YOU'RE STILL WRONG.. MYKEL'S MARCH 2020 BLOG UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES (PT.1 )

YOU'RE STILL WRONG.. MYKEL'S March 2020 BLOG
Unintended consequences (PT.1 )

[Last month’s test –breaking the blog into weekly parts– was a near complete failure. It was at least an unpleasantry for several blog readers. So starting this month I’m going bi… weekly that is. Let me know if you think it’s better.]

You’re STILL Wrong

or
Mykel's

March 2020 Blog/Column

Unintended Consequences

by Mykel Board

It is...highly probable that from the very beginning, apart from death, the only ironclad rule of human experience has been the Law of Unintended Consequences.

--Ian Tattersall

Just do it.

--Nike

New York February 2020 The Black Sheep bar on Third Ave: I’m with my friends Richard, Miho, Hazem. We sit at a table next to the end of the bar. At the bar, God is punishing me for my eternal complaint about the girl with that voice. You know the one… she’s at a table one over from yours… squeally Long Islander… a laugh that can incite murder… drunk as a fish. It’s a rare night that there isn’t one to complain about.

Tonight, though, it’s all boys, a couple jocks and their fathers… or father figures… with guffaws from hell… glass-breaking loud. Probably from large families-- used to fighting to be heard. Right now each one yells over the others... as if this quiet bar required a chorus of alpha males to compete for attention. No girls here… just this stinking pack of machotude... making communication impossible among our multiculturals. I’m not going to complain to them, as any one of these guys is TWO of me.

Then I see it…a way out: right at the bar, in front of the loudest guy… wearing a white toque. (What is it these days wearing wool caps inside? And not only bald guys!). I walk over to the group… stand behind them… about an arm’s length away.

“Hey guys,” I say pointing to the beers in front of them. “Don’t you know that you can die from drinking that beer?”

“Huh?” asks the second loudest… and most annoying... a two-ton gray-haired guy in a bright red jacket.

“Corona,” I say. “Why do you think the virus has that name?”

“You’re full o’ shit,” says the man. “Corona is Mexican. The virus is Chinese.”

“Yeah,” I say, “but the whole problem started because Corona began to outsource its beer-making to China. The main factory is in Wuhan… where the virus comes from. It was the first thing closed after the outbreak.”

Richard, the only native English-speaker in our group, hears what I’m doing and pipes in from our table next to the bar.

“Yeah,” he says, “I heard about that.”

The others in the loud group, all drinking Bud Lite, move away from him.

I cough, then say, “I know about it because my boyfriend is Mexican and he told me his uncle works for the Corona company and was in China on assignment…” I cough again… trying to bring tears to my eyes. “He’s in the hospital right now in Mexico City. The first case of Corona virus in that country.”

I cough again and go back to sit with the others. Richard struggles to keep a straight face. In less than five minutes, the entire crew has left the bar.

In another five minutes, Mary, our regular Irish waitress comes over to us. She glances over her shoulder at a tall white guy with a scraggly beard.

“Mykel,” she says in a low whisper. “I think we’re in trouble. One of our regular customers complained about ‘a sick person who just returned from China.’ I think you guys had better leave until this blows over. I’m so sorry.”

FLASH TO Ulan Bator, Mongolia 1995… The air is breezy… there’s no humidity. Outside my apartment block is a field of dry dead grass. I run across that field chasing a small white plastic bag that tumbles in the breeze… edge over edge… like a girl doing cartwheels on the beach. The wind suddenly changes direction... I turn... twisting an ankle sprawling face down in the dry dirt. Pain… but not serious.

ネバーギブアップ say the Japanese. (The pronunciation is something like: NEBA-GIVU-AHPPU… I’m not shittin’ you.)

I get up… run/limp after the bag... stopped, for now... caught on a sprig of weed. I tackle it. Yes! Now, I have somewhere to throw my garbage for the week.

FLASH TO NYC 2020: In 6 days, single use plastic bags will be illegal in New York. Here, I generate a dozen times more garbage than I did in Mongolia. (In Ulan Bator, I had a plastic egg container that I brought to the market and refilled as I needed it. I carried groceries by folding my coat around them.) I refuse to buy garbage bags… I will not buy something to throw it away. Right now… before the ban… I use grocery bags for my trash.

