The Myth of Silver Bullet Solutions

Have you ever noticed that fixing one thing frequently breaks another? Take medicine for example: It is common for the side effects of a medication to be worse than the ailment the medicine is used to treat. The patient then has to take several other pills to deal with the side effects of the first drug, each of which has its own set of side effects.

It is much the same with political “solutions”; only we are not told up front what the side effects will be so we can decide if we are willing to accept them. Instead, politicians herald a solution as a magic bullet that solves the problem without creating new ones. If common sense does not defeat this notion, empirical evidence certainly will.

Take for instance the popular myth that regulation is the solution to the housing crisis. While some regulation is arguably necessary, regulation almost always has unintended effects. Rent control laws are a strong example of this. While they are designed to keep housing affordable they almost always have the unintended consequence of driving up the costs of other housing in the area and have led to housing shortages in cities around the world. In short, when evaluating a new policy we must not only consider what it will fix, but also what it will break.