The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

Four Signs of Shortsightedness and Strategies to
Overcome Them
Most of us imagine that we engage in some form of long-term thinking;
after all, we have goals and plans. But really we are fooling ourselves.
We can see this most clearly when we talk to other people about their
plans and strategies for the near and more distant future: we are often
struck by their vagueness and the lack of deep thinking people
generally give to such plans. They are more like hopes and wishes, and
in the rush of immediate events, feeling pressure and the need to
respond, such weak goals and plans are easily overwhelmed. Most of
the time we are improvising and reacting to events with insufficient
information. Basically we are in denial about this because it is hard to
have perspective about our own decision-making process.
The best way to overcome this is to recognize the clear signs of
shortsighted thinking in our own lives. As with most elements of
human nature, awareness is the key. Only by seeing these signs can we
combat them. The following are the four most common manifestations
of short-term thinking:
1. Unintended consequences.
History is littered with endless examples
of this phenomenon. In ancient Rome, a group of men loyal to the
Republic feared that Julius Caesar was going to make his dictatorship
permanent and establish a monarchy. In 44 BC they decided to
assassinate him, thereby restoring the Republic. In the ensuing chaos
and power vacuum Caesar’s great-nephew Octavius quickly rose to the
top, assumed power, and permanently ended the Republic by
establishing a de facto monarchy. After Caesar’s death it came out that
he had never intended to create a monarchical system. The
conspirators brought about precisely what they had tried to stop.
In nineteenth-century India, under British colonial rule, authorities
decided there were too many venomous cobras in the streets of Delhi,
making life uncomfortable for the British residents and their families.

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To solve this they offered a reward for every dead cobra residents
would bring in. Soon enterprising locals began to breed cobras in order
to make a living from the bounty. The government caught on to this
and canceled the program. The breeders, resentful of the rulers and
angered by their actions, decided to release their cobras back on the
streets, thereby tripling the population from before the government
program.
Other notorious examples would include the Eighteenth
Amendment, establishing Prohibition in the United States in 1920,
which was designed to stop the spread of alcoholism but only ended up
increasing alcohol consumption by a substantial amount; and the
surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in 1941, designed to
decimate the U.S. naval force in one blow and bring America to its
knees. Instead it shook the American public out of its deep
isolationism, ensuring the total mobilization of the country’s superior
manpower and resources to not only defeat the Japanese but also to
obliterate its military for good. The very success of the attack
guaranteed the opposite of the intended result.
We can find less dramatic examples of this in our daily lives. We try
to control a rebellious teenager by putting some restrictions on his
behavior, only to make him even more rebellious and uncontrollable.
We try to cheer up a depressed person by making her realize that her
life is not that bad and that the sun is shining, only to find out we have
made her even more depressed. She now feels guilty about her feelings,
worthless, and more alone in her unhappiness. A wife tries to get her