So it looks like I’ll be chasing plastic bags down Bleecker Street, as they grow less and less common. In Mongolia, only the high-end stores –mainly for foreigners-- had plastic bags. I’ll need more here than I did there.

I open my closet door. On a rack inside the door are two dozen “reusable” carrier bags. Some I bought in an emergency when I needed something for a heavy purchase. Some were free bonuses for renewing my subscription to one or another liberal political magazine. Some were left by couch-surfers who just didn’t want to carry that shit around with them. I’ve tried to give them away, but the answer is always I’ve got tons of them. This will only get worse during the ban, as with each shopping trip, people will buy a new one.

The glut of thin plastic bags using a little oil to make will be replaced with a glut of thick plastic carrier bags using a shitload of oil to make. The small grocery bags that are reused for trash will be replaced by huge purchased trash bags used once and then thrown into the landfill.

The ban was well-meaning. The effects will be disastrous.

FLASH TO NEW YORK 1970s: 6AM the city awakens to the banging of Oscar The Grouch style garbage cans. KABOOM! KABOOM! The diesel garbage trucks are almost as loud as the cans themselves. Someone’s got to do something about the racket! People gotta sleep!

As is usual when there’s a problem… either someone gets killed or they pass a law… or both. So they pass a law. No metal garbage cans… or even rubber. It makes too much noise. You’ve got to take the plastic bags OUT of the garbage cans, pile them curbside, so they can be disposed of quietly.

While most new laws are universally despised, this one was loved… by the city’s rats. It used to be so hard to gnaw into those metal cans. Rats were visiting the rat dentist by the pack. Just awful… but now… three seconds to get through the plastic. Come on! It’s a food orgy… we’ll eat, fuck and make more rats! Wow!

We read about unintended consequences in history books. How alcohol prohibition created the mafia. How nuclear power destroyed Chernobyl and made the land uninhabitable. How the routine use of antibiotics created drug-resistant microbes… How the treaty ending World War One set the stage for World War Two… How starlings brought in to control sparrows became pests themselves.

It’s harder to find positive examples of unintended consequences. In the history books, in my life, and in the world.

An internet search gives me this example: In 1973 the Supreme Court declared (Roe v. Wade) that abortion was legal and could not be outlawed by the states. 20 years later the crime rate plummeted. One of the reasons? Unwanted/ abandoned/ not supported kids --instead of roaming the streets to become criminals-- were never born in the first place. Instead of building more jails, you keep jails from being needed in the first place.

There are, of course, other good unintended consequences. The scaffolding construction companies put up when repairing or cleaning buildings… in a rainstorm it’s a welcome respite. That light outside the doorway to keep muggers away from the shadows also keeps people like me from pissing in those doorways.

AND THIS JUST FOUND: In the German city of Kleve, the owner of a chicken that took 10 hours of training to appear in a movie was awarded the equivalent of $680 when a dog mauled it. According to reports, regular chicken wrongful death would bring the owner about $20. But because this one had acting lessons and appeared in a movie, the court ordered the dog's owner to pay much higher damages. Who knew acting lessons for chickens would be so profitable?

Are these positive unintended consequences harder to dig up because there are fewer of them… or are there just as many (or more) and fewer people notice?

I don’t know.

Then what’s the solution? There will always be unintended consequences. Seems like you’ve got some choices to make.

A. Before you make a decision, think about all the possible consequences and then choose the one that will have the best outcome… or at least do the least harm. Deal with the consequences later.

or

B. Don’t act at all. There are ALWAYS unintended consequences and the only way to avoid them is to do nothing to create those consequences.

or

C. Go for the Nike and JUST DO IT. Deal with the consequences -- unintended or otherwise-- when they happen. Of course, you’ll run into unintended consequences of dealing with the consequences. You can deal with them too when you get to them.

Am I going to tell you which way to act? Do I seem like the kind of person who tells others how to act? Ok, I will… but maybe later.

- end -

ENDNOTES AND LINKS will appear in 2 weeks. You can contact me on facebook or by email at god@mykelboard.com.