxury for some people. In India, people wanted their cars to be a sign of
their status in society. They wanted it to be a symbol of their wealth and
prosperity. They simply failed to get attracted to a one lakh car which would
just invite ridicule among their friends and relatives that they are driving such
a cheap car which would in turn lower their image. It seemed like an
unintended side effect for a product released primarily to ease the convenience
of people. Even Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata group (at that time) admitted
that their marketing strategy was a mistake.
Ratan Tata says calling Nano the 'cheapest car' was a mistake - NDTV
Nano still sold a few lakh units at launch and continues to do so but it was clear
that it failed to achieve the heights it was expected to. It became yet another
low cost car in the already crowded Indian automobile market.
This was something unintended as I'm sure Tata had released such an
affordable car out of good will. I wonder if it would have turned out better if
they had based their marketing campaign on affordability and convenience
rather than it being cheap.
Updated 24 Jul.
Upvote 1.1k
Adam Bossy, The Innovator's Dilemma is on ... (more)

652 upvotes by Peter Clark, Dustin Ho, Fahd Butt, (more)
American citizens often complain about how high CEO salaries are. The SEC
attempted to mitigate this, and required CEO salaries to be publicly disclosed.
As a result, they increased approximately three-fold between 1976 and 1993,
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going from 36 times the average worker pay to 131 times the average worker
pay. "It encouraged other CEOs to demand higher pay, since now they had
hard data telling them they were underpaid."[1]
[1] Source: Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. Re-published here:
http://www.moskalyuk.com/blog/pr...
Written 17 Nov, 2010.
Upvote 652
Robert Rapplean, amateur political analyst and ... (more)

80 upvotes by Will Wister, Phil Jones, Marie Stein, (more)
Here's a new good one:

In America, we wash our eggs to clean any possible infection off of them. This
also scrubs a protective layer off of them, which makes it easier for eggs to get
infected.
Americans why do you keep refrigerating your eggs?
In addition to the Hawaiian's Snail menace, they also decided to import the
mongoose to handle their rat problems. As it turns out, the mongoose is
diurnal and the rats are nocturnal. The end result was that the mongooses
wound up devastating the native (much easier to catch) animal population
instead.
The second one is the 18th amendment to the US constitution, otherwise
known as "Prohibition". This was intended to decrease the drinking of alcohol.
When it was passed in 1918, the city of New York had roughly 800 bars on
record. By the time it was repealed the city had an estimated 4000 speakeasies
in operation. We still haven't learned that lesson.
Upvote 80
Ashwini Meena, The girl who cried wolf.

106 upvotes by Charles Faraone, Scott M. Stolz, Dan Cozma, (more)
Teachingchildrennottotalktostrangers(e.g.theStrangerDanger
Campaign)maybemakingthemlesssafe,notmoresafe.
If you grew up in the United States, or if you grew up in Canada and had access
to American television networks, you may remember the Stranger Danger
PSAs. If you are unfamiliar with this campaign, watch:
1. The campaigns were a failure and were criticized for confusing children
into believing that all people they knew were safe.
2. The biggest reason this campaign failed is because most of the abuses this
campaign was trying to protect children against are not perpetrated by
strangers. They are perpetrated by the people known and trusted by both
the parents and the children, such as family members, teachers, ministers,
and community leaders.. (The reality is though that for every 800,000
child abductions there are each year, only 115 of those are children being
abducted by a stranger .)
3. Extreme cases : Brennan Hawkins, the 11-year-old Utah Boy Scout who
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was found after going missing for four days, told his family that he was
afraid rescuers "would steal him," perhaps delaying authorities from
finding him in the mountains outside of Salt Lake City. (Does 'stranger
danger' go too far? )
Sources : Keeping Your Children Safe Online: Why 'Stranger Danger' Doesn't
Work | GeekMom | Wired.com
Updated 26 Jun.
Upvote 106
Souvik Gupta, Sometimes my brain farts a rainbow

149 upvotes by Robert Rapplean, Pam Berkeley, Daniel Spector, (more)
Some wonderful answers here. I have 3 interesting stories with me.

