20 Things That Show How no Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Here are 20 examples of people or ideas that had good intentions, but led to bad results. Just because something is supposed to be good, doesn't mean it will turn out that way.
1.
Here are 20 examples of people or ideas that had good intentions, but led to bad results. Just because something is supposed to be good, doesn't mean it will turn out that way.
The expression "no good deed goes unpunished" can feel like hyperbole at times, and completely contradicts a concept like karma, if you believe in such things. However, it is a reminder to always consider all angles and details of a plan, even if it is made with good intentions. Things can always go wrong!
2.
The opioid crisis. Initially it was highly restricted and doctors hated prescribing it because they KNEW how addictive it could be. Well here we are.
3.
Purity culture and the *I Kissed Dating Goodbye* book/movement. It was a response to hookup culture and the "free love" movement of the 60's and 70's, and all of *its* downsides and dangers. But it left people with no idea how to have healthy relationships, sexual dysfunction, and worse. (Not to mention, a net *increase* in STIs and teen pregnancy, as they never learned how to protect themselves and mitigate risks.)
4.
I recall hearing that the person behind the 'like' function of Facebook legitimately just saw it as a nice way for people to show others what they like, or a way to positively react on things. It turns out that it has a huge negative impact on social cognition, especially for teenagers.
5.
Lobotomy, Surgery to fix the mentally unwell, It sounds so good: no more reliance on medication, you’re good from now on. But it didn’t work. The outcomes were awful and it was frequently done without any sort of consent It all could have been shut down fairly quickly if people were honest about what was happening, but careers and money was at stake….so many unnecessarily suffered
6.
Most moral panics? Stranger Danger: convincing people in the 1970-90s that hundreds of thousands of American children were being yoinked into random cars by evil strangers each year, while downplaying and underfunding the resources that could actually help decrease child abduction. Child abductions not only never came anywhere near those huge numbers, but it was and still is nearly always a custodial issue or a very close family member. Teaching people to be wary of kidnapping is great; directing all their fears toward vague spooky strangers and not helping people learn how to *actually* prevent kidnapping is kinda s**t.
7.
The introduction of Kudzu for erosion control. It has become invasive and girdles and kills plant life above ground without establishing proper roots, therefore causing soil erosion.
8.
George W Bush admin created subsidies on corn to promote the production of ethanol to be used in fuel, etc. Better for the environment and so forth. Couple of downstream effects: 1) Ethanol in fuel lowers the fuel efficiency, so you have to buy gas more frequently (more of an inconvenience, but that's why fuel with no ethanol is usually slightly more expensive). 2) Corn sold for other purposes than ethanol didn't qualify for the subsidies, so there was a strong financial incentive to sell to ethanol produces instead of for food. This drove the price of food corn (and food that uses corn-derived ingredients) up, affecting poor people the most. 3) The financial incentives were so strong that farmers were buying up cheap land in areas that were very unsuitable for corn production or switching away from crops that would grow more easily if they couldn't afford more land. In western Kansas, corn needs to be heavily irrigated in order to grow. There is an enormous aquifer that stretches from South Dakota to the Texas panhandle. Increased irrigation combine with a years-long drought drained the aquifer to the point that the city of Hays has to truck their water in.
9.
Once upon a time, I found a wallet on the beach. Having lost my own more than once, and not having it returned to me, I am aware that it is a stressful life event. So, my first thought was how to return it quickly. Looking through the contents, the owner was from out of state and there was no contact information other than the drivers license. Aside from that, only a few credit cards and some cash. Not knowing how long ago the owner had left, I thought let's just sit here for a while and maybe he will return looking for it since it is the first thing I would do. After a couple hours of fun and sun we needed to move on; my next best idea was to turn it into the local police station which we found easily enough just down the street. What I thought would be a quick in and out turned into a full on interrogation session during which I was, at one point, accused of theft/robbery. It was a bizarre experience, to say the least, which wasted an hour of our day.
10.
A man named Dr. Spock wrote a handbook for childrearing. It was widely circulated and well received. Many of our parents likely got their childrearing advice from this book. In it he recognized that babies throw up a lot and therefore recommended newborns be laid on their stomachs to sleep. Unknowingly, this would result in the accidental smothering deaths of thousands of newborns. A huge number of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) cases can be laid at his feet. To this day the back to sleep campaign is still fighting to update parents on what we now know: newborns should sleep on their backs until they can reliably roll over for themselves.
12.
Since the abysmal performance of American schools has been in the news recently, "No Child Left Behind" and it's replacement "Every Student Succeeds Act" America has never had really good public education, but it used to be serviceable. NCLB came in to try and create some milestones and accountability. Instead it made the problem worse. ECSS came in and tried to address it's problems, but changed the stuff that wasn't the problem and left the bad parts unscathed. Taken all together 57% of highschool GRADUATES can't read at a 7th grade reading level and over a quarter are functionally illiterate.
13.
My mom called my Christian university (that 17 year old me attended by my parents behest) to inform the school that I was smoking weed, drinking, and having sex. She thought because it was a Christian university, they would put me into a counseling program to get me “back on track.” The school told me to pack my bags, leave immediately and they rescinded the 80% scholarship I obtained, causing me to owe the full 100% for that semester which I’m still paying off a decade later.
14.
My parents thought that if they brought us kids to church every week (Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and all day Sunday), had us go to private religious schools, and made us volunteer for religious organizations, we'd stay out of trouble and be as zealous as they are. As soon as each of us could, we ran away and never looked back. One of my sisters won't attend a funeral if its in a church!
