Crossing the threshold of unintended consequences

Early January in California often means — as the announcer used to warn us in introducing each episode of The Twilight Zone — there’s a signpost up ahead indicating that we have entered the threshold of unintended consequences.

Over the coming months, we will indeed be coming face to face with many of the vagaries of poorly researched or miserably written legislation being pronounced upon us by so called “leaders” of the sixth largest economy in the world. Why should we be upset because they stripped a few more of our rights away to make those less driven more comfortable? Why should they be saddled with rational thought when if anything goes wrong, they simply turn to the belabored taxpayer for resolution of their problems.

More tax money will solve everything, right?

Anyway, one might keep in mind the fact that this group of people which we sent to Sacramento are imbued with the ability to undercut and downsize our economy until it is small enough — even for them to manage! Their limits on the skill set required to absolutely waste seems, however, to have no bounds.

For those of us who make a living in the private sector, it’s absolutely imperative that we look at the downside of every decision in the context of its overall impact. We are forced then to do a risk analysis to determine if the potential damaging offset is worth the risk or is at least controllable.

An example would be our legislature caving into the demands of California’s environmental community and requiring that our utility companies use more and more renewable (more expensive) power sources in the cocktail used to generate our electricity. The result has been the most expensive utility rates in the country.

But, as always, that’s only one man’s opinion.