Short term results that are opposite to the long term

[miriam_e]

I've been thinking a lot lately about a class of actions that have the opposite effect in the long term than their short term one. I am sure they have a name, and that I am not the only person to have thought about these. They are a pretty simple class, however when people encounter them in real life it almost always mystifies them. They have important implications for many political actions which are aimed only at the short term, and have use for making ordinary day-to-day life run more smoothly too.

Here are some simple examples (some of which I've mentioned here before):

When people are impatient and drive close behind another car at night, it might initially cause the driver in front to speed up a little, but driving even closer will have the opposite effect, because the glare of headlights in the mirror reduces visibility and causes the first driver to slow to a safer speed.

When people wait at the baggage conveyer belts at airport terminals many of them cluster close to the luggage conveyer, watching for their bags. This makes it hard for others to see their bags so more people push closer to the conveyer to see. As the wall of people at the conveyer becomes denser, less people can see and even those at the conveyer find it difficult to manoeuvre. If everybody stood back a meter or so from the conveyer everybody would be able to see and easily step in to pick up their bags when they need to, but there is this counterproductive push to keep moving closer.

Bullying works in the short term, and people obey because they are afraid of the consequences, but it never works in the longer term. The bullies get their comeuppance in a rebellion. Or they lose the respect of those around them who leave at the first opportunity. Perplexed, most bullies will simply become more ferocious when they start to lose their power, never realising that any small gains simply hasten the end.

Killing people in wars and letting them die of disease initially causes great loss of life, and I've heard many people that I'd not normally think of as callous, suggest these processes as a way of limiting population growth in some parts of the third world. But this is counterproductive as such uncertainty in people's lives leads them to have more children, drastically worsening the situation still further. The only proven way to reduce the population growth rate is to eliminate war and disease and make life as stable and pleasant as possible. This will initially result in population growth as people stop dying while children are still being born, but the birth rate soon drops to a level at, or below, maintenance.

Lately, here in Australia the private health insurance companies have been getting into financial trouble. They don't seem to be able to see the simple long term result of their actions. When they run low on money they raise the price of premiums in order to get more money in and cover costs in the short term. But then many people drop out of private insurance because they can no longer afford it -- especially the young and healthy on whom the insurers depend for their income. The old and sick cost the insurers money. If they would reduce the price of their health cover then more people would buy insurance, including the young and healthy.

Scaring kids away from drugs or sex or anything else often works in the short term, but almost never does in the long term. As soon as they find out that they were fed lies they distrust all the information, and then the only way to find out is personal experience. So, oddly, fear propaganda actually encourages the thing you want not to happen in the longer term. This is so not just for children. Alcohol consumption rose during the prohibition.

Developing more powerful weapons only increases security momentarily as your enemies either develop more powerful ones in a progressively more dangerous arms race or find ways around your weapons and become more determined to fight against what they see as a growing threat. In the long term weapons development decreases security.

I'll add more examples as I think of them.

Comments

[futurelegend.livejournal.com]

Game Theory probably has terminology for this stuff.

You know about the Prisoner's Dilemma? That would apply to the baggage carousel example.

Brinkmanship was a term used in relation to the Cold War arms race I think.

(Not sure what a unifying term would be, based on temporal reversal of effect.)

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

That's a good idea. I should look further into Game Theory. If anybody has gone into the details of this stuff before it would be those guys. Though it was largely through Game Theory that we got nuclear brinkmanship and Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.) of the cold war. I think they had only the beginnings of understanding some of the stuff they studied.

You're right, the Prisoner's Dilemma is similar to the baggage carousel example, because it requires more than one person to worsen the effect, and each person is trying to get something better than those around them by moving closer than their fellows, so "cheating", whereas if they all cooperated they would all win. What makes it different from the classic Prisoner's Dilemma is that it is a gradual effect, and that the "cheater" doesn't win significantly more than if they cooperated, and in fact the more someone cheats (moves forward to block others) the more they themselves are hampered (they are restricted in their ability to move and get at their baggage).

As you note, in most of the stuff I'm interested in here the effect changes over time, with the initial results working one way, then reversing. This is one of the things that makes it so confusing for people to deal with it in real life. Doing the same thing doesn't continue to achieve the same result. And this is often especially so when they push harder.

For anybody reading this who doesn't understand what the Prisoner's Dilemma is, there are two common ways to represent it:

The original one, that gave it its name regards two prisoners who are interrogated. If one of them betrays the other this works in favor of the betrayer, but only if just one does; if they both do then they both lose. Alternatively if they both keep their mouths shut then they both go free.

A more recent view, which is easier to model as well as being more relevant to everyday life has two people who meet in a forest to trade goods. The forest is neutral ground and they can't see if the other traded fairly till they've separately left the forest. If they both trade fairly then they both win. If one rips the other off then he gets something for nothing and the other loses big-time. If they both cheat then they both have wasted their time.

The good things about the trading model are that it is so easy to repeat over and over again, and the gains and losses are so clear.