Download or read book Unintended Consequences written by Edward Conard and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was our country’s economic success before the Crash of ‘08 built on false pretenses? Did we simply borrow and spend too much, or was something else really going on? The conventional wisdom now accuses Wall Street and the mortgage industry of using predatory tactics to seduce homeowners. Meanwhile, average Americans are blamed for increasing consumption to unsustainable levels by borrowing recklessly. And the tax policies of the Reagan and Bush administrations are blamed for encouraging reckless risk-taking. Edward Conard disagrees. In an attempt to set the record straight he presents a fascinating new case for how the economy really works, why the U.S. has outperformed other countries, what caused the financial crisis, and what improvements might better protect our economy without damaging growth.
Download or read book Unforeseen Consequences The Beginning written by O'conner Sycamore and published by O'conner sycamore. This book was released on 2023-07-23 with total page 19 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells the story of Will, whose ordinary Saturday turns into a mysterious adventure. In this thrilling journey where the boundary between dreams and reality blurs, mystery and suspense come together. The determination of Rose and Harshal, Dr. Benedict's dangerous solution proposal, and ethical dilemmas keep the reader engaged, offering an unforgettable experience.
Download or read book Unintended Consequences written by John Ross and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rising by the pro-gun lobby brings the government to its knees. The story begins when Henry Bowman, a geologist in Iowa, fires on federal agents, thinking they are terrorists. The conflict escalates, agents and congressmen die, and to bring peace the president agrees to repeal anti-gun laws and pardon the rebels.
Download or read book Unintended Consequences written by Clive Wills and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2020-05-01 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How is it that, in doing our very best to achieve one thing, we can end up achieving just the opposite? There exists an unseen force with an unassuming name that conceals all manner of terrors. It is ‘Unintended Consequences’, and it takes our efforts to do the good and right thing, turns them to ashes and blows them back in our faces. Whether it be governments fighting a “War on Terror” only to bring their economies crashing about their ears, ecologists attempting to stamp out pests but making things ten times worse in the process, or giving people lots of choice only for them to make worse decisions, it is all too easy to start out with the best of intentions, only to end up doing more harm than good. In Unintended Consequences, Clive Wills discusses national disasters, Prohibition and the War on Drugs, frustrated efforts to improve health and safety, and touches on issues of everyday life such as how to improve relationships and bring up children. As HL Mencken reflected, “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong”. This book examines the many ways in which those apparently simple solutions can turn around and bite us, and more importantly, just what we can do about it.
Download or read book Unintended Consequences written by Deepak Lal and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, based on the 1995 Ohlin Lectures, Deepak Lal provides an accessible, interdisciplinary account of the role of culture in shaping economic performance. Topics addressed include a possible future "clash of civilizations," the role of Asian values in the East Asian economic miracle, the cultural versus economic causes of social decay in the West, and whether modernization leads to Westernization. Lal makes an important distinction between material and cosmological beliefs, showing how both were initially shaped by factor endowments and how they have evolved in response to changing historical pressures in different civilizations. Lal's first major theme is the interaction of factor endowments, culture, and politics in explaining modern intensive growth in the West. The other major theme is the role of individualism--an inadvertent legacy of the medieval Catholic Church--in promoting this growth, and the strange metamorphoses this has caused in both the West's cosmological beliefs and the interaction between "the West and the rest." Lal takes account of the relevant literature in history, anthropology, social psychology, evolutionary biology, neurology, and sociology, and the economic history of the regions and cultures that form Eurasia. An appendix shows how the stories Lal tells can be described by four formal economic models.
Download or read book The Nature of Change Or the Law of Unintended Consequences written by John Mansfield and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2010 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This absorbing book provides a broad introduction to the surprising nature of change, and explains how the Law of Unintended Consequences arises from the waves of change following one simple change. Change is a constant topic of discussion, whether be it on climate, politics, technology, or any of the many other changes in our lives. However, does anyone truly understand what change is? Over time, mankind has deliberately built social and technology based systems that are goal-directed there are goals to achieve and requirements to be met. Building such systems is man's way of planning for the future, and these plans are based on predicting the behavior of the system and its environment, at specified times in the future. Unfortunately, in a truly complex social or technical environment, this planned predictability can break down into a morass of surprising and unexpected consequences. Such unpredictability stems from the propagation of the effects of change through the influence of one event on another. The Nature of Change explains in detail the mechanism of change and will serve as an introduction to complex systems, or as complementary reading for systems engineering. This textbook will be especially useful to professionals in system building or business change management, and to students studying systems in a variety of fields such as information technology, business, law and society.
