{"id":7296,"date":"2016-02-29T20:12:11","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T01:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/?p=7296"},"modified":"2016-02-29T20:12:11","modified_gmt":"2016-03-01T01:12:11","slug":"unexpected-consequences-in-governmental-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/2016\/02\/29\/unexpected-consequences-in-governmental-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Unexpected Consequences in Governmental Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the mid-19th<\/sup> century, En\"\"glish engineer George Cayley created a safety device that promised to save millions of lives today. His seatbelt kept automobile passengers from flying from the car after a collision, and eventually was installed in every car. However, seatbelts did not save as many lives as they\u00a0should have. Geographer and risk theorist John Adams analyzed the numbers and found that \u201ccontrary to conventional wisdom, mandating the use of seat belts in\u00a018 countries resulted in\u00a0either no change or actually a net increase in road accident deaths,\u201d as Time<\/a> puts it. Why? This was a classic case, in economic theory, of the Law of Unexpected Consequences: when<\/a> the \u201cactions of people\u2014and especially of government\u2014always have effects that are unanticipated or unintended.\u201dWith the net number of accidents staying the same, it turned out that people felt more reckless when wearing a seatbelt and engaged in riskier behavior.<\/p>\n

In 1989, Mexico City introduced an ambitious program to reduce smoke and environmental damage within its boundaries. Hoy No Circula<\/a><\/em> reduced vehicular emissions by prohibiting some cars on the road on certain days of the week, based on the last digit of license plate numbers. Explains Lucas Davis in an RFF article, \u201cWhile the hope<\/a> was that drivers would shift to low-emissions forms of transportation, such as the subway or the public or private bus systems, no\u00a0one got out of\u00a0their cars. Instead, the evidence indicates that HNC has led to an increase in the total number of vehicles in circulation. What is the easiest way to circumvent the\u00a0Hoy No Circula\u00a0program? Buy a second car. A driver with\u00a0two vehicles can drive\u00a0every day of the week as long as the last digits of the license plates don\u2019t match. Plus, the data shows that most of the new cars are, in fact, used and imported from other parts of the country, and thus tend to be high-emitting.\u201d<\/p>\n

These stories are a cautionary tale to those who are certain of which governmental policies they feel will solve their problems. Reality does not always reflect what is expected. The coal used for electric batteries in Tesla cars makes them worse for the environment than BMWs<\/a> in some areas. High minimum wages in 2013 caused an estimated 700,000 jobs to be lost<\/a>. The real world is fickle. It doesn\u2019t lend itself to expectations as easily as we would like to believe. In the fragile ecosystem of human interaction and psychology, changing one variable, regulating it, or leaving it alone, can have completely unexpected beneficial or devastating effects on another. \u00a0It behooves those who confidently predict\u00a0policy effects to keep this in mind as the United States passes laws and navigates intricate policy strategy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The coal used for electric batteries in Tesla cars makes them worse for the environment than gas-fueled cars in some areas. High minimum wages in 2013 caused an estimated 700,000 jobs to be lost. The real world is fickle. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":703,"featured_media":7297,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[709,743,886,1028,1128,1396,1596,1950,2178,2322],"class_list":["post-7296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-economics","tag-environment","tag-george-cayley","tag-hoy-no-circula","tag-jobs","tag-mexico-city","tag-opinions","tag-seatbelt","tag-tesla-cars","tag-unexpected-consequences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/703"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}