15.
On a personal scale trying to help a really drunk person. I'm a woman and talkative and I started talking to another woman at a bar who was really really drunk. She told me her friends deserted her so I said she could hang out with me and my friends as it was my birthday (to keep an eye on her and because she seemed fun). Then she started falling off of chairs and spilling drinks so I encouraged her to get a cab. She started crying how everyone hates her as I was helping her outside but agreed to go home. I got a cab, paid for it because she was a mess, and all of the sudden she got really violent and ended up kicking me in the face trying to get out of the cab because she 'wasn't done'. She pushed me and told me to f**k off but ultimately sat back down in the cab crying. We had already exchanged numbers so the next day she texted me apologizing profusely and asking if we could stay friends. I told her I appreciated her apology but no thanks. I will always try to help people where I can but that turned me off from going above and beyond. Plus, you can rarely rationalize with really drunk and upset people.
17.
Story: My uncle took me and my brother in because he wanted us to get a good education. My mom and dad agreed as they knew that my uncle would be able to give us a better shot at making something of ourselves. My uncle's intentions were good. However, my uncle's wife made our lives hell. She basically mistreated us and my uncle was unable to do anything about it. So his inaction made him complicit. Even through the hardships, my brother and I still managed to get an education, but my uncle's reputation was affected negatively. Family members don't see him the same way and his wife is really disliked (to put it mildly). It started with good intentions, but it didn't end well for my uncle.
18.
A company in a town I used to live in “employed” a lot of people from the local disability support center, these people had mental disabilities such as Down syndrome and this company “employed them” to come in a few hours a week and “work” - and by work I mean little tasks that gave these employees lives a sense of meaning, purpose and structure. Things like folding pamphlets and stamping papers and they would be paid a small amount for their time, not minimum wage but enough for them to be absolutely thrilled with their “pay” from working. The government made some changes so that these people HAD to be paid minimum wage (I assume to avoid people being taking advantage of), I am sure they had the best intentions but this company, and many others could not afford to pay all of these people minimum wage and so they had to cut back to only letting 1-2 people work instead of all of the people who were benefiting from “working” for them initially. It was really sad especially because these people did not understand why they were not allowed to work anymore.
19.
A lot of old programs centered around weight and eating disorders just led to kids being more self conscious of their weight, despite the intentions of wanting to prevent bullying ,and trying to promote healthy weight. It did not even matter if it was anti-anorexia.
20.
Harry Frederick Harlow(scientist). He wanted to prove that humans cannot survive without love and affection. He needed an animal that was sufficiently humanlike and he settled on rhesus monkeys. Harlow's research went in a really dark direction. Harlow wanted to prove the importance of early social interaction in social development, and the importance of family and love, but his cruel methods ended up causing some of the monkeys to engage in self-mutilation or starve themselves to death. He raised the monkeys from birth with as little love and affection in isolation chambers for up to 24 months. They became empty shells of living animals.
21.
I'll poke a little at my fellow leftists here. Plastic bags. Back in the late 90s there was a huge push for people to stop using paper grocery bags because of the amount of trees being cut down for paper. Unfortunately, it turns out the logging industry can be pretty sustainable (though not entirely faultless!) and plastic bags are unrecyclable and so thin that reuse is uncommon. Instead contributing to massive amounts of plastic pollution in the environment. Another example is the protest against hunting white tailed deer. Unfortunately we killed their natural predators, and hunting is an effective way of keeping their population at sustainable levels.
22.
During one of china's extreme dry seasons (think of their dust bowl period) Mao ordered the killing of birds to prevent bird eating seeds and so increase agricultural productivity instead what happened is that birds that feeded on plants pests were killed making the situation even worse and resulting on the death of millions a bad dry season, deforestation, missuse of pesticides and a war against nature under his belief that conquring nature was the way to inprove agricultural yield and so the welbeing of their citizens stupid uninformed decisions even if semingly rational to a layman resulting in one of the biggest human and ecological cost disasters we still making such decisions from time to time, sometimes for profit on the belief that such will benefit all and sometimes for genuine good reasons
23.
Those parents who solve all their kids issues and don't make them "stress" about consequences of their own actions. Their kids just turn into inept and entitled adults who still act 15 for decades and not only have a harder life for themselves, but make life miserable for everyone around them.
24.
In every war, even the most righteous ones, there were members of the “good side” that were rapists, sadists, and plain old vile.
26.
Haiti did not have cholera. A disastrous earthquake hit Haiti in 2010. After the earthquake, humanitarian forces from the UN arrived to help, and the Nepalese contingent reintroduced Cholera to Haiti. This epidemic has since infected approximately 850,000 people and killed over 10,000.
27.
Trying to help someone so desperately that you lose sight of your own actions and end up hurting everyone around you by neglecting your own health and becoming overly defensive of that person, even insulting and attacking others for them. This can happen too fast when you fall in love with a bad person.
30.
The invention of social media. When Tom was working at Friendster, I genuinely believe he wanted to build something that allowed people to communicate in a new and modern way. On paper, early MySpace is a brilliant concept that made a lot of people realize the potential of the internet.This concept was mutilated and turned into what social media is today.
31.
Federally backed student loans. Once money was guaranteed, colleges jacked up tuition and continue to do so, with no end in sight.
34.
'Helping' someone by enabling them in their self destructive behaviors. Sometimes you help someone by denying them what they want.
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