The Law of Unexpected Results

A government passes laws to get an effect but, in a surprisingly high percentage of cases, the opposite occurs. Singapore passed a law many years ago that taxed couples if they had more than two children. Now, birth rates are below rates required to replenish the population and the government is urging couples to have more babies.

The US government passes regulations requiring washing machines and dryers to use gas energy so they with from gas to electric heat thus making power plants use more fossil fuels to produce the electricity needed to run the newer machines. The result is the opposite of the desired outcome.

Liberals have passionately forced abortion rights on the country through leftist judges. Now it appears that conservative and religious couples are having more babies than liberals and these young people are increasingly voting against liberal agenda.

The following comes from a blog OpinionJournal@wsj.com

Leftist Columnists Disagree

Columnist Ellen Goodman says: I'm wary of numbers that may be, in the statisticians' terms "true, true, but unrelated." We live in a world that's been through tremendous technological and social change. The average woman in the world had 4.48 children in 1970 and has 2.69 now.

Anyone who thinks that a low birth rate produces a conservative takeover hasn't been to Italy lately. I am even far more dubious of the claim that political labels are handed down through the DNA or even around the dinner table. In our own swiftly changing country, parents who dutifully plant one ideological seed get some pretty different sprouts.

OpinionJournal@wsj.com says:

No one claims that all children come to hold exactly the same political views as their parents, but the premise of the Roe effect is a more modest claim: that in general, parents tend to be a strong influence on their children's political values. Does Goodman really disagree? It would seem so.
Oh, and incidentally, if Goodman is hoping, as she puts it, that "persuasion could be a match for procreation," she ought to take a look at some of the pro-choice arguments that are on offer to young people. The Web site PunkVoter.com offers an essay by songstress Theo Kogan that includes this prose poem:

As a person and as a WOMAN I value my freedom, whether its the freedom to speak out,to look the way I want,live the way I want, create art and music, choosing what I want to do with my body,whether it's my hair color,tattoos, piercing, squeezing a zit, plucking a hair or having an abortion.

Gary says:

No wonder the leftists are losing the battle for hearts and minds of people young and old. This kind of heartless, cruel, callous reasoning sounds like the Taliban or Muslims who kill Russian children.

We all need to be careful about the things we adopt to control the uncontrollable. As a Christian I am not sure that we ought to try to control things that only God can do.