A story about unintended consequences

One of the things wrong with the federal government--perhaps the major thing--is that after various pols succeeded in violating the Constitution and didn't get shot for that accomplishment, at that point the federal government had effectively no limits on what it could do.

Combine unlimited power with the types of idiots who infest Washington, and who could possibly think anything could go wrong?

Okay, that was hyperbole: I suspect there are lots of smart folks in DC. But if that's true, how do so many astoninshingly stupid or harmful provisions wind up getting passed into law?

The answer--and the reason I said "idiots" in DC--is that the people inserting the provisions either don't understand the effects of the things they're inserting; or else they do, and are doing it deliberately, to please a big donor or voting block.

Here's an example of the former: From the earliest days of aviation, private aviation in the U.S. was a thriving, innovative engine. In the 1960's and 70's, American companies produced most of the general-aviation aircraft on the planet. But then in the mid-70's a congressman flying in a private plane went down in Alaska and it took several weeks to find the wreckage.

This led some well-intentioned inventors to note that if private planes were equipped with battery-powered, crash-rugged radio beacons, activated automatically in a crash, then rescuers could simply home on the signal to find the survivors, if any.

Hey, who could possibly be against a deal like that?

And it was thus duly passed into law that after a given date, all general-aviation aircraft had to be so equipped.

Of course this increased the cost of such airplanes. But who could object? After all, the percentage increase was small. And only rich folks bought an airplane anyway, so they wouldn't even notice the increase. [/sarc]

Problem is, when you added dozens of such regulatory requirements, and the cost of "product-liability" insurance due to huge damage awards made by juries eager to punish companies even when pilots did stupid, fatal things, you ended up with planes so expensive that few could afford to buy 'em.

And over time the general-aviation industry shrank to a shadow of its former size, even as the GA industries in other countries boomed.

Instead of mandating emergency locator radios, the government could have done nothing, and let buyers and charter operators decide for themselves whether to spring for the cost of a potentially lifesaving safety device. But the folks in DC don't believe people can be trusted to look out for themselves. So their solution--as always--was to make the devices mandatory.

It's highly unlikely that anyone in the chain that passed this law ever considered its ultimate effects on the GA industry. After all, any such effects would be somebody else's problem.

Now multiply this by ten thousand: A few congressional staffers have decided that it's just not fair that some Americans have access to high-speed internet service while others don't. Solution? Force taxpayers to fund installation of expensive fiber-optic networks in places too poor to afford it themselves.

If some students can't afford laptop computers, some politician (many, actually) will pass a bill or rule ordering taxpayers to provide them.

A teachers' union demands that their (largely taxpayer-funded) insurance plan cover Viagra. Two milliseconds later jailed prisoners complain that they should be provided with Viagra, at taxpayer expense, since the courts have ruled that they're entitled to free medical care and Viagra is just another medicine.

Imagine if government didn't have the power to force any of this on taxpayers.

Oh, that's right: According to the Constitution, it doesn't.

Sure would be nice if there was a way to force government back into the original, Constitutional constraints.