Story 1: In 1912 the sinking of Titanic imparted many lessons in safety
measures and procedures. The major one of them was to have adequate
number of lifeboats on the vessel. In 1915, the new federal Seamen'sAct had
been passed because of the Titanic disaster. This required retrofitting of a
complete set of lifeboats. In the same year in Chicago a ship named Eastland
sank, and ironically the factor that contributed to the sinking of the ship was
the instability caused by carrying the extra lifeboats. To make matters worse
the death toll of this incident was 844, 14 more than the death toll of Titanic.
Doomed if you do, doomed if you don't.
Story 2: In the post world war 2 period, during rapid industrial revolution and
modernisation HVAC systems were developed which were Heating,
VentilatingandAirConditioningsystems.In 1976 , the world recorded
the first cases of new disease called the Legionnaires' disease. This disease was
caused by a bacteria called LegionellaPneumophila. Now later on further
investigation it was found that these bacteria's were always present in aquatic
bodies. They were not a recent genetically mutated bug. These HVAC systems
created the ambient temperatures and environmental conditions for these
bacteria to thrive. Water used in the HVAC systems had these pathogens which
reproduced and were transmitted by the air that was blown by these very
systems. Now comes the even more interesting part. Technology came to
rescue and developed a bactericide that go rid of these bugs and the bactericide
was present in the water that was used in the HVAC systems. In 1980's IBM
witnessed a mysterious epidemic, in which The Tape drives made by the
company were failing. They pondered a lot over the problem without any
success. Then they commissioned a group of very reputed scientists who upon
investigation found that all these tape drives were situated very close to the
ventilation systems. The bactericide in the ventilation systems had Tin present
in it. This Tin got deposited on the Tape heads of the drives which resulted in
the drives failing. Machines and humans both plagued by the same problem.
What are the odds eh?
Story 3: I have saved the best for the last. In 1886, John Pemberton, a veteran
of the american civil war, got addicted to morphine. Being an excellent druggist
he developed a product and patented it as a medicine to cure morphine
addiction, dyspepsia, neurasthenia, headache, and impotence. The product was
non alcoholic and instead it had a so called benign substitute which was later
found to be "cocaine".It contained 8mg of cocaine in every ounce. In 1890's
the public sentiment began to turn against cocaine linking the substance
directly with crime and other antisocial activities. So the product had to stop
using cocaine as ingredient and it looked for a substitute. It finally settled for
the another popular product. It was caffeine. In early 1900s the US government
imposed some additional taxes on pharmaceutical drugs. Now the company
that manufactured this product did not want to shell out extra money on taxes.
So this company changed its marketing strategy and started selling this
product as a beverage.Yes they completely stopped claiming about all the
health benefits of it and just sold it as a non alcoholic, carbonated beverage
with the same formula minus the cocaine as a beverage to be enjoyed by people
in social gatherings. Most of you might have guessed by now what that product
was. It was Coca-Cola.
Updated 29 Aug.
Upvote 149
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Suniel Meena, Devil's Advocate
58 upvotes by Marie Stein, Diana Creu, Erik Fair, (more)
Despite a long time of severe opposition to the practice of Child labor, it is still
endemic. Various policy measures have been taken by governments of different
countries to curb this social evil. Among them, bans and regulations are the
most popular ones, for example in India : Child Labor Prohibition and
Regulation Act was enacted in 1986. This law acts as the starting point for a
legal action against Child labor in India.
A recent study conducted by National Bureau of Economic Research on the
data from employment surveys (in India) conducted before and after the ban,
and using age restrictions that determined who the ban applied to, reveals that
: Notonlydidthebannotreducechildlabor,butitevenincreased
it.
The reasoning provided by researchers in their paper goes like this :
When perfectly enforced, bans force employers to forgo the use of child labor.
However, it is not clear that such laws will always lead to reductions in child
labor. In reality, governments in countries where child labor is prevalent, rarely
have the capacity and resources to perfectly enforce regulations on child
employment.
When bans are imperfectly enforced, they raise the cost of hiring children, as
employers anticipate facing stiff fines or other penalties when caught using
child labor. Thus, when imperfectly enforced, bans may simply lower the wages
that children are paid.
If families send their children to work out of necessity, this can have perverse
effects, as it lowers the income for families relying on child labor. Therefore, a
drop in child wages may compel families to supply more child labor, rather
than less.
Read full paper here : http://www.nber.org/papers/w1960...
Written 26 Jan.
Upvote 58
Downvote Comments 2
Share 2
Josh Freckleton, Programmer and Entrepreneur

546 upvotes by Ram Kumar Krishnan, Giovanna Lazzari, Al Taylor, (more)
ThomasMidgley,Jr. ., should be crowned:

KingofUnintendedConsequences.
1.) First he addedleadtogasoline to reduce engine-knocking. It worked. It
also lead to long lasting health consequences because of all the added lead in
the atmosphere. (Notice how you use "Un-leaded gas" today.)
2.) Next, he invented CFCs for use as a refrigerant. Other refrigants were toxic
and/or explosive. CFCs were neither toxic, nor explosive, and because they
were cheap to synthesize, they quickly became the standard. It wasn't until
CFCs were widely used that we figured out that they act as a catalyst to destroy
ozone, which protects the earth from UV and excess heat. We're still suffering
from this.
3.) Lastly, he contracted polio and in his final days, devised a pulleysystem
inhisbed for himself to help those assisting him. This device ultimately
strangled him to death when he became entangled in the ropes.
Updated 1 Nov.
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Upvote 546
Olly Benson
58 upvotes by David Yu, Leonardo Pergola, Sam Shoreside, (more)
One of the best examples of unintended consequences was the effect of the
Hatfield rail accident in the UK in 2000. Four people died when a train
derailed and overturned in Hatfield, about 25 miles north of London. The
investigation identified that there was a serious backlog of railway
maintenance, which resulted in a huge programme of trying to check and fix all
the points etc. During this time all high-speed trains were restricted to a lower
speed limit, which reduced the number of trains able to run and the number of
people willing to travel by train. There was a noticable increase in road traffic
as a result.
It's argued that the increase in road traffic resulted in more road traffic deaths
than the number of people killed in the original rail accident.
The UK now has one of the safest railways in the world; there hasn't been a
single passenger death for 10 years. But there is also an argument that the
increased investment on making the railways safer has come at a huge cost trains are now more expensive, people therefore choose to drive as it is
cheaper, this means more road traffic accidents that has resulted in more
overall deaths.
But road traffic accidents don't make the headline news in the same way as a
train crash; so we spent millions trying to fix one and very little trying to fix the
other.
Written 14 Sep.
Upvote 58
Downvote Comment 1
Share 4
Ashley Timms, M.A., Forensic Linguistics