Download or read book Learning to Avoid Unintended Consequences written by Leonard A. Renier and published by Infinity Publishing. This book was released on 2011-10-07 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If something you thought to be true, wasn't true, when would you want to know about it? In your financial world, that defining moment occurs by understanding the Efficiency of Money. Learning to avoid the unintended consequences of transferring your wealt
Download or read book Unintended Consequences of Human Actions written by Elena Ermolaeva and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using a mixed-method approach, Unintended Consequences of Human Actions documents a wide range of unintended and unanticipated consequences of human actions. The major message is the urgent need to review a range of possible outcomes of human actions. During these fragile times 'looking down the road' has become imperative.
Download or read book Unintended Consequences written by Peter W. Galbraith and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-09-30 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Called by New York Times columnist David Brooks the "smartest and most devastating" critic of President George W. Bush's Iraq policies, Peter Galbraith was the earliest expert to describe Iraq's breakup into religious and ethnic entities, a reality now commonly accepted. The Iraq war was intended to make the United States more secure, bring democracy to the Middle East, intimidate Iran and Syria, help win the war on terror, consolidate American world leadership, and entrench the Republican Party for decades. Instead, Bush handed Iran its greatest strategic triumph in four centuries U.S. troops now fight to support an Iraqi government led by religious parties intent on creating an Iranian-style Islamic republic As part of the surge, the United States created a Sunni militia led by the same Baathists the U.S. invaded Iraq to overthrow administration gave Iran and North Korea a free pass to advance their nuclear programs Obsessed with Iraq's nonexistent WMD, the Bush administration gave Iran and North Korea a free pass to advance their nuclear programs Turkey, a key NANATO ally long considered a model pro-Western Muslim democracy, became one of the most anti-American countries in the world U.S. prestige around the world reached an all-time low Iraq: Galbraith challenges the assertion that the surge will lead to victory. By creating a Sunni army, the surge has, in fact, contributed to Iraq's breakup and set the stage for an intensified civil war between Sunnis and Shiites. If the United States wishes to escape the Iraq quagmire, it must face up to the reality that the country has broken up and cannot be put back together. Iran: Having helped Iran's allies take control in Baghdad, the Bush administration no longer has a viable military option to stop Iran's nuclear program. Galbraith discusses how a president more pragmatic than Bush might get Iran to freeze its nuclear program as part of a package deal to upgrade relations between two countries equally threatened by Sunni extremism. Turkey, Syria, and Israel: A war intended to make Israel more secure, undermine Syria's Assad regime, and strengthen ties with Turkey has had the opposite result. Nationalism: In the coming decades, other countries may follow Iraq's example in fragmenting along ethnic and religious lines. Galbraith draws on his considerable experience in Iraq and the former Yugoslavia to predict where and what the United States might do about it. The United States: George W. Bush substituted wishful thinking for strategy and as a result made America weaker. Galbraith provides some rules for a national strategy that will appeal equally to conservatives and liberals -- indeed, to anyone who believes the United States needs an effective national security strategy.
Download or read book The Dreadful Monster and its Poor Relations written by Julian Hoppit and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2021-05-27 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'An invaluable primer to some of the underlying tensions behind contemporary political debate' Financial Times It has always been an important part of British self-image to see the United Kingdom as an ancient, organic and sensibly managed place, in striking contrast to the convulsions of other European countries. Yet, as Julian Hoppit makes clear in this fascinating and surprising book, beneath the complacent surface the United Kingdom has in fact been in a constant, often very tense argument with itself about how it should be run and, most significantly, who should pay for what. The book takes its argument from an eighteenth century cartoon which shows the central state as the 'Dreadful Monster', gorging itself at the dinner table on all the taxes it can grab. Meanwhile the 'Poor Relations' - Scotland, Wales and Ireland, both poor because of tax but also poor in the sense of needing special treatment - are viewed in London as an endless 'drain on the state'. With drastically different levels of prosperity, population, industry, agriculture and accessibility between the United Kingdom's different nations, what is a fair basis for paying for the state?
Download or read book Unintended Consequences written by Dan Walsh and published by Bainbridge Press. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jack and Rachel leave Culpepper for their long-awaited honeymoon trip, a driving tour through New England. On day three, they stop at a little bayside town in Cape Cod to visit Jack's grandmother. After he gets called away to handle an emergency, Rachel stays and listens as Jack's grandmother shares a remarkable story about how she and Jack's grandfather met in the early days of World War 2. It's a story filled with danger, decades-old family secrets, daring rescues and romance. Jack is named after his grandfather, and this story set the course and direction for Jack's life to the present day. After hearing it, Rachel is amazed that anyone survived.
