Law of unintended consequences

The law of unintended consequences states that actions of people—and especially of government—always have effects that are unanticipated or unintended. It is a concept that suggests that any action, no matter how well-intended, will create some kind of unintended consequence, which can often be very significant. This law is used to explain how governments often introduce policies with the best intentions, only to find out that the effects of the policy may have been worse than the problem it was trying to fix. For example, when governments offer incentives to increase production to stimulate the economy, they may cause firms to cut prices and thus lower profit margins.