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Backfires, blowbacks and unintended consequences — how good turns can turn out bad
Prohibition in the USA, begun nationwide a hundred years ago this year, was intended to improve society but simply gave rise to criminal empires trading in illicit alcohol and, instead of making Americans healthier without drink, it caused the opposite with people making their own wine, beer and spirits.
Unintended consequences are a fact of life. In fact, they’re almost a law of existence, arising from naivety, lack of foresight or sheer incompetence, or a combination of these things, in human affairs. Trying to achieve the best result in one area can have the opposite effect in another. Prohibition was a classic case.
Clive Wills became fascinated by the subject of unintended consequences while studying economics, since when he has obtained a degree in philosophy and worked in business affairs in the music business. Now, he has written Unintended Consequences: or why do bad things happen to good decisions? (Iff Books, UK £14.99 / US £23.95, April 2020), an entertaining and well-crafted compendium of catastrophe.
As H L Mencken (1880–1956), the American journalist, essayist, satirist and cultural critic, who is quoted by Wills, said: ‘For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.’
