We have all heard of the “Law of Unintended Consequences.” Do you know what it is?
In the social sciences, unintended consequences (sometimes unanticipated consequences or unforeseen consequences) are outcomes that are not the outcomes intended by a purposeful action. The concept has long existed but was named and popularised in the 20th century by American sociologist Robert K. Merton.[1] Unintended consequences can be roughly grouped into three types:
- A positive, unexpected benefit (usually referred to as serendipity or a windfall).
- A negative, unexpected detriment occurring in addition to the desired effect of the policy (e.g., while irrigation schemes provide people with water for agriculture, they can increase waterborne diseases that have devastating health effects, such as schistosomiasis).
- A perverse effect contrary to what was originally intended (when an intended solution makes a problem worse), such as when a policy has a perverse incentive that causes actions opposite to what was intended.
One of the phrases that is often used in a very negative way is the phrase, “the military-industrial complex.” President Eisenhower was the first one to warn about the dangers of such a complex. However, as the definition above points out, sometimes the unintended consequences are positive. I can give you two examples of such a positive outcome. The United States of America as a culture has a problem with using national funds to fund infrastructure improvements. Even if it is a project that would be very difficult for private industry to carry out, we tend to have the bias that somehow everything works better if private industry does it. But, that is not always accurate. There are two cases that are interesting.
Prior to World War II, Germany built the autobahn system. When Führer und Reichskanzler Hitler began his assaults, the autobahn became the way in which he was able to quickly and efficiently move both his troops and his tanks to the border to begin the attacks. After World War II was over, General of the Armies Eisenhower was elected President of the United States. He was convinced that the USA must have the same capabilities. When he was a much younger officer he had to take a convoy from one coast of the USA to the other. It took over a month. That experience was the impulse for the Interstate system. The original name of the Interstate system was the, “National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.” It was built with military money to ensure that the USA military could move supplies as quickly as needed to any part of the country.
But the Interstate system brought a fantastic and unexpected change to the USA. As a result of the Interstate system, free highways were available that led out to previously uninhabited sections of America. The result of President Eisenhower’s drive to militarily protect the USA was the birth of suburbia. More than that, McDonald’s and every fast food joint that you can imagine is the child of an Interstate system that permitted fast travel from point A to point B. So, the result of a defense expenditure was a system of travel that completely changed the way in which our society functions. It became possible to take a two week vacation from New York in order to travel with your children to Disneyland in California and still have over a week to spend as a family in Disneyland. Eisenhower’s defense system became one of the items that began to nationalize the various regional cultures as well as making possible suburbia, Ozzie and Harriett, Leave it to Beaver, and any of several others details of our “modern” American culture.
Another example is the need that the USA had to allow federal computers to communicate with each other across distances. Tax money was used to develop ARPA net, a way to allow that communication. ARPA net was the parent of what became the Internet. Up until less than 20 years ago, the American defense establishment still pumped large amounts of money into the Internet in order to ensure its functionality. Few would be the people (except for the Tea Party extremists) who would argue that this was money badly spent!
What is the lesson? I would argue that the lesson is that the USA needs to be significantly more willing to fund basic science research, rather than mistakenly relying on the free market system to allow us to develop the technology that we need to keep us competitive in the future.
Interesting trivia: The autobahn went from city to city — but only from the outskirts of the cities, not through the cities. Eisenhower wanted to do the same thing, but had to agree to have the interstates run through the cities in order to get enough political support for the project.
The ARPA net was designed to not have a central point of control — or failure. The idea was that if one computer was knocked out, the rest of the network would continue to function. Of course, that led to a situation where no one can control the Internet. There is no ‘master switch’ as it were.
And since the internet is not something with a master switch intellectual property has become a controversial topic with some people claiming that copyright and intellectual property are immoral. I’ve been in some odd discussions with people who genuinely claim intellectual property is immoral because once you own a CD you should be able to copy it as much as you want. I don’t know how a person who had to scroll through at least six end user licensing agreements to make that kind of claim on the internet actually thinks through intellectual property being immoral but some of them seem to be watching Cato Institute videos. 🙂 Ironiclly an invention from one government branch made life exponentially more stressful for another government branch.
Unintended consequences show up every place. But, I would argue that the resulting Internet is much more positive than the negative that the copyright office suffers.
True, the advantages of the internet are vastly more for the disabled than the disadvantages the internet may bring. Most of the music I like is written by living musicians from eastern Europe. If there were no internet I’d be a guy with a disability and no job stuck unable to stay in touch with most of my friends and have even less of a shot at landing any kind of job.