Alex Tabarrok posts the best short definition of the law of unintended consequences I’ve seen:
The law of unintended consequences is what happens when a simple system tries to regulate a complex system.
Definition of the law of unintended consequences
January 24th, 2008 · 3 Comments
Tags: · economics
3 responses so far ↓
1 Duff // Jan 24, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Wow. That’s a fascinating definition. It certainly seems to apply whenever government at any level attempts to mess with the free market.
2 Rafe // Jan 24, 2008 at 3:14 pm
The thing is though that it’s not government that wants to mess with the free market, it’s people who want to mess with the free market, and government is one means by which people do so.
Markets do not necessarily want to be free.
3 Quillian // Jan 24, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Yes, it’s interesting that most all economics really is ‘theory’. For all his faults, in Greenspan’s book, even he refers to a lawless market not as the ‘free market’, but as a ‘black market’.
And despite this complexity of the economic of the market, you find people who wish to impose a simple ‘flat’ tax.
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