40 upvotes by Diana Creu, Charles Faraone, Ravi Nallappan, (more)
Very unfortunately, the death of astronaut Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, a personal

hero of mine.
TLDRafteraproblemwithaweakhatchforoneofthespace
missions,NASAcreatedahatchthatwassostrongthatthree
astronautsdiedbecausetheycouldn'topenit.
The Mercury Seven were the first astronauts that were pilots selected from the
military. Gus Grissom was from the Air Force.
In 1961, Gus was on a test flight for the Mercury missions in MR-4, also known
as Liberty Bell 7, which was named by Grissom. These missions ended with the
capsules falling into the Atlantic ocean. The mission was delayed multiple
times due to weather and a final time because one of the 70 bolts on the hatch
came loose. Engineers decided that 69 bolts out of 70 ain't bad and that they
would hold. Grissom's reentry went perfectly. A parachute is deployed before
hitting the water and it all went fine. These capsules are designed to straighten
themselves in the water. Grissom had believed that he was actually facing the
wrong direction, however. The hatch on these spacecrafts was opened by the
astronaut when it was safe to do so; they didn't open automatically but they
would explode open in the case of emergency.
Grissom pulled the pin on the hatch and purposefully didn't touch the activator
and waited. He heard a thud and realised quickly that the spacecraft was filling
with water and sinking. Grissom escaped drowning and claimed that "the
hatch just blew" despite there being no emergency. Liberty Bell 7 sank to the
bottom of the ocean and was not recovered until 1999. This led to a lot of
controversy. The engineers for this mission were stunned and didn't fully
believe Gus. How could a non automatic hatch automatically open?
To combat the problem, and to avoid any future problems, the engineers
designed a new hatch that couldn't "just blow." It was tested and Gus was
scheduled for another test flight along with Edward White and Roger Chaffee
for Apollo 1 in 1967. After a few delays and alarms, the hatch was sealed and
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the cabin was filled with pure oxygen. The flight was put on hold once more
due to some concerns and the crew went over their checklist while waiting.
Suddenly, Chaffee exclaimed that there was a "bad fire" in the cockpit. The
three astronauts were heard shuffling around. Pure oxygen ignites and spreads
fire much more rapidly than the air we breath. Very quickly, onlookers could
hear the spacecraft rupturing from the spread and pressure of gases and fire.
When finally opened, Grissom and Edwards were found near the hatch.
Presumably, they attempted to open it, while Chaffee remained on
communication, but couldn't due to the pressure inside the cabin. Doing
whatever they could, it took rescuers 3 entire minutes to open it from the
outside. All three men died inside.
**Let me know if I got any details wrong! It's been a while since I read up on
this story.
Written 26 Aug.
Upvote 40
Welles Robinson
181 upvotes by Erik Halberstadt, Jeff Wright, Daniel Spector, (more)
Parachuting Cats
In the 1950s, a serious outbreak of malaria occurred in the northern states of
Borneo, which is a very large island in South East Asia. The recently
established World Health Organization (WHO) decided to step in to stem the
outbreak by eradicating the malaria carrying mosquitos using DDT. Problem
Solved. Right?
Well not exactly. Spraying DDT had some unintended side effects. First, the
thatch roofs of the houses began to collapse. It turns out that the wasps that
feed on the thatch-eating caterpillars were wiped out by DDT. Even worse, the
cat population of Borneo declined dramatically allegedly due to the
biomagnification of DDT up the food chain. Fewer cats led to a lot more rats,
which caused a new outbreak, this time of the plague and typhus. So the WHO
traded malaria for the plague and roofless houses. Talk about unintended
consequences.
In the end, the WHO ended up parachuting cats in Borneo to contain the rat
problem. Thats right. After seeing what happened when they tried to eradicate
mosquitos using the most advanced ideas of the time, they decided to
parachute cats.
Special thanks to Professor Sabonis-Helf, who told me this story for the first
time in my Energy and International Security class.
Of note, Professor Patrick OShaughnessy has much more in-depth review of
this story (and the various incongruities of this story) on his website Operation
Cat Drop .
Updated 16 Aug.
Upvote 181
Downvote Comment 1
Share 2
Rodrigo Losina
65 upvotes by Joan Hoffman, Jann Hoke, Pam Berkeley, (more)
There is - or was, not sure if it still exists - a social program in Brasil called, I
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believe, "programa do leite" (milk program).
Mothers of kids with severe malnutrition would receive monthly amounts of
dried milk for free.
Many of those mothers sold this milk to get money (some, probably, to help
feed the whole family, others for cigars, drugs, whatever).
Now, the worst part. If the kid gets better, the family no longer gets the milk.
So, the poor kid is never feed enough, to assure that he will be kept in the
program, and the family will keep receiving the milk.
Written 1 Sep.
Upvote 65
Downvote Comments 2
Share 1
Matt Fernand, Problem solver

67 upvotes by Mark Binfield, Josh Manson, Diana Creu, (more)
Surely the life of Fritz Haber deserves a mention here?

At the turn of the last century, over-population was threatening mankind as we
couldn't grow enough food. The world was dependent for fertiliser on nitrogen
extracted from mineral deposits and these were very scarce. Haber perfected a
process to create ammonia using atmospheric nitrogen, saving our species
from starvation ('Food from the air!') - an act which won him a Nobel Prize.
Unfortunately, as well as enabling agriculture on an industrial scale, abundant
cheap nitrates also enabled war on a massive level. Without him WWI as we
know it simply wouldn't have been possible.
There is a final twist to this. Haber is now largely remembered (well, vilified is
probably a better word) for his work developing the use of poison gas in the
WWI trenches, believing that he would shorten the war he'd inadvertently
enabled. When peace was restored he turned this into a less controversial line
of research, developing pesticide gases.
Ironically, especially considering Haber's Jewish origins, his research in this
field laid the foundations for the Zyklon process, providing Germany with a
cheap source of poison gas for use in the Holocaust.
[Edited for typos and clarity]
Written 23 Jul.
Upvote 67
Downvote Comment Share
Matt Isison
86 upvotes by Al Taylor, Sangwon Hyun, Tim Scott, (more)
My first job was as a crew member at a Burger King. To ensure speedy service
in the drive thru, a timer was installed and hooked up to a pair of sensors so
that it started when the car drove up to the speaker, and stopped when the car
left the drive thru window. The times were aggregated throughout the day and
the times for each restaurant were reported back to the district supervisor.
As a result of this system, on days when we weren't meeting our goal time
(generally 3 minutes), the managers would instruct us to have each car pull
around to the front of the restaurant immediately after receiving payment if
their order wasn't ready yet, causing the timer to stop counting. Then, rather
than handing the food out the window, we would have to step out from behind
the counter, walk up to the front, deliver the order and then walk back. So the
customers ended up waiting longer for their food because we had to travel
farther to deliver it, and also reduced the amount of time that we could spend
productively handling other customers.
Written 11 Aug.
Upvote 86
Conner Davis, He who walks with thunder.
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42 upvotes by Charles Faraone, Colin Jensen, Diana Creu, (more)
Not far from where I live, there is a motor inn famous for having mirrors on the
ceilings of its rooms and renting by the hour. Obviously, it was intended for
sexual purposes. However, on more than one occasion, people have used it to
perform surgery on themselves, making use of the mirror on the ceiling while
lying on the bed.
Written 17 Jul.
Upvote 42
Jaap Grolleman, Copywriter at Vandebron, edito... (more)

