The law of unintended consequences is my favorite law. There are so many examples of this where someone enacted a law trying to do one thing, and the effect of it is totally different. In this week’s column, the Freakonomics guys have an article explaining this very well!

There’s another story of how the European royalty acquired large tracts of forests for hunting, and prevented any development there to make sure they could shoot animals there. Bad for the animals right? No! After several centuries, that land was still preserved, and today there are wild-life reserves at this very place. Turns out, the “hunting” hobby of the aristrocrats was a life saver for the animals of the forest, after all!

Also, check out the Wikipedia page. Lots of interesting stories like these.

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