After last week’s post I became interested in the way acclimatization societies created unintended consequences from non-native species introduction around the world. Those societies sometimes introduced species without thought to impact on the local environment. More recently, governments developed environmental protection regulations to protect endangered species. These regulations have had Cobra Effect type second-order effects as well. Let’s look at why and what we could do instead. Continue reading “Importing Risk and Risky Regulations”
One Child Policy (Outcomes in China)
After 35 years, China’s One Child Policy has come to an end. Carried out with high compliance and across a large population (at scale a decision is at greater risk of second-order effects) the policy had unexpected outcomes.
The One Child Policy has been a common topic over the years (even the Economist published a recent article on “The Law of Unintended Consequences,” about changed attitudes in China toward family size). Let’s look at what happened over the last 35 years and why.