Too abstract. Second-order effects are mostly not mysterious, they’re things which you can predict, not perfectly but usually well enough, if you look at the right parts of the world and apply some economics. If someone’s arguing against an intervention because they think the intervention will have bad second-order effects, then the followup question is whether those effects are real and how big they are. Answering that means looking at the details.
That said, in my experience, if you come across an argument between two people, and one person is saying Something Must Be Done, and the other person is saying You Fool That Will Backfire For Reasons I Will Explain, the second person is almost always right.
Too abstract. Second-order effects are mostly not mysterious, they’re things which you can predict, not perfectly but usually well enough, if you look at the right parts of the world and apply some economics. If someone’s arguing against an intervention because they think the intervention will have bad second-order effects, then the followup question is whether those effects are real and how big they are. Answering that means looking at the details.
That said, in my experience, if you come across an argument between two people, and one person is saying Something Must Be Done, and the other person is saying You Fool That Will Backfire For Reasons I Will Explain, the second person is almost always right.