You Cannot Do Only One Thing

Garrett James Hardin framed the eponymous Hardin’s First Law of Ecology:
“You cannot do only one thing”.
He meant that you can’t change one element of an ecosystem without having unintended consequences on other parts of the ecosystem. Of course, that “law” doesn’t apply just to ecology, which is why it is quoted so often.

Take AirBnb, the site/app for renting your room/house to complete strangers for short durations. Despite the “how do you trust a stranger?” problem, the site has become a hit. It appealed to people with spare rooms and travelers who didn’t want to spend on expensive hotels. On a per-day basis, room rents on AirBnb would be higher than if you rented via an old fashioned long term lease. That’s obvious. Soon Hardin’s law comes into play: people decided it was better to rent their houses exclusively via AirBnb because they made more money! European cities began to find that rooms for long term leases were very hard to come by since everyone was renting via AirBnb! And so Germany recently issued a law:
“Homeowners can still rent out individual rooms on Airbnb and similar property-listing sites, but renting out entire homes or apartments is now forbidden across the German capital.”

Or take Uber and Ola. Great ideas that make a cab available via your phone. Even more useful when Delhi introduced its odd-even formula for cars and you can’t drive on all days. Enter Hardin’s law: since Uber and Ola are legally not cab companies, they can increase fares (a lot) based on demand. Which, of course, they did. And so the Delhi government cracked down by launching a helpline for complaints against what is called “surge pricing”.

“There’s an app for that”. It applies to practically everything you can imagine. Recently, a Boston start-up called GetHuman launched a new service:
“(It) lets you to pay $5 to $25 to hire a "problem solver" who will call a company's customer service line on your behalf to resolve issues.”
Why is such a service even needed? Because customer service calls keep us in hold, bounce us around and even after all that, we often don’t get what we wanted. Not amused, Time Warner launched its own customer service app, MyTWC! Time Warner’s logic?
“Spending your money on a third party who doesn't know you versus clicking on an app that lets you do self-service seems like an easy choice to us.”

Solutions to problems can create new problems. Or solutions to problems can trigger even better solutions. It can work either way, but one thing’s for sure:
“You cannot do only one thing”.

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