Kerby Anderson
Elon Musk noted on X that giving more money to homelessness charities in California did not seem to reduce the number of homeless people. In response, Konstantin Kisin reminded him about the Cobra Effect and was surprised to discover how many people hadn’t heard of it.
The Cobra Effect is based on a story which may or may not have taken place during British colonial rule in India. According to the story, the British wanted to reduce the cobra population and offered a bounty for every dead cobra. But the cobra problem got worse because people realized they could profit from this bounty and began raising cobras in farms. When the government became aware of this practice, they discontinued the bounty program. The cobra breeders released their now worthless snakes into the wild making the problem worse.
In the past, I’ve talked about how the Cobra Effect surfaced in the attempt to combat racism. Anti-racist groups and organizations formed to combat racism. But they soon faced a problem. The demand to find racism was much larger than the supply. Soon we were hearing about microaggressions, and the charge of racism was thrown around indiscriminately.
The problem of homelessness in California, Kisin argues, came not only from the “attempts to deal with it failing, but was also the result of well-intentioned policies, the deinstitutionalization movement, whose goal was to free people of the tyranny of mental asylums.” The mentally ill people released into the streets fell through the cracks. Today cities are littered with tents and drug addicts on the streets.
These are just two examples of many others that remind us that good intentions don’t always solve social problems.

Kerby Anderson
The U.S. dollar has lost half of its purchasing power in just the last 30 years. Put another way, that means that one dollar today can only buy 50 cents worth of goods and services compared to the 1990s. In less than a single generation, the dollars in your wallet or purse can only buy half as much.
Once you understand that depressing statistic, you can also begin to see why the wealth gap in this country is increasing. If you have your wealth sitting in cash (bank accounts, checking accounts, etc.), you are losing ground. However, if you have your wealth in investments (stocks, housing, land, etc.), you are doing much better.
Thirty years ago, a dollar would allow you to buy two apples. Today, a dollar will only allow you to buy one apple. By contrast, if you use that dollar (and many others with it) to buy stock, the value of the stock is worth twice as much because it takes twice as many dollars to purchase it.
This problem isn’t just affecting young Americans who would like to buy a house. It is also affecting seniors who put their savings in pensions and retirement plans. They are becoming aware that the money they set aside in their retirement plans has not kept up with inflation and there won’t be enough for them because of the dollar’s declining value.
This simple illustration helps focus on the real problem facing America in the future. The dollar is broken simply because more and more of it is being printed each year. Yes, we can lower the cost of living some by increasing energy production. Yes, protecting American markets will provide more jobs for the American people.
But we need to fix the money. Until we do so, the problem I just illustrated will be worse for the American consumer.