The Cobra Effect Podcast
Well-meaning plans can easily backfire, leading to revolt, failure, and shocking events. From ancient Mesopotamia to current world events, The Cobra Effect Podcast explores the unintended consequences of government policies, including taxation, wage and price controls, foreign aid, collectivization, subsidies, environmental impacts, and more. Four millennia of history on all continents demonstrate that we repeat the mistakes of the past when judging ideas by intentions rather than results.
Episodes
In this episode, we first travel 2,000 years to the Roman Empire to see how they taxed luxury goods. Then we travel to the United States of the 90s to see how the Luxury Tax, approved by Congress in 1990, backfired. After that, we will check on how things are going in Canada, just two weeks ago, to see how we learn nothing from past mistakes. And finally, we will go back to the Roman Empire. All of this while trying to understand f...
In this episode, we first travel more than 4,000 years to ancient Mesopotamia, mostly modern-day Iraq. I will first describe the slow death of the Sumerian gods, and in the second half of the episode, their revival as an unintended consequence of Iceland’s tax system. Yes, cold and windy Iceland.
A necessary note: this episode is not about the Anunnaki, as popular as that subject may be. Also, talking about the disappearance of th...
In this episode, we first travel 2,400 years back to ancient Athens, where the playwright Aristophanes satirizes the notion of communal property leading to reliance on slaves. But the central theme of the episode is the town of New Harmony, in Indiana, United States. Founded in 1825 by Robert Owen, a Welsh reformer and philanthropist, his idea was to create a society without poverty or individualism through the collective sharing o...
In this episode, we first travel 700 years to the Mali Empire in West Africa. Mansa Musa, the ninth ruler of the Mali Empire, is the protagonist of our episode. In 1324, as a devout Muslim, Mansa Musa embarked on a pilgrimage to Mecca. On his way, he spent and gave away so much gold in Cairo that his actions disrupted the gold market's value there for at least 12 years.
His good deeds in foreign lands are among the first examp...
In this episode, we first travel more than 100 years to the city of Delhi, in India.
The British colonial government decided to eliminate the overpopulation of cobras slithering around and put a bounty on each of them. The economic incentive initially worked well. However, the authorities did not foresee other subsequent events... Based on this story, in 2002, the German economist Horst Siebert coined the term “cobra effect” to des...
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