Law of Unintended Consequences (due to the limits of our knowledge)

The complexity of society supervenes on individuals and societies (of societies) supervene on societies. 

The reason for supervenience is that we cannot stop messing things up. In economics, history, and system theory, this is known as Law of Unintended Consequences (Adam Smith's "invisible hand" in economics in the link's page's second paragraph). 

Here are some examples from History: 

*Spain's discovery of the New World and gold actually made Spanish mercantilism stronger (more money, more mismanagement), which made for more war (England, France, etc.), which ended up depleting the very sources of wealth. Spain became poorer and weaker. 

*Antibiotics are one of the significant medical advances, but their overprescription has resulted in the development of antibiotic-resistant diseases. 

*The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia announces a new era of human equality and progress. Instead, it brings the horrors of the gulag labor camps and the purges of the 1930s under Stalin. *The discovery of nuclear fission, crucial for nuclear power, simultaneously became the main ingredient for the nuclear arms race during the Cold War. 

*More recently, Germany’s "green" policies. In 2000, Germany passed a major green initiative Promulgated by a Socialist-Green coalition government. It forced providers to purchase renewable energy at exorbitant fixed prices and feed that power through their grids for twenty years. In 2011, stubborn Angela Merkel doubled down and shut down eight reactors in the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima disaster (which was caused by a tsunami –a threat Germany isn’t exposed to!)😅 "Green power" is so unreliable that Germany is constructing four new coal plants to replace the nuclear energy it has taken offline. And most of these coal-fired facilities lignite! which is strip-mined and emits nearly 35% more carbon dioxide than hard coal!

Here are some additional variables to the Law of Unintended Consequences:

There are so many variables:

1- Ignorance! We can't tell the distant future. 

2- Errors in our models (remember induction?) What worked in the past doesn't have to apply to the current situation. 

3- Immediate interests override long-term interests (it's called short-termism). Though someone's long-termism may be someone else's short-termism!

4- Basic values that may require or prohibit specific actions even if the long-term result might be unfavorable (these long-term consequences may eventually cause changes in basic values). 

5- Self-defeating prophecy, or the fear of some consequence, which drives people to find solutions before the problem occurs; thus, the non-occurrence of the problem is not anticipated. 

This is also known as the Munchausen paradox.

6- Grupthink is definitely a candidate.