Nadine wrote: "Because Liberals,... have never heard of the law of unintended consequences."
You wrote "Please explain the law of unintended consequences.... Foreign to me.:"
Which sort of proves her point, doesn't it? <g>
I see there are other replies, so you probably know by now. But here's a classic case. Smallpox was one a scourge of childhood. Then along came a vaccine, and we made smallpos innoculation mandatory and essentially eliminated smallpox as a scourge of childhood. Which was a very good thing. But the vaccine killed a small proportion of children. (No, that's not the unintended consequence. That was an anticipated side effect.) Now we are seeing a generation of parents who have never seen a case of smallpox, have no idea how devestating it is, but see that the vaccine can cause occasional deaths, so are resisting innoculating their children. Since in some areas they now have the right to refuse innoculation, and are doing so, eventually smallpox will return and become a childhood problem again.
So the unintended consequence of the success of the smallpox innoculation program will be the return of smallpox. Whereas if soem children in each generation had not been innoculated and had gotten smallpox, or if the vaccine hadn't been so effective, parents would still be seeing how terrible a disease it is and would be making sure their children were innoculated.
Another example: some parents keep their children away from dirt and germs as much as possible to protect them from diseases. They keep them away from daycares, for example. But we're now finding that children who are exposed more to germs and other children's illnesses while young get sick much less because they build up immunity. So the unintended consequence of parents overprotecting their childen to keep them well is that in fact the children get sicker. |