69 upvotes by Ravi Thatte, Ian McCullough, Rhul Dhar, (more)
In Greece there was a policy that homes would only be charged tax once they're
finished. And so, home owners simply built the house, but not finished the
roof, in order to evade tax.
Written 7 May.
Upvote 69
Simon Olson
71 upvotes by Jae Won Joh, Coleman Foley, Fred Landis, (more)
Great question!
One of my favorite contemporary examples relates to the legislative history
behind the creation of biofuel incentives in the United States.
Early biofuel proponents wanted to find a way around opposition from the oil
states.
So, they thought about it and came up with the brilliant idea of pitting the farm
states against the oil states by promoting the benefits of corn-based ethanol.
Since the farm lobby is more powerful than the oil lobby, they won, and
succeeding in getting all kinds of new laws enacted which incentivized biofuels.
The only problem was that the new laws mandated the use of corn-based
ethanol rather than efficient feedstocks like dedicated biofuel crops
(switchgrass, myscanthis, etc.) or cellulosic ethanol.
Though born of good intentions, the laws wound up incentivizing inefficient
practices and souring people on biofuels.
Upvote 71
Jack O'Connor
49 upvotes by Bill McDonald, Carl Anthony Jr, Colin Jensen, (more)
Back in the 90's there was some debate about requiring small children to have
their own seat in airplanes. I think there had been media coverage of lap
children who died in a plane crash, while some other children in the plane were
saved by their seatbelts. Anyway, the idea was that if we don't allow lap
children in cars for safety reasons, we obviously shouldn't allow them in
planes.
That reasoning sounds simple, but it's actually wrong. While child restraints
would make flying slightly safer, flying is already very safe, and so the larger
effect of the proposed regulation would have been to make flying more
expensive for families with small children. That would have led more families
to drive instead of flying, which is much less safe, and as a result more children
would have died in car accidents than were saved in plane crashes. Luckily that
particular regulation never became law.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/...
------------------------------------For another very quick example, Congress created the Interstate Commerce
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Commission in the late 1800's to prevent railroads from using their monopoly
positions to exploit customers. But throughout its lifetime, large railroads used
their influence over the ICC to control their markets and reduce competition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Int...
Upvote 49
Piyush Gupta
88 upvotes by Joan Hoffman, Nathan Dintenfass, Daniel Spector, (more)
In 1993, federal securities regulators forced companies, for the first time, to
reveal details pay and perks of their top executives. The idea was that once pay
was in open, boards would be reluctant to give executives outrageous salaries
and benefits. This, it was hoped, would stop the rise in executive compensation,
which neither the regulation, legislation, nor shareholder pressure had been
able to stop. And indeed, it needed to stop: in 1976 the average CEO was paid
36 times as much as the average worker. By 1993, the average CEO was paid
131 times as much.
But once the salaries became public information, the media regularly ran
special stories ranking CEOs by pay. Rather than suppressing the executive
perks, the publicity had CEOs in US comparing their pay with that of everyone
else. In response, executives' salaries sky-rocketed. The trend was further
helped by compensation consulting firms that advised their CEO clients to
demand outrageous raises. As a result average CEO makes about 369 times as
much as the average worker - about three times the salary before executive
compensation went public.
Source:PredictablyIrrationalbyDanAriely
Updated 15 Jul.
Upvote 88
Downvote Comments 3
Share 2
Dennis Ferguson, Junkwaffel

158 upvotes by Charles Faraone, Robert Rapplean, Andrei Kucharavy, (more)
Just after WW2 in Houston, they started a major build out of the city to handle
the expected growth. This included many new roads. One of the innovations
that they tried was to modulate the grooving at the side of the road. You've
heard tires "sing" when you hit those groves at the edge of the asphalt. What
they did was to modulate the groves such that they said "danger!". Since this
was in the late 40's early 50's, there were a lot of people that were spooked by a
disembodied voice telling them danger!, when they got to the edge of the road.
The experiment was a failure because many people wouldn't drive on those
"haunted roads."
Written 4 Feb.
Upvote 158
Mark Kawar
86 upvotes by Charles Faraone, Vikram Rout, David Chu, (more)
In the late 19th century, morphine was used as a pain killer and to treat a wide
variety of diseases. But patients were becoming addicted. So the Bayer
company introduced a substitute drug that had all the benefits of morphine,
but was supposedly safer and less addictive.
"It possesses many advantages over morphine," wrote the Boston Medical and
Surgical Journal in 1900. "It's not hypnotic, and there's no danger of acquiring
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a habit."
They called it ... heroin! Today it's one of the most addictive and dangerous
illegal drugs.
Written 16 Jun.
Upvote 86
Philip Newton, professional software develope... (more)

72 upvotes by Jann Hoke, Vivek Sharma, Charles Faraone, (more)
Germans have been educated to save water, with good results.

