By John Sykes
Wikipedia: “The law of unintended consequences [LUC]is an adage or idiom warning that an intervention in a complex system invariably creates unanticipated and often undesirable outcomes”.
Wikipedia also says that the outcomes can be classified as “positive”, “negative”, “perverse”. It would follow, at least to us conservatives, that the bigger the government gets, the more unintended consequences will occur. I’d hazard a bet that by far the majority will be fiascos. LUC will most probably not be LUCKY (sorry).
A summary of today’s WSJ’s LUC example “Peak Water” shows:
- AZ mandated that utilities produce 15% of their electricity from green sources by 2025.
- Unfortunately, utility-scale solar power uses twice as much water per mwh as coal-fired powerplants which may consume as much as 1% of the state's finite water resources within a few years.
- AZ is an electricity exporter so its green regulations actually export their short supply of water.
I didn’t have to look far for another LUC example. From the next WSJ editorial down in today’s paper, “Kilroy Was Here, Alas”:
- A line in the Dodd-Frank financial reform fiasco means that credit raters must consent before their ratings can be used in registration statement filings.
- This greatly increases credit raters’ liabilities so they said they would not give their consents.
- The new registration markets froze for days until the SEC suspended this idiocy for 6 months.
The Constitution of the United States consists of 4618 words (including signatures) arranged into seven articles. The ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank and Stimulus bills have over 8,000 pages – before the regulations are even written and added to the mess.
Now we just have to hope that we can survive the unintended - maybe - negative and perverse consequences of the statist Obama administration.
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