This is the last blog about my seven biases.
Many, if not most, of our domestic social problems are the result of unintended consequences of government laws or policies.
I can only support a generalization of this sort with a few examples. Showing unintended consequences of government programs is difficult and when presented with a good counter example I may not have an explanation of why a particular social ill is connected to a prior unintended consequence.
Example number one....
Example number one of laws that created later social ills: many businesses in small towns in rural areas have gone out of business because a Wal-Mart in their region has attracted the local customers with lower prices based on Wal-Mart's efficiencies and scale of operation.
The very people who claim to love small businesses in small towns were the ones who supported huge federal farm subsidies to protect small family farms. It was federal subsidies to farming that created the $30 billion cash surplus that accumulated in agricultural hinterlands that in turn created a company that was founded and grew by serving rural farmers: Wal-Mart of tiny rural Bentonville, Louisiana.
My second example is public housing. Public housing was generally built in isolated non-commercial clusters to provide the low income population with safe and healthy housing using public subsidies. In almost every city, concentrated public housing, devoid of retail businesses, has created a lawless environment where criminals are safe, crime is the highest and health is the poorest.
The best examples of public housing projects that are not hot beds of crime are where subsidies go to rental vouchers and housing is mixed racially, integrated with affordable market rate housing and retail services are built into the project.
You can offer your own examples of current social problems that are the result of unintended consequences of earlier government policies.