Toilets that have two flush buttons (so that you have the option of using less
water if theres less to flush away) is just one example.
However, the resulting reduced flow through the sewers has led to problems
such as some materials not being transported away properly, germs
multiplying, or gas forming.
The result: cities often use large quantities of water to flush out those sewers
often using drinking-quality water. Thus essentially negating the advantages of
saving water.
See, for example, Wasserspar-Irrsinn lsst Deutschlands Stdte stinken
(Water saving insanity makes Germanys cities stink) or Wasserversorgung:
Schluss mit dem Wassersparen! (Water supply [says]: Stop saving [so much]
water!).
Written 21 Aug.
Upvote 72
Yogesh Bhavarthi
47 upvotes by David Chu, Jeff Wright, Ian McCullough, (more)
Until 1773, tea was breakfast drink here in America. But in 1773, the tea act
with the assent of King George was established which allowed East India
company to export tea to colonies by eliminating the middleman and
undercutting the tea importers.
This resulted into Boston Tea party in December 1773. Many Americans
considered tea drinking to be unpatriotic following the Boston Tea Party.
Tea drinking declined during and after the Revolution, resulting in a lasting
American preference for coffee.
Boston Tea Party
Written 17 May.
Upvote 47
Anonymous
68 upvotes by David Chu, Daniel Spector, Rajesh S Rajagopalan, (more)
Here in Germany:
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When hiring a professor, a department has to provide a "top three" list of
candidates. #1 is offered the job first, if they turn it down, it is offered to #2.
likewise for #3.
There is a law that requires that a woman to be hired if she is as well qualified
as a man.
This means that if a woman is in position #2, there may be a discussion about
promoting her to the #1 spot. The result is that if a man is in #1, a woman who
deserves to be #2 may be relegated to #3 or even not listed at all, in order to
prevent her being promoted to #1 solely for political reasons.
Thus a law that was intended to improve womens' opportunities actually
reduces them.
Written 16 Jun.
Upvote 68
Downvote Comments 2
Share
Diego Noriega Mendoza, Entrepeneur, Filmmaker, Vacati... (more)

40 upvotes by Andrew Koenigsberg, Diana Creu, Amitabh Adhikari, (more)
Theaction:
Several states in Mexico have just passed laws forbidding the sale of alcoholic
beverages in retail after 10:00 PM on weekdays, and 6:00 PM on Sundays. The
rationale behind the new law was to reduce the incidence of alcohol-related
violence and accidents.
TheUnintendedConsequence:
Convenience stores around the country have been held up at gun point by
people looking to get drunk after 10 PM. Several clerks have been killed.
Written 26 Jan.
Upvote 40
Downvote Comments 5
Share 1
Edward Wong
44 upvotes by Ivan Gautama, Jann Hoke, Joan Hoffman, (more)
Here's my favorite one, since I work in the printing services industry: The myth
of the "PaperlessOffice".
OriginalIntention:
With the advent of digital editing and productivity tools, it was believed that
offices and workplaces would rely less and less on paper printed materials, as
workflows and information transfer would be seamlessly digital and
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automated.
UnintendedConsequence:
Businesses and workers have actually been printing more and more paper year
over year.
Whyisthishappening?
I believe the main culprit was the digital tools themselves. Look at Microsoft
Word and Powerpoint (probably the biggest paper generating softwares of our
time), the main canvas is still the blank page. To make matters worse, with a
seemingly unlimited digital canvas, workers can now generate hundred or
thousand page documents with greater ease than the traditional typewriter.
And don't blame the pros of paper, being easy to handle, annotate, flip through,
and so on. The fact that the information had to be transmitted through paper
necessitates its consumption and review by the very same medium. E-readers
and tablets that try to mimic paper based reviewing still falls short because
they are trying to bridge a gap that can never be reached.
We just didn't make the behavioral change management of the consumers of
such information to stick to reading such information on digital screens, but
elect to print the documents instead. A paradigm shift needs to happen
towards how we produce, consume and store information before we can truly
move towards the paperless office. Either that or the price of printing becomes
prohibitively high and exceeds that of digital mediums.
I'm sure printing companies and printer manufacturers have some blame to
share (I work in Xerox, so sue me!) by making printers cheap and easy to use.
They have been driving down printing costs through the evolution of laser and
digital printing and of course through the massive economies of scale in paper
supplies. Some of which were not environmentally sustainable.
The only exception where paper is reducing is probably only in printed books.
When the market for ebooks had surpassed traditional printed books (but only
in U.S., I'm sure many developing economies are still dwarfed by printed
books) recently. But many factors come into play: e-reading device technology
becoming affordable and easy to use; retailers pushing publishers to move
towards digital formats; discounts to consumers for electronic versions over
print; and so on. This just goes to show that the whole mindset and ecosystem
around paper needs to change, not just the underlying technology.
Written 21 Oct.
Upvote 44
Barry Hampe, Atheist, writer, pilot, sage (... (more)

87 upvotes by Jon Mixon, Colin Jensen, Greg Self, (more)
Sunshine laws. They have contributed tremendously to the partisanship we are

experiencing. Because everything is on the record, there is no way for
politicians to quietly compromise--or even explore a compromise--except on
the record. And no one is willing to be the first to go on the record offering a
compromise.
ADDED 8/30/13:
CAFE legislation that exempted small trucks from the gas mileage
requirement. This led to the creation of ubiquitous, gas guzzling SUVs.
Updated 30 Aug, 2013.
Upvote 87
Akshaye Badiger, Quoraholic..!!