Download or read book The Paradoxes of Unintended Consequences written by Ralf Dahrendorf and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This volume of essays is dedicated to George Soros in honor of his seventieth birthday. In their various fields of work the authors, who come from the interconnected worlds of academe, politics, and business, have each made an active contribution to the growth of the huge philanthropic empire built by Soros." "The editors chose the title The Paradoxes of Unintended Consequences to encourage contributors to adopt a dialogical approach. The title also refers to the case of Giordano Bruno, itself a telling example of paradox. Burnt at the stake 400 years ago for heresy, Bruno's views were probably far more illiberal and undemocratic than the views of those who condemned him. The editors' aim was to show that any complex social process or political attempt to change people's lives will inevitably have unintended consequences, usually of a paradoxical nature. These consequences should force us to reconsider our original theory."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book Unintended Consequences written by Kenneth J. Hagan and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2007-04-25 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The United States does not do nation building,” claimed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld three years ago. Yet what are we to make of the American military bases in Korea? Why do American warships patrol the Somali coastline? And perhaps most significantly, why are fourteen “enduring bases” being built in Iraq? In every major foreign war fought by United States in the last century, the repercussions of the American presence have been felt long after the last Marine has left. Kenneth J. Hagan and Ian J. Bickerton argue here that, despite adamant protests from the military and government alike, nation building and occupation are indeed hallmarks—and unintended consequences—of American warmaking. In this timely, groundbreaking study, the authors examine ten major wars fought by the United States, from the Revolutionary War to the ongoing Iraq War, and analyze the conflicts’ unintended consequences. These unexpected outcomes, Unintended Consequences persuasively demonstrates, stemmed from ill-informed decisions made at critical junctures and the surprisingly similar crises that emerged at the end of formal fighting. As a result, war did not end with treaties or withdrawn troops. Instead, time after time, the United States became inextricably involved in the issues of the defeated country, committing itself to the chaotic aftermath that often completely subverted the intended purposes of war. Stunningly, Unintended Consequences contends that the vast majority of wars launched by the United States were unnecessary, avoidable, and catastrophically unpredictable. In a stark challenge to accepted scholarship, the authors show that the wars’ unintended consequences far outweighed the initial calculated goals, and thus forced cataclysmic shifts in American domestic and foreign policy. A must-read for anyone concerned with the past, present, or future of American defense, Unintended Consequences offers a provocative perspective on the current predicament in Iraq and the conflicts sure to loom ahead of us.
Download or read book The Great Mental Models Volume 1 written by Shane Parrish and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2024-10-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.
Download or read book Decoding the Social World written by Sandra Gonzalez-Bailon and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-12-22 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How data science and the analysis of networks help us solve the puzzle of unintended consequences. Social life is full of paradoxes. Our intentional actions often trigger outcomes that we did not intend or even envision. How do we explain those unintended effects and what can we do to regulate them? In Decoding the Social World, Sandra González-Bailón explains how data science and digital traces help us solve the puzzle of unintended consequences—offering the solution to a social paradox that has intrigued thinkers for centuries. Communication has always been the force that makes a collection of people more than the sum of individuals, but only now can we explain why: digital technologies have made it possible to parse the information we generate by being social in new, imaginative ways. And yet we must look at that data, González-Bailón argues, through the lens of theories that capture the nature of social life. The technologies we use, in the end, are also a manifestation of the social world we inhabit. González-Bailón discusses how the unpredictability of social life relates to communication networks, social influence, and the unintended effects that derive from individual decisions. She describes how communication generates social dynamics in aggregate (leading to episodes of “collective effervescence”) and discusses the mechanisms that underlie large-scale diffusion, when information and behavior spread “like wildfire.” She applies the theory of networks to illuminate why collective outcomes can differ drastically even when they arise from the same individual actions. By opening the black box of unintended effects, González-Bailón identifies strategies for social intervention and discusses the policy implications—and how data science and evidence-based research embolden critical thinking in a world that is constantly changing.
Download or read book The Unintended Consequences of Peace written by Arie Marcelo Kacowicz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-07 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rigorous global examination of the links between peaceful borders and illicit transnational flows of crime and terrorism.
Download or read book This Could be Our Future written by Yancey Strickler and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the cofounder of Kickstarter comes a vision for building a society that looks beyond money and toward maximizing the values that make life worth living. Hopeful but firmly grounded, full of concrete solutions and bursting with creativity, this work brilliantly dissects the world we live in and shows us a road map to the world we are capable of making.
