Unintended Consequences - Commentary

How much should government be involved in our daily lives?  In a just society those who have more help those who have less.  Should this be left to individual choice, or should it be government-mandated?  This is part of a larger question regarding the purpose of government.  Does government exist to help create a just society, distributing wealth equitably and protecting the most vulnerable?  Or does government exist to create a safe space in which individuals are free to live their lives as they see fit without having to worry about attacks from without or within?

The first school of thought manifests as “big government”.  Government is seen as the vehicle through which societal problems can and should be solved.  The second school of thought manifests as limited government.  According to this school, government is at its best when it is not noticed.

The problem with the first school of thought, is that many “solutions” proposed and implemented by government are not thoroughly thought through.  Many times they simply don’t work.  Many times there are unintended consequences.  And many times these unintended consequences are disastrous.

The assumption here is that national governments and world bodies such as the World Health Organization (WHO) in proposing and implementing various solutions are honestly trying to solve a problem.  They are not trying to use “solutions” to further a meta-agenda.  For example, the purpose of COVID-19 vaccines is to prevent the disastrous effects of COVID-19 and not depopulation.  The purpose of Net-Zero Carbon Emission policies is to prevent global warming, not to advance the WEF’s 2030 agenda in which we own nothing and are totally dependent on a technocratic elite.  The purpose of LBJ’s War on Poverty was to raise minorities out of poverty, not to make them dependent on government and create an automatic voter base for the Democrat party.

These are major assumptions.  It is not at all clear that governments and world bodies are honestly promoting various solutions to solve problems instead of to further agendas. Be that as it may, let’s assume for the purpose of this exercise that governments and global bodies are being honest.  Then we need to consider policies implemented to solve various problems, whether they were effective and whether they created unintended consequences.

Here are several examples in no particular order:

• Woke university officials at Edinburgh University changed the name of one of its buildings honoring the great Scottish philosopher David Hume because of a “racist” (by today’s standards) footnote he wrote. 

Woke people apparently do not understand the word anachronism.  They judge everything that’s come before by their relatively new ideology. 

Unintended consequences: Donors cancelled donations to the tune of GBP 2 million.

•  Lockdowns across the globe during the COVID-19 pandemic were instituted at first to “flatten the curve”, that is, to relieve pressure on countries’ health care systems from the expected inundation of COVID-19 patients.  They were subsequently extended to reduce the spread of the virus.

Effectiveness: Recent studies show that the lockdowns were ineffective.  Here is one example among many.  They did not stop the spread of the virus.  

Unintended consequences: Lockdowns damaged children’s speech and mental development.  A landmark investigation in the UK revealed the devastating toll of lockdowns on children.  Lockdowns were responsible for hundreds of thousands of child deaths mostly in Africa. 

The economic meltdown we are currently experiencing is the direct result of the lockdowns.  Many thought “governments could just shut down an economy and turn it back on without consequence.”  They could not have been more misguided.

Thousands of small businesses were shut down never to open again but mega businesses like Amazon and Target were allowed to remain open.  In fact, the lockdowns resulted in one of the biggest transfers of wealth in recent history.  The likes of Amazon grew in value by billions of dollars while small business owners were impoverished.

Now researchers in the UK are blaming the severe pediatric hepatitis global outbreak on lockdowns.  Very young children develop immunities to common viruses through interaction with other children.  The lockdowns prevented this crucial stage from happening.  

• Face masks were mandated to protect the wearers from contracting COVID-19 and transmitting the virus to others.  

There are hundreds of studies showing that face masks are ineffective and cause harm.  

• COVID-19 vaccines.  We were told that the vaccines would stop the pandemic in its tracks.  We were told the vaccines would prevent infection and transmission.  We were told the vaccines are safe.  We were told the spike proteins that the mRNA instructs the body to create stays at the injection site and last only a few hours, maximum a couple of days.

Effectiveness: The vaccines did not stop the pandemic.  They did not prevent infection nor transmission.

Unintended consequences: More adverse events reported in VAERS for these vaccines since the vaccine roll outs than all other vaccines for the entire thirty-two-year history of VAERS combined.  In Europe a recent study found 0.2-0.3% with at least one shot suffered an a serious adverse reaction. The spike protein proliferates throughout the body.  There are more COVID-19 infections among the vaccinated than among the unvaccinated.  The vaccines are causing an uptick in cardiovascular events and other diseases including cardiac arrests and strokes, sudden death among young adults, myocarditis and pericarditis.

• Pandemic Economic Relief: The U.S. federal government implemented a plan to provide economic relief to all citizens.  

Creating money when the economy is not expanding is the very definition of inflation (more money for the same amount of goods and services).  Inflation that results from an overheated economy can be mitigated with higher interest rates.  However, artificially created inflation, when the economy is not growing produces stagflation: money has less buying power and people have the same amount or less money.  Indeed, the US GDP has contracted for the past two quarters indicating the beginning of a recession.

• Climate Change Policies: 

The Biden administration cancels the Keystone oil pipeline on day 1 of his administration and subsequently makes it very difficult for oil and gas companies to drill for new oil.  

So far, there is no noticeable difference in the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and no difference in the global average temperature.

Unintended consequences: Energy prices skyrocket.  Since the entire economy needs affordable energy to run, this has had a direct effect on prices in all segments of the economy fueling the worst inflation in 40 years.

Greenhouse gas emission restrictions.  The purpose is to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which is supposed to result in lower average global temperatures.

It is too early to know if this will be effective.

Unintended consequences: A draconian move away from fossil fuels to renewable energy is a move from affordable and reliable energy to unaffordable and unreliable energy.  The results in countries that have already implemented this are catastrophic.  

In Sri Lanka there has been social unrest.  Government leaders have been forced to resign.  Some have had to flee the country.  People are starving and cannot get fuel.  

Germany is experiencing record high energy prices.  Because it has weaned itself off coal, it has become more dependent on Russian gas and oil.  In fact, 50% of its energy needs are being supplied (until recently) by Russia.  Russia in response to NATO sanctions has cut down the amount of gas it is supplying Europe.  As a result, Germany is going back to coal!

The Netherlands, Canada and Ireland are planning to implement greenhouse gas restrictions on farmers.  As a result, a significant number of farms are expected to go bankrupt affecting the world’s food supply.  The Netherlands is the second biggest food exporter on the planet.

This is a partial list but it gives an idea of how wrongheaded government policies, even if they are made in good faith create avoidable catastrophes.  It also should give us pause.  Maybe individual citizens working with regional and local bodies are more likely to solve problems efficiently than overblown national and global bureaucracies.

As I mentioned earlier, this article assumes that governments and world bodies are acting in good faith and suffer merely from incompetence.  It is quite likely, though, that they are also acting to promote an insidious agenda whose goal is a one world government run by technocrats.