157 upvotes by Josh Manson, Erik Halberstadt, Daniel Spector, (more)
Note:Someimagesinthisanswermightprovedisturbingtosome
readers.
Viewerdiscretionrequired.
"NotsuitableforMinors".
It was 1921 when 17-yearold Frances Splettstocher landed a job at the
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Waterbury Clock Company on Cherry Street. It was a glamorous job, for she
and her young colleagues worked with radium the wonder substance of the
new century. The girls used their keen eyes and nimble fingers to paint tiny
numbers on glow-in-the-dark watches that were all the rage at the moment.
World War I soldiers had worn the futuristic devices in the trenches, and now
in peacetime everyone wanted one, so Splettstocher and dozens like her were
hired to help produce millions of the watches during the early 1920s.
Many of the women pressed their brushes between their lips before dipping
them in the radium-laced paint to give their small brushes a nice, fine point.
The gritty-textured paint tasted no worse than Elmers glue, but it had a
strange effect: It made their mouths glow in the dark. This didnt bother the
girls, who stole moments at work to paint their dress buttons and fingernails,
and glowing rings on their fingers. They loved their jobs, said Claudia Clark,
author of a book about the dial-painters called Radium Girls. These were the
best jobs working-class girls could get.
But some would pay for these jobs with their lives.
Even as Splettstocher and her friends bent over long workbenches painting
dials, evidence was mounting that this naturally occurring radioactive element
had a dark side. But few listened. Even when young women painting dials in
Waterbury and places like Orange, New Jersey and Ottawa, Illinois, began to
develop horrific symptoms, no one wanted to hear that radium was the cause.
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Recognition of the dial workers came much later, when they helped scientists
understand the long-term effects of radiation, and their suffering led to safety
measures for World War II atomic-bomb workers.
... (more)
Upvote 157
Thomas Chekaiban, lover of statistics

51 upvotes by Jarl Arntzen, Shashank Rathi, David Rosen, (more)
Probably the Dynamite.

Nobel created this stable explosive in 1867 to make blasting activities (in
mining and construction for instance) much safer. Little did he know that it
would quickly be used for military purposes during wars. There is strong
evidence that he created the Nobel Prize in remorse for his "not meant to be"
lethal invention.
Written 14 Jul.
Upvote 51
Craig Weiland, Art Director

48 upvotes by Luke Bornheimer, Bruce Hubbell, Will Wister, (more)
BillboardsincentralMissouri
In central Missouri a number of years ago, a group of concerned citizens got
together to rail against the billboards that were "cluttering up the view" along
Interstate 70, and they started putting together a bill that would limit the
number of billboards that could be installed. The makers of the billboard signs
immediately went to work putting up more, to make sure that as many signs as
possible would be "grandfathered in." The legislation wound up failing, and the
net result was twice as many billboards as there were when they started.
HappyMealsinSanFrancisco
Just recently, the city of San Francisco passed an ordinance regulating
McDonald's Happy Meals and the inclusion of toys. It states that no toy may be
included as an incentive with a meal 600 calories or more. McDonald's quickly
responded by adjusting the offering of the toy--many of which are collectors
items--with the Happy Meal as an additional 10 purchase, with the 10
donated to the Ronald McDonald House charity. By combining the toy with a
charitable contribution, McDonald's made it so that in order to buy the toy, one
must also buy the Happy Meal, thereby making purchase of the meal necessary
bylaw in order to acquire the collectible toy (whereas, before, it was not). So
the "ban" may actually increase Happy Meal sales rather than reduce their
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consumption. http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesni...
Upvote 48
Downvote Comment 1
Share
Evan DeFilippis, manage impact evaluation for p... (more)

1.2k upvotes by Charles Faraone, Barry Hampe, Colin Jensen, (more)
Thisoneisbrilliant:
In 2005, Americans who racked up an inconceivable amount of credit card
debt realized they could file for bankruptcy to relieve themselves of any
obligation to pay back debts.
There were those who exploited the system, of course, spending excessive
amounts of money on credit cards, and then filing for bankruptcy the moment
any bank started asking questions.
Banks wanted protection from this sort of abuse, so they lobbied for the
Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act which made it
costly to actually file for bankruptcy.
Everything was great, and smooth sailing after that, right? Nope.
Turns out that there were people who were actually, you know, bankrupt. The
new law made it to where a large number of people didn't have the money to
even file for bankruptcy. As a result, these people had to default on all their
debts, including their mortgages, which the banks had to foreclose.
So, now we have a situation in which all the banks have a bunch of houses they
can't do anything with. What are they going to do with houses? Well, they need
to sell them, of course.
As it would turn out, though, all the banks simultaneously realized that the
housing market was being floodedwith houses from other banks doing the
same thing. Because of supply and demand, housing prices plummeted,
causing even more people to default on their mortgages.
This also meant that the value of mortgage-backed securities dropped
precipitously as well, leading to more than $40 billion of writedowns for U.S.
financial institutions.
Search
Banks lost so much money that they themselves

began filing
bankruptcy, Notifications4
Home
Openfor
Questions
including one of prominent banks that lobbied for the law in the first place,
Washington Mutual . Nearly everyone lobbying for the law was subsequently
punished: Citigroup Chief Executive Officer Charles O. ``Chuck'' Prince
Henry
Add Question
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stepped down after losing $11 billion of writedowns on top of more than $6
billion in the third quarter of that year. Stan O'Neal was ousted as CEO of
Merrill Lynch & Co ., the world's largest brokerage, after an $8.4 billion
writedown. Morgan Stanley , the second-biggest securities firm, had subprime
losses that cut fourth-quarter earnings that year by $2.5 billion...
Deliciously ironic
Note - there are a lot of people saying this was not the cause of the 2007-2008
housing crisis. Nowhere did I make this claim. This story is merely an isolated
narrative of unintended consequences that only is a small component of the
overall housing crisis.
Updated 1 Oct.
Upvote 1.2k
Alex Sergeev, quantum quant

