I have a pet peeve when people describe entirely predictable failures of a system as unforeseeable. When you miss those risks, you end up wasting resources on the wrong things and suffer worse outcomes to boot.

There’s a way out though, by understanding the system and who might make choices that lead to undesirable outcomes.

I frequently see articles where the journalist writes something like “Who knew that anyone would find this giant loophole?!?”

And the answer is that perhaps a lay reader wouldn’t have expected that result... But ask any of a thousand experts in the field, including many that created the system, and they would have predicted it with near certainty. They maybe even wrote memos about all the likely negative consequences of leaving the loophole open.

If you’re a parent, you’ve experienced this in a very tangible way. Your kid asks if they can watch tv, and you say no. Minutes later you find them playing videogames and are incredulous. They point out that you only said no to tv, and so they didn’t watch tv, they played video games. Totally different.

You make a note… fool me once, shame on you… But next time they ask for tv, you’re going to close that loophole.