the law of unintended consequences states that when making decisions regarding a complex system - say the economy or the work policy of an MNC affecting thousands of employees across the globe, there can be consequences that were not expected before making the decision.

these consequences can be good or bad, and small or huge. say for example the cobra effect - when the british goverernment decided to award people money for each tail of a snake they got in. instead of killing the snakes, people bred more snakes to cut their tales and earn money.

this was a consequence that was not taken into account by the decision makers. each of us has a huge set that goes by the name of ‘unknown unknowns’ and which means that if we make decisions that are to affect a complex system over a long period of time, there have to be multiple consequences that we can’t even take into account because we do not know that we do not know those.