Great Moments in Unintended Consequences: Fossils, Price Controls, and Traffic Lights (Vol. 17)
Great moments in unintended consequences—when something that sounds like a great idea goes horribly wrong. Watch the whole series.
Part One: Beef Grief
The Year: 1946
The Problem: The price of beef is skyrocketing! And voters are angry! And it’s an election year!
The Solution: Reinstitute federal war-time price controls.
Sounds like a great idea, with the best of intentions. What could possibly go wrong?
Turns out, artificially low prices are harder to swallow when you’re the one selling. Angry farmers, unwilling to sell their meat at government-mandated prices, refused to bring their cattle to market. Meat production plummeted. Now everyone was angry. Miners went on strike. Butchers closed. Hospitals complained they’d have to serve horse meat. With voters up in arms and an election weeks away, President Harry Truman lifted the restrictions. But not soon enough: in what’s been called “The Beefsteak Election,” Democrats were slaughtered at the polls, losing Congress for the first time in 16 years.
But at least that meat shortage was cured.
Part Two: Reaching New Lights
The Year: 2010-ish
The Problem: Traffic lights in Japan use up too much energy!
The Solution: Replace the incandescent bulbs with energy efficient LEDs that last longer and cost less to operate!
Sounds like a great idea, with the best of intentions. What could possibly go wrong?
Turns out, it gets cold! And since LED bulbs don’t radiate enough heat to melt snow and ice, the signals became obscured, resulting in numerous traffic accidents and workers being sent out to clean the signals with brooms. And it wasn’t just Japan—in Green Bay, maintenance crews in bucket lifts scraped their new lights by
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