Unintended Cosequences

There is a saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The other day I googled a person who I had some business encounters with during the telecom heydays. She was a financial executive at a large company, retired young, bought a yacht and sailed around the world. During the Google search I found she decided to return to her roots in Newfoundland and share some of her success with the community where she grew up. One of the first things she did was to set up a scholarship for local students. Community leaders said they really appreciate her wanting to help but with the community’s financial woes, many people are leaving the fishing villages for jobs in the more industrialized parts of Canada and the scholarships would encourage more of the best and brightest to leave. This story made me think of a few other instances I have run across over the years where an obvious good could potentially backfire. About thirty of forty years ago I was watching a debate on PBS between two groups with one advocating banning smoking in public places and the other opposed. During the debate someone from the “ban smoking” side pointed out that if everyone stopped smoking, life expectancy would go up by some number of years. A crusty old guy from the other side very calmly said; can you imagine what would happen if the life expectancy suddenly went up that much. Of course continuing promoting smoking to keep the population growth at a reasonable level is a poor argument but nevertheless, a rapid rise in population would present problems catching society unprepared to feed and care for its suddenly increased number of elders. Around the same time I heard another debate where one side argued that providing food aid was a bad idea and the other side argued, not that it was a good idea but it wasn’t as bad as the others claimed. On the face of it, this seems like a ridiculous debate. Of course feeding the hungry is a good thing. The side arguing against, pointed out a few shortcomings with providing food aid. In most instances truly starving people didn’t have the strength to get to the distribution centers. In cases of droughts the outputs of agriculture were very low and farmers would give up whatever farming they could do to walk for days to get the donated food. In some places the food was used for bribes and even sometimes to enslave people. Wheat products were provided to areas that could not grow wheat and in time people became accustomed to wheat which they then had to buy from the countries that donated them. One country, I believe it was in South America, outlawed foreign assistance because of the havoc it raised in the aftermath of an earthquake. By no means am I proposing that we encourage the early deaths or not feed the hungry and help the needy (although I think Ayn Rand maybe would). Human nature requires us to help, some of us only the deserving others all needy. I am just pointing out the multitude of interactions within societies are very complex and require well thought out solutions. Even then we will sometimes be wrong.