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Rob Norton, former economics editor at Fortune, says that "the law of unintended consequences, often cited but rarely defined, is that actions of people - and especially of government -always have effects that are unanticipated or 'unintended.' Economists and other social scientists have heeded its power for centuries; for just as long, politicians and popular opinion have largely ignored it."
This law is more easily understood with a metaphor and a story. Many of you will know about the passenger pigeon, which numbered in the billions in the early part of the 19th century and became extinct when the last known representative, Martha, died in captivity on September 1, 1914. The size of passenger pigeon flocks were legendary and often estimated to contain as many as 4 billion birds! It must have been an amazing sight as pigeons darkened the skies. The bird's rapid extinction was primarily us. They were such easy targets that one gunshot could kill a dozen birds. At one time, passenger pigeon hunting competitions were held that required killing a minimum of 30,000 birds to even be close to winning!
Interestingly, Lyme disease, the illness that is spread to thousands of people annually by ticks, is tied to the extinction of the passenger pigeon. As part of their natural cycle, oak trees produce an extra abundance of acorns every few years. Until they were rendered extinct by human beings, these huge flocks of passenger pigeons thrived on these acorns in northeastern forests. This additional acorn production by oak trees toppled the dominos in an ecological chain reaction. Acorns attract the two key animals that are critical to Lyme disease dispersion -white-tailed deer and...