25 upvotes by Svan Nathan, Makarand Sahasrabuddhe, Ashwin Thirumala Kumara,
(more)
Africanized bee , or Killer Bee was a result of trying to make bees give more
honey:
The Africanized honey bees in the Western Hemisphere are descended
from hives operated by biologist Warwick E. Kerr , who had interbred
honey bees from Europe and southern Africa . Kerr was attempting to
breed a strain of bees that would produce more honey and be better adapted
to tropical conditions (i.e., more productive) than the European strain of
honey bee currently in use throughout North, Central and South America.
<...>
But in October of 1957 a visiting beekeeper, noticing that the queen
excluders were interfering with the worker bees movement, removed them
resulting in the accidental release of 26 Tanganyikan swarms of A.m.
scutellata. Following this accidental release, the Africanized swarms spread
out and cross-bred with local European colonies, and their descendants have
since spread throughout the Americas. Because their movement through
South and Central America was rapid and largely unassisted by humans,
Africanized bees have earned the reputation of being one of the most
successful biologically invasive species of all time.
<...>
Africanized bees are characterized by far greater defensiveness than
Upvote 29 Downvote Comments 3+ Share 3
European honey bees . They are more likely to attack a perceived threat
and, when they do so, attack relentlessly and in larger numbers. Also, they
have been known to pursue a perceived threat for a distance of well over 500
meters.
Written 1 Aug.
Upvote 25
Yalanda Medina, Founder, Creative Director of ... (more)

46 upvotes by Arvind Shrihari, Adisa Nicholson, Coleman Foley, (more)
When airlines started implementing fees for checked luggage, carry-on luggage
was exempt. However, if you brought with you a carry on bag that was too large
for the overhead bins, your bag was checked at the gate and stored underneath
the plane with all of the other checked-at-the-counter luggage.
So naturally, everyone started using carry-on luggage that was slightly too big
for the overhead bins. Not only did you get your bags checked for free at the
gate, your bags were returned to you at your arrival gate and you didn't even
have to endure the hassle of going to baggage claim.
Additionally, this also caused flight delays since gate personnel/flight
attendants had to tag, store and retrieve long lines of luggage at the gate,
causing passengers to miss connecting flights, etc.
Upvote 46
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Charles Faraone
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29 upvotes by Piyush Patil, Colin Jensen, Pete Ashly, (more)
Recycled from Charles Faraone's answer to What are some examples of a fluke?
Short answer:
The best example of the law of unintended consequences in the history of
humankind is how a highly evolved dopaminergic system backfired with the
only species capable of understanding how the system works. As a result,
biological programming that encouraged life sustaining behaviors for countless
generations of countless species (and delivered humans into the 21st century)
is in the process of undermining our chances of making it into the 22nd
century by encouraging life-threatening behaviors.
TL/DR answer:
It turns out there is only one addiction and it's to dopamine. Heroin, cocaine,
nicotine, caffein, gambling, and other substances, beliefs, and behaviors are
actually different triggers that release the same neurotransmitter. So while it
might appear there's an array of different addicts with little or nothing in
common, they're actually more similar than most realize. The similarities
include lying, denying, and caring about only one thing protecting and
triggering dopamine flow.
According to Scripps Research Associate Professor Paul J. Kenny, What
happens in addiction is lethally simple. The reward pathways in the brain have
been so overstimulated that the system basically turns on itself, adapting to
the new reality of addiction, whether its cocaine or cupcakes. (News
Release )
The unintended consequence can be traced to the effectiveness of the
dopaminergic system which owes both it's success and failure to extremely
sensitive receptors. So sensitive that a little dopamine goes a long way with
healthy lifeforms while too much "overstimulation" destroys the delicate
receptors until excessive dopamine can never be enough. Once the receptors
are destroyed, the life sustaining biological pleasure cycle is replaced with a
life-threatening bioillogical addiction cycle of powerful cravings and painful
withdrawal.
I seem to be one of the few who believe the list of dopamine triggers should be
extended to include money, religion, and all of Abraham Maslow's deficiency
needs (for safety/power, acceptance/approval, esteem/status) that, no
coincidence, coincide with the survival behaviors exhibited by chimpanzees.
Scientists are currently cranking out two papers an hour linking dopamine with
addictions to cupcakes, tanning, the smell of beer, video games, tanning,
pornography, social media, as well as autism, schizophrenia, Parkinsons
disease, ADHD, delusions, paranoia, and a long list of acknowledged addictions
to drugs and gambling. Oddly (and suspiciously) enough there's very, very, very
little research into the possible connections between dopamine and addictions
to money, safety, power, acceptance, approval, attention, esteem, or status.
The reason for this is that, thanks to a an unintended consequence, our species
is in the grips of the perfect pandemic a worldwide brain disorder that's
capable of keeping sufferers from wanting to know they're suffering from a
brain disorder. Which happens to be the key symptom of all addictions =
addicts don't want to know they're addicts.
Why aren't scientists or the media looking into the possible connections? For
the same reason alcoholics, gamblers, junkies, and junk food addicts aren't
interested in learning they're addicts.
I'm talking about the most destructive pandemic that's ever plagued our
species. If a form of brain cancer negatively impacted on almost everyone on
the planet the headlines, news, talk shows, and internet would be dominated
with features, discussions, gossip, reports, and shows about the disease.
It doesn't matter that our species' future is on the line. Because of the
unintended consequence, the only thing that matters is protecting dopamine
flow against information that threatens safety, esteem, and peer approval (for
anyone foolish enough to try to explain whats going on to addicts who are
more interested in protecting dopamine flow than admitting they're addicts)
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What is Charles Faraone's definitive post or answer in which he explains his
ideas on dopamine flow?
Written 21 Jul.
Lech Dharma, ontologically logical

