Unintended Consequences - Essays 1 to 25

In an interconnected world, we need to learn about systems, complexity, and unintended consequences. Those who do that can thrive. Those who don’t risk ruin. I help my readers gain that knowledge, new perspectives, and frameworks to evaluate decisions.

This edition includes the following essays:

• The Cobra Effect Redesigned
• Diet, Dying, and Demographics
• Smoking Bans, Smoking's Back
• The University Fundraising Arms Race
• Egypt's Aswan Damn
• What Are Unexpected Benefits?
• One Child Policy
• Visibility of Cost
• Anything at Scale
• Uncertainty Saves Lives: the Peltzman Effect
• Substitutions: The Temperance Movement and Ether
• Don't Touch Anything
• Importing Risk and Risky Regulations
• The Self-Defeating Prophecy (and How it Works)
• The Kudzu Effect
• Food from Thought
• Categories of Unintended Consequences
• Under a Spell: The Armistice at 100
• Food Follows Function
• Destructive Collection
• Origins of Error
• A City Too Familiar: the Spread of Disease
• Acquiring Ignorance
• Eradication's Good Intentions: Mosquitoes & More