Economics Is A Tricky Business

True story;

It’s the 18th century in British ruled India. In Delhi, the Brits have a problem. It seems that there are far too many Cobras in the streets of Delhi and these Cobras are presenting a health crisis.

So, the Brits, always so wise in their administration of their colonies, arrive at an idea. They decide to offer a bounty for every dead Cobra that is turned into their designated Cobra centers.

This works great … for awhile. Dead Cobras are being turned in. People are making some money from the exchange. Delhi is becoming comparatively pestilent free of Cobras. However, during the period in which there was a bounty on cobras, the number of rats in Delhi increased and with it an outbreak in the bubonic plague. When the bounty ended, the number of rats significantly decreased.

Also, someone gets the idea of breeding Cobras as a lucrative option. The reasoning went like this …. “We will breed Cobras which have monetary value, and then once they reach a certain maturity we will kill the Cobras and turn them in for the English bounty.” The English bounty was working as a subsidy on Cobras and whatever a government subsidizes it gets more of.

Suddenly the English offices were flooded with dead Cobras and the British realized that it was necessary to end the “dead Cobras for money” program.
The problem was though that the Cobra breeding farms had mushroomed throughout Delhi. Now, these farms had a product (live Cobras) which had no monetary value. Who wants to keep all kinds of live Cobras around? So, the Cobra breeding farms just released their formerly lucrative product, with the end result that Delhi’s Cobra problem was greater after the English “Cobras for Cash” program than it was before the program.

The moral of the story …. Beware the law of unintended consequences.

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

One thought on “Economics Is A Tricky Business”

  1. Its race, not economics.

    Canada and the US put similar bounties on varmints without such problems. Boys would go out and get strings of prairie dogs or go kill some racoons, young men would go kill coyotes, turn them in and get some money for their family or some pocket change. My great grandad did it.

    Even today when deer get out of control the government issues a limited bounty to certain hunters to get the population back to carrying capacity, thats similar but different.

    If some idiot tried to use this as a reason to breed prairie dogs their dad would smack their ass till Sunday. Rats didn’t overrun the place because people kept cleaner and sealed up holes and kept cats and set traps. I had a year when the vole population went out of control at random. We boarded things up and killed nests and were extra careful about waste and the year of the vole ended.

    India has rats because people live in filth. It has cobras because it has rats. It has cobra breeders because it has Indians that don’t care about long term consequences or public good.

    England’s idea to curtail the cobra population would have worked if India was populated entirely by the English.

    Reply

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