The Cobra Effect

According to a much-repeated story from British-era India, officials worried about cobras offered a bounty for every dead snake. Locals responded by breeding cobras to claim it. When the program was canceled, the breeders released their now-worthless stock, and the cobra population grew. The tale's historical accuracy is disputed — the term was coined by economist Horst Siebert in 2001 — but it has stuck because the mechanism is real.

That mechanism is the cobra effect — an intervention that produces the opposite of its intended outcome because of an unanticipated second-order response. The question to ask before any intervention is not just "will this work?" but "how will people respond, and will their response undo what I am trying to achieve?"