Although it might seem so, this post is not about politics, the evils of socialism or anything like that. Irreal doesn’t do politics. Rather, this is a post about what happens when you fail to consider unintended consequences.
Like most developers I’m always acutely aware of possible unintended consequences. Or maybe it was my years working on security software that taught me to think about how things could go wrong. Or maybe I’ve just always been that way. In any event, this made me laugh. The unintended consequences are so easy to foresee that one is suspicious that the Hollande government did see them but just didn’t care.
The TL;DR of the story at the link is that after the new French Socialist government imposed a 75% surtax on the rich, the rich started leaving France. What did they think was going to happen? The fact that this mass exodus resulted in howls of outrage from the French government only makes the whole thing funnier.
Again, this isn’t a political post and it takes no stand on socialism versus capitalism or any of the rest of it. Nor is it about how foolhardy those silly French are; after all, in the U.S., California is experiencing essentially the same thing. It’s merely to point out that whatever your beliefs, it’s dangerous to indulge in magical thinking and fail to consider how things might go wrong.