Unintended Consequences
As I have mentioned in my previous article on the census, I don’t believe that there is much of a case for it to be used in state planning. In this article I will talk about another reason why state planning is generally a bad idea.
The authoritarian statist will believe that the state is the one true holder of all knowledge and that it never makes any mistakes. But the government is made up of people, with all their human failings. And also the failings of group think and committees. So in actual fact the state is probably the worst place to make decisions.
Many a time the state will plan something only to find that events don’t proceed as planned, or that some unintended consequences occur. For instance, in California the state was persuaded of the benefits of the green agenda and so they set out a law that all the Johns should be low flush types. But the unintended consequence of this was that the sewers which were designed for high flow rates of water started to back up and create a stink. So now California does save water, but it is not being green as they flush loads of sodium hydroxide (caustic soda to you and me) down the sewers to counter the smell.
Another example of brilliant planning by the state, or should I say ill thought out planning by humans, is again in the realm of Green Eco. In this case it’s in Spain where the were so keen to follow the Green agenda and knowing that they have lots of sun that they thought that having high feed in tariffs would encourage everyone to take up the cause. But through lack of thought by the planners they didn’t take into account human ingenuity which led to photovoltaic panels producing energy in the middle of the night – because diesel fuel is cheaper than the feed in tariff.
I’m sure you can find many more examples of such unintended consequences caused by the all-knowing-all-powerful-never-make-a-mistake state.
SBML
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March 8, 2011 at 08:45 -
I think you’ll find it was sodium hypochlorite (bleach) that they were flushing down the tubes. That’s not so bad, as it will make the whole city smell like a swimming pool and evaporate from the water in a few days. Caustic soda would be killing fish from there to Hawaii.
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March 8, 2011 at 09:06 -
I admit I am not too concerned about handing over my information to the government census – probably because I am fundamentally quite boring. I am middle-aged, middle income, (some would argue) middle class and these days live almost on the edges of middle-Britain.
But there are many out there who would be more reluctant to hand over information because they either do not want to reveal their past, or feel it is an invasion of their privacy. My concern is particularly for these people. Let’s face it, the government do not have a particularly good track record on handling data securely. Do a google search for government computer bungles in the UK ” and you get 56,500 hits! Now extract 90% (an arbitrary figure just used for arguments sake) of those as being rubbish and you are still left with 5,650 foul ups.
Given the Census will all be computerised it beggars belief the kind of data loss they will achieve – but you can bet it will be substantial. Add to that errors and ommisions and it starts to make the whole thing pretty meaningless.
It rather makes you wonder why they are doing it? Do I hear sounds of George Orwell’s words in “1984″ ringing in the air?
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March 8, 2011 at 11:53 -
It’s not the information which, let’s face it, is available from many other sources. What we are being asked in the census is fairly uncontroversial, and the religion question is voluntary anyway. The sexuality and other questions have been left out. No, my concern is not with privacy as such; it’s the way that the census assumes a relationship between me and the ‘state’ which I am not comfortable with. They assume the right to ask me about myself, with the threat of extortion or imprisonment if I decline to answer. I don’t have the right as a private citizen to demand to know your personal circumstances, so why should I through an organisation purporting to represent me?
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March 8, 2011 at 16:30 -
Yea, the information is already available and known so I’m not that precious about giving it. But the census is a waste of time and money in terms of goverment planning.
As other bloggers have mentioned, John James Cowperthwaite famously refused to collect statistics so that his civil servents in Hong Kong couldn’t work out what nice plan to use next on the population.
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March 8, 2011 at 19:07 -
And the Company tasked with collecting & collating data on all us British people is American owned. And the US government can demand that data.
Still, I suppose it’s marginally better than it being EU owned.
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March 8, 2011 at 09:30 -
Three of four bottles of Chateau Mind Bleach at the Christmans Party had the unintended consequence that I woke up with Gemma from accounts. Also that a photocopy of a certain part of my anatomy was available for circularisation. You see, a butterfly flaps it’s wings in Tibet and…
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March 8, 2011 at 10:07 -
I’m a high flush type – not that I needed another excuse to avoid California.
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March 8, 2011 at 13:43 -
As the saying goes
“a camel is a horse designed by a committee” -
March 8, 2011 at 16:08 -
Hmmmm, I am not convinced that some of the examples are unintended consequences, I would classify them as rank stupidity because the outcomes could and probably were predicted by knowledgable people within those industries. Those opinions were simply ignored by governments, because the consequences were not immediate and they wanted to appear “to be doing something”.
It seems that current governments everywhere are flailing around trying to attract a small minority of voters to their constituency at ANY COST. The two examples given relate to the “green agenda” where any sensible thinking was long ago abandoned for feel-good action of any nature and at any cost.
But I will play the game of “unintended consequences”=stupidity the following examples quickly come to mind:
low wattage lighting,
windmills,
EU membership,
immigration policy,
sell-off gold reserves,
PFI,
bash-the-bankersIt is obvious that government is at the root of all these decisions, the cure is less government. One way to effect less government is to provide less information about you and your family to the government.I assume the census requests salary information, I always answer by stating what is left after all statutary deductions and reasonable expenses for work-clothing, wvehicle expenses, train fares etc. Just saying.
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March 8, 2011 at 16:26 -
There is quite a correlation between unintended consequences and stupidity. But other than the gold and EU membership were it is obvious that they wanted that path or were extremely stupid, the others were ones where the policy makers disengaged their brains when accepting the word of the special interest groups.
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March 8, 2011 at 21:01 -
Friends in Ireland tell me that the consequences of the ‘incentives’ (fines) to reduce non-degradable household waste are permanent bonfires and a huge increase in flytipping.
The state probably responds by increasing CCTV at potential dumpsites (increasing taxes to cover it), but if they get in to a battle of wills over it people would simply wrap scarfs round their faces and put temp covers over the numberplates. It’s forcing people who
wouldn’t normally break the law to have a ‘Colditz’ mentality where defiance is morally justified. -
March 8, 2011 at 21:15 -
“Friends in Ireland tell me that the consequences of the ‘incentives’ (fines) to reduce non-degradable household waste are permanent bonfires and a huge increase in flytipping.”
Ah, that’s why bonfires are now illegal in Ireland.
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