Dr. Bob and The Law of Unintended Consequences

Dr. Bob and The Law of
Unintended Consequences

For those of you who have been regular readers of mine over the years you have already been introduced to the writings of our family vet and my good friend Dr. Robert Hallstrom. Bob’s column can be found every Friday in the Ledger Dispatch, the East County insert in the CC Times.

Now Bob and I don’t always agree on things, such as I think he’s weak on concealed carry laws and he thinks the three strikes law is the next best thing to sliced bread... but hey, despite such deep philosophical differences we’ve managed to remain friends ever since Andrea and I moved out here to to this hell hole of a place and we needed a vet. Bob’s writing never fails to cause me to sit up and take notice, and once again he has hit the proverbial nail squarely on it’s proverbial head.

This one is all yours Bob!

Julie

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Hi all:
Life is sure simple, ain't it?
Dr. Bob
 
Sociologist Robert K Merton is one of those people with whom I wouldn't mind spending some time. I fancy myself a dispassionate observer of the human condition, but this guy beats me hands down.

I wish I had coined such phrases as "role model" and "self-fulfilling prophecy". Mr. Merton beat me to it in his writings. I'm sure he's had lots of other great ideas, and I can imagine long evenings spent talking around a campfire, just feeding the man questions, and then waiting patiently while he explained the workings of the human mind to me. Alas, he died in 2003, long before I had even heard of him.

Arguably the most famous idea Mr. Merton came up with was a little thing he called the Law of Unintended Consequences. He was aware of the propensity of politicians to oversimplify things, by coming up with uncomplicated solutions that can be presented in uncomplicated ways to a relatively uncomplicated public. Politicians like to pretend to solve our problems, and thus stay in our good graces.

But Merton noticed that just about every time somebody sets out to fix some malady that infests our society, they end up inadvertently setting some other problem loose upon us, that is often as bad or worse than the thing they tried to fix.

Consider Prohibition, as one example. Hoping to rid society of the scourge of social drinking, our lawmakers came up with the 18th amendment, which made the whole alcohol thing illegal. Bars closed, and the makers of booze went out of business. Problem solved, right?

Well, not quite. It seems that quite a few people still wanted a drink once in a while, and if they couldn't do it legally, they simply found another way. That other way was supplied and protected by organized crime families, who grew wealthy and powerful off the proceeds. Crime flourished, bribery corrupted law enforcement and the government, and much of the public lost all respect for law and order.

Not only did people not stop drinking, but some suggest they drank more. And with the growth of organized crime, our society ended up with a whole new pestilence loosed upon us. After prohibition was finally repealed, The Mob simply switched to illegal drugs, and they went on to corrupt America in virtually the same way for decades more.

When women's rights advocates finally got abortion on demand laws passed in the early 70's, they used the argument that society would be better off if a bunch of unwanted pregnancies didn't result in a bunch of unwanted children. Arguments for and against abortion have raged continuously since then.

Proponents claim that no good could come from forcing women to bear children they couldn't or wouldn't properly care for. Opponents look sadly at all those forever unborn kids and wonder if in spite of a bad beginning, they might have become doctors or famous baseball players, poets or nuclear physicists, or just plain folks who could live out reasonably happy lives like the rest of us. And of course, no one could prove any of these arguments, one way or another.

A study published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics suggests however, that in one sense the legalization of abortion may have actually accomplished something. For it turns out that the precipitous decline in violent crime rates, approaching 50% in some studies, that started around 1990 and is continuing up to the present, might well have come about in large part because of legal abortion.

Roe v. Wade was settled in 1973. Abortion rates sky-rocketed from that point on. And many of those unwanted pregnancies went away, taking with them the unwanted babies that would have been the perfect age for criminal activity, 15-25 years old, right when the crime rate started falling.

In fact, the states that were the first to legalize abortion saw the earliest decline in crime, and those states where more abortions were performed saw the greatest declines.

The statistics are compelling, although they may not tell the whole story, and controversy still rages over this conclusion. We may never know the truth.

The resignation of Justice O'Connor has again begun the process of selecting a new Supreme Court justice, but the debate seems to have settled upon abortion as the only issue that should determine which judge gets in. No one seems to care if the candidates have even read the Constitution.

And since the next two or three Supreme Court justices will probably be appointed by an avowed anti-abortion President, we may soon see an end to legal abortion in this country.

Perhaps this will be a good thing. Perhaps one of the unwanted children will now be born and grow up to invent cold fusion or some such thing.

But what might be the unintended consequences of such a change?

Who can say, but we can always just wait 15-25 years, and then check the crime statistics.

Dr. Bob
Bob Hallstrom <flashdr@starband.net>

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Like I said, sometimes Bob just hits the nail on the head and makes you think... without even knowing you are doing it.

That's my opinion of his opinion and you are welcome to it.

Julie Johnson aka “The Great Spoon“