Intended And Any Unintended Consequences (Secondary Effects) Of A Government Policy

The regulation of accidental penalties, often cited but seldom characterised, is that activities of people—and particularly of government—always have consequences that are unanticipated or unintended. Economists and other communal researchers have heeded its power for centuries; for just as long, political leaders and well liked attitude have mostly disregarded it.

The notion of accidental penalties is one of the construction blocks of economics. Adam Smith's “invisible hand,” the most well renowned metaphor in communal research, is an demonstration of a affirmative accidental consequence. Smith sustained that each one-by-one, searching only his own gain, “is directed by an unseen hand to encourage an end which was no part of his intention,” that end being the public interest. “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, or the baker, that we anticipate our dinner,” Smith composed, “but from consider to their own self interest (Merton 635-893).”

In the first half of the nineteenth 100 years, the well renowned French financial reporter Frédéric Bastiat often differentiated in his composing between the “seen” and the “unseen.” The glimpsed were the conspicuous evident penalties of an activity or policy.

Merton marked the third source the “imperious immediacy of interest.” By that he was mentioning to examples in which somebody likes the proposed outcome of an activity so much that he purposefully selects to disregard any accidental effects. (That kind of willful ignorance is very distinct from factual ignorance.) The Food and Drug Administration, for demonstration, conceives tremendously destructive accidental penalties with its guideline of pharmaceutical drugs. By needing that pharmaceuticals be not only protected but efficacious for a specific use, as it has finished since 1962, (www.econlib.org) the FDA has slowed down down by years the introduction of each drug. An accidental outcome is that numerous ...