105 upvotes by Aaron Ellis, Darragh McCarthy, Andrew Koenigsberg, (more)
Off the top of my head, one of the best examples of "the law of unintended
consequences" occurred in those States that made "texting while driving"
against the law (with a hefty fine)---in an effort to decrease auto accidents.
The initial result was that auto accidentsincreased.
Further investigation revealed that "text-addicts", who used to position their

devices on top of the steering wheel while driving, began holding it in their laps
or under the top of the dashboard, where it could not be seen by passing police.
Consequently, they had to take their eyes off the road more often, and caused
more accidents.
Updated 16 Jul.
Upvote 105
Grace S Chang
46 upvotes by Diana Creu, Diana Folt, Adisa Nicholson, (more)
Law:Road Space Rationing (efforts to restrict the number of cars on the road)
UnintendedConsequence: More cars than before
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Bogota, Colombia is notorious for its insane traffic. In an effort to address this
issue, legislature decided to introduce a road space rationing law based on the
last few digits or digit on the car's license plates. For example: cars with a 1, 2,
or 3 on the license plate were permitted to drive Mondays through Wednesdays
and cars with license plates ending in 4, 5, or 6 were permitted to drive
Thursdays through Sunday (the exact law may have been different but this is
the general idea.)
The law's intention was to halve the number of cars on the road. What ended
up happening was that households began double the cars; one to drive Monday
through Wednesday, and another to drive Thursday through Sunday. This
resulted in keeping the congested traffic at status quo (and possibly
exacerbating it) and adding all the negative effects associated with households
owning double the cars.
Freakonomics did a really great podcast on this last year which you can listen
to here: The Cobra Effect: A New Freakonomics Radio Podcast
Written 27 Feb.
Upvote 46
Brian Walshe, not particularly wedded to thi... (more)

212 upvotes by Anirudh Joshi, Joshua Engel, Coleman Foley, (more)
America armed Islamic insurgents in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet occupiers.

I think we all know how that turned out...
Upvote 212
Downvote Comments 3
Share
Ben Barocas, Inquisitive by nature.

28 upvotes by Lindsay X. Lin, Lindsay Williams, Jeff Wright, (more)
Artificialsweetenersmayincreaseyourbloodsugar.
"The research shows that zero-calorie sweeteners such as saccharin,
sucralose and aspartame can alter the population of gut bacteria and trigger
unwanted changes such as higher blood glucose levelsa risk factor for
diabetes. The provocative findings are likely to stoke the simmering
controversy over whether artificial sweeteners help or hinder people's ability
to lose weight and lower the risk of diabetes and obesity."
WSJ: Research Shows Zero-Calorie Sweeteners Can Raise Blood Sugar
Betterprofessorsmayreceiveworseevaluations.
A 1-standard-deviation increase in university teachers effectiveness in
boosting student performance reduces the students evaluations of their
professors teaching quality by about half of a standard deviation, on average
enough to significantly reduce the teachers percentile ranking at the
university, says a team led by Michela Braga of Bocconi University in Italy.
Students, especially the least able, appear to respond negatively in their
evaluations to the extra effort that good teachers require of them, a finding
that casts doubt on universities reliance on student evaluations to inform
faculty-promotion decisions.
HBR Blog: Better Teachers Receive Worse Student Evaluations
Written 17 Sep.
Upvote 28
Downvote Comments 2
Share 3
Dustin Ho
56 upvotes by Adam Bossy, Kaushik Iyer, Zach Ritter, (more)
Braess's paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bra... ) states that adding an

additional road to a transportation network can actually cause an increase in
traffic congestion.
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This has actually been observed in multiple major cities, including New York
[1], Seoul, Boston, and London [2].
[1] http://query.nytimes.com/gst/ful...
[2] http://arxiv.org/abs/0712.1598
Upvote 56
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Best Examples of the Law of Unintended Consequences

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Best Examples of the Law of Unintended Consequences

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11/28/2014

What are the best examples of the law of

Follow Question 1.5k

Facts and Trivia

Update Your Interests

What are some of the cases where

Write your answer, or answer later.

3.1k upvotes by Charles Faraone, Al Taylor, Pam Berkeley, (more)

My favorite example of the law of unintended consequences is Hoy No

Law of Unintended Consequences: Why

What are the best historical examples of

Pick new people and topics to follow

Comments 8+ Share 18 Downvote

There's more on Quora...

Latest activity: 11h ago

What are interesting examples of

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Daniel Morgan, Business Valuator, Entrepreneu... (more)

One particularly famous example is the Cobra effect . From Wikipedia:

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Aaron Ellis, Screenwriter

A twofold example of Invasion Biology.

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Luke Bornheimer, Product Designer, Nickel (nick... (more)

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Jeremy Arnold, A living unintended consequence.

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Mark Binfield, BS in Economics

The employer-based US health care market is a perfect example.

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Jann Hoke, Writer. Movie/Book critic. Emp... (more)

Unintended consequence: Screwing up the native fish population in Flathead

and the (now endangered) Bull Trout:

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Brian O'Conaill, journeyman lawyer/coder/MIT ad... (more)

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Nate Anderson, Cofounder, CEO of ClaritySpring

The D.C. local government is a constant source of unintended consequences.

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Adrian Stone, AngelCube | Investor - From Fo... (more)

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Andy Micone, Futures adviser for TechCast G... (more)

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Today, childbirth is a relatively routine process, with the current rate of

Downvote Comments 25+ Share 7

Tim Scott, Software Developer, Entrepreneur

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Brian Grimmer, Why not

The Streisand effect is a primarily online phenomenon in which an attempt to

Diana Creu, Photo spammer @ http://dianacr... (more)

The unintended consequence that I am about to contribute here is a little

Downvote Comments 7+ Share 1

Rakesh Agrawal, CEO, reDesign mobile

When San Francisco banned givingawaytoyswithhappymealsthat

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Andy Warwick, I voted once

I thought this story is pretty cute.

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Tyson Rosage, It doesn't matter how smart yo... (more)

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Caroline Zelonka, thinks science is cool.

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