The law of unintended consquences

It is called the Cobra Effect. Some people describe it as the Law of Unintended Consequences. Economists and politicians refer to this law as being a result of unforseen outcomes to decisions taken. For instance, a government policy that is meant to do one thing, but ends up causing something that was not planned. Let us illustrate. Earlier we said it is also called the Cobra Effect. The term cobra effect originated in a story that describes an occurrence in the time of Colonial Rule in India, The British government was concerned about the number of poisonous cobra Snakes in New Delhi. The government offered a payment for every dead cobra. At the beginning, it was a pefect strategy to rid the city of the snakes as large numbers of snakes were killed by residents for the money. Much later, however, creative and enterprising people began to breed cobras for the money. The government became aware of this, and the reward programme was stopped. Cobra breeders then set the snakes free. As a result, in the final analysis, the wild cobra population increased in Delhi.
If you have ever planned a scheme, polilcy or elaborate plan and at the end of the day, it ended up defeating the very purpose for which it was established then you have a situation in which “the Law of Unintended Consequences” has taken place. It is not possible to unravel all eventualities and unforeseen circumstances, but managers, politicians and economists can subject policies, strategies and ideas to scenario situations before they take their final decisions to implment. In doing so, they might have a fair idea of how to nip unwanted sitatuions in the bud.
In Hanoi, Vietnam in 1902, the colonial government needed to reduce the population of rats in the Asian city. So it created a programme that paid a reward for each rat killed. To collect the money, people would need to provide the tail of a rat.Soon enough, the government officials began noticing rats in Hanoi with no tails. The Vietnamese rat catchers would capture rats, cut off their tails, and then release them back into the sewers so that they could procreate and produce more rats, thereby increasing the rat catchers’ stake in the process. Of course instead of the rat population decreasing, it doubled!
We should never think we have total control of situations, expecting that our solutions will always solve the problem at hand. As we have seen, sometimes, the solution can aggravate the problem.The benefits brought by the internet are too vast to mention, yet viral misinformation, vast erosion of privacy, and the diminishing patience of society as a whole are all unintended consequences. Currently the world is facing a crisis of monumental proportions and even thought social media via the internet is serving the purpose of enligtening people about the Corona Virus, a lot of misinformation is being spread by mischief makers and the damage in many cases is difficult to quantify.
Right now another debate about the safety of 5G technology is taking the waves and strangely enough many people are linking the base stations and the cables that enhance 5G to ailments such as cancer and even the COVID 19! Base stations are being destroyed in Europe in a period when the world is going through turmoil for a lack of control of a deadly disease.
In the field of medical science, unintended consequences appear in the form of side effects of medicine and procedures on the part of the patients. As we write this, a vaccine is in the works for COVID 19.Medical personnel in France let it slip that trials should be performed in Africa before people in Europe should be exposed to it. Not that alone, technology that was invented and installed in clinics in many countries has complicated medical work instead of simplifying it. With computer software and artificial intelligence, if it takes longer to process clinical information, then there is a problem rather than a solution. The side effects in medicine are so dire that patients often have to choose between enduring harrowing side effects of drugs and the suffering that comes with the symptoms of their sickness. In many ways it is a catch 22. Patients have fallen ill dastardly from the effects of chemotheraphy to cure cancer in the body. The experience related by patients is so deplorable that some critics of medical procedure wonder if the process is worth it at all.
On the whole, the Law of Unintended Consequences teaches us to consider the outcomes of every decision we make. More often than we expect, things might not go the way we plan them. Especially when a bounty or gift is invovled in eradicating a nagging problem as we have seen in the cobra situation and rat story.