unintended consequences

How does the information in the listening passage add to the ideas presented in the reading passage?


The decisions are taken some of the times without thinking what are going to be the consequences, and according to the law of unintended consequences, the actions of individuals, groups, or governments have effects, that are unexpected, or unintended.

But talking about government there is a great environment to study and to analyze, and it is important to think about the unintended consequences that may turn positive or negative. In the text we can look at the example of the council decision to ban cars from Main Street in the city. In the positive side: citizens will improve their health by walking from their cars to the businesses. In the opposite side: Businesses are exposed to lose a certain number of customers; even when that negative effect was not intended by the decision of the city council.

Another example may be the one presented in the listening: Government raise taxes to increase revenues, but customers have less money so that they cannot buy as always, so that employees lose their jobs, and revenues start to going down rather than up; and obviously it makes the opposite effect that they wish in the beginning.

So every decision that we have taken, gets a consequence, and we should be sure of taking it, by analyzing it before and creating a lot of tests thinking about the possible negative or positive consequences, in order to make them positive intended consequences.