Great Moments in Unintended Consequences: Traffic Noise, San Fran Contracts, Cartoon Ban (Vol. 15)

Good intentions, bad results.

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Part 1: Game Engine

The year: 2018

The problem: Too many loud vehicles in the city of Edmonton!

The solution: Erect sound monitoring display boards in various locations in the city, alerting motorists if they are exceeding the 85 decibel level limit by displaying their current noise level.

Sounds like a great idea, with the best of intentions. What could possibly go wrong?

Turns out games are fun! Since the display board went up as part of a pilot program with no accompanying enforcement mechanism, competitive motorists used the scoreboards… er, displays…to see just how loud they could get. As revving engines increased, so did noise complaints. Within weeks the city reversed course and turned off the displays.

Looks like cars aren't the only things that backfire.

Part 2: I Left My Smart in San Francisco

The year: 2016

The problem: States are passing laws San Francisco doesn't like!

The solution: Pressure them to change by prohibiting any city contracts with companies headquartered in states that don't share San Francisco's values.

Sounds like a great idea, with the best of intentions. What could possibly go wrong?

Turns out, competition drives down prices! With limited bidding options, public project costs ballooned by around 20 percent according to city administrators. The ban also created additional bureaucratic costs, totaling nearly half a million dollars in staffing expenses alone, and made it difficult to support like-minded businesses in verboten states.

More and more waivers and exemptions were granted as the list of covered states grew from 4 to 30, which should have been a clue these expensive pressure tactics weren't exactly changing hearts and minds. In 2023, the city trashed the bans, probably in a very expensive trash can.

Part 3: Tooned Up

The Year: 1903

The Problem: cartoonists keep depicting Pennsylvania politician Samuel Pennypacker as a parrot!

The Solution: Introduce a bill banning any cartoon in which a person is depicted as a "beast, bird, fish, insect, or other inhuman animal."

Sounds unconstitutional, and entirely self interested! What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Turns out, people who make fun of politicians for a living are pretty comfortable fighting back against politicians. Criticism of Governor Pennypacker and the anti-cartoon bill exploded, with cartoonists nationwide depicting the Governor and others as turnips, trees, chestnut burrs, squash, and beer steins. The blowback was so humiliating that the bill was pulled from consideration, and replaced with a new broader bill making newspaper editors and publishers personally responsible to libel lawsuits.

The press ramped up their ridicule, daring Pennypacker to take them to court. But the law was never enforced, and was repealed after he left office, having been hounded for his entire term by critical cartoons.

That's one way to draw attention.

[ashirtthatjusthaspantswrit]

The last one was more like, “ bad intentions, great results!”

[sbdyson]

Is it sad that the most surprising thing on this list was that San Francisco actually reversed their bad policy?

[michaellyden]

So, the Streisand Effect really should be called the Pennypacker Effect

[EZPZ_SoBadItsGood]

Here's a suggestion for a future episode:
The story of the "Agricultural Adjustment Act". The time when FDR decided to pay farmers NOT to grow crops, because he felt that food was just too darn cheap. The result was starvation, and those same farmers who he was trying to keep in business by artificially inflating prices, going bankrupt because now animal feed was too expensive and their livestock died.

[notme]

**Got one for you Austin:** According to the Institute for Energy Research, the 2022 ban on plastic bags in New Jersey has increased greenhouse gasses from bag use by 500% and earned an average of $200, 000 profit per supermarket by selling reusable bags that don't get reused.

[christianelzey]

In Philadelphia's Roosevelt Boulevard, notorious for speeding and racing, several years ago they added individual "your speed is...." displays for each of the 3 lanes. Those just became scoreboards...

[flyoverkid]

With the staggering number of these " unintended consequences " segments, one might expect that heavy handed government regulators would learn from the historical [ hysterical? ] record. But no.

[malvoliosf]

Note for the curious: although the transcript says cartoonists depicted Pennypacker as a “chestnut bear”, sadly, it was merely a “chestnut burr”, that is, the tough, prickly husk that surrounds the chestnut seed.

[wompa]

That last one didn't even have good intentions. And we see that more and more today, too.

[jeffreyb.]

I think you should do one on Daylight Savings Time. It seems like every time changes, people complain and want the time changes stopped. However in 1974 we actually did stop daylight savings time. People complain both before and after so much that it was stopped then restarted. History is getting ready to repeat itself.

[SH-lyuy]

0:39 lol Same Thing happened in my city with scoreboards indicating speed

[robertnelson]

This continues to be the best series on YouTube.

[marcusmoonstein]

Just research any government program that was supposed to "pay for itself". Because anybody who understands business understands that if the program would pay for itself, then somebody would already be doing it as a business.

[isentient]

I love how San Francisco boycotted itself.

[DanielPearson]

I love the decibel meter thing, we have something similar in Eugene Oregon, speed boards around school zones and high accident areas, people painted a quarter mile line before the speed trap, and people routinely checked their trap speed quarter mile on the boards, until the cops took them down.

[filipporiva]

have you ever done a grat moment in unintended consequences with nuclear power bans? like germany shutting down the reactos to satisfy the green party and end up increasing carbon emissions of coal energy?

[EchoTangoSuitcase]

The first one reminds me of that time they put a breathalyzer in the lobby of the NCO club at Coleman Barracks in Mannheim W. Germany.
I don't think it was up for even 10 minutes before people began competing for high score.

I don't remember exactly how much time went by before they took it down, but it wasn't long.

[Adrian_Nel]

Tipper Gore and the (I think it's called) the Parental Advisory label. Every teenager wanted their next music purchase to feature it, and every rapper obliged.

[RationalEgoism]

I started laughing as soon as you mentioned the decibel meters because I knew what was going to happen.

[RealityOrganized]

You covered the 2008 gun buyback in Oakland in Vol 13. Have you done the gun buybacks in:
2013, Seattle. Turned into an open air gun show, where private gun collectors worked the line buying back the guns at higher prices.
2022, Houston, where at least three people manufactured cheap guns to sell them to Houston authorities at a steep profit.
2022, same in New York, where people manufactured cheap guns to sell them to authorities at a profit.