It's naive to assume that law can be enacted "to make the world a better place" without unwarranted side effects. Change a law and you change behavior. Predicting the change in behavior is not always difficult, and the lawmakers know it. Oh, and I'm not talking about the politicians. No sir. These lawmakers are not naive.
America is a welfare state, and it's bred a population of welfare junkies. We are drowning in evidence of this. When you're unemployed and know that you'll be getting a check in the mail for the next six months, are you not going to bask in the free money and only seriously start looking until it's exhausted. The unemployed are rewarded to NOT find work. What happened before unemployment? People were forced to step up to the plate, and as a result, people became more independent and empowered. What we have now is a bunch of powerless dependents.
How about the "too big to fail" banks. Government intervention eliminates risk from the equation. How do you expect banks to behave when they are rewarded for taking huge risks and losing? They're betting with a 2-sided coin - and the American people are the ones anteing up (through a life of debt slavery).
What about college students being rewarded financial aid based on "need"? Well, they're penalized for working (and saving), and they and their parents are encouraged to spend anything they have saved up. What rational person would not do this considering the irrational cost of college?
How about our representative democracy? Since a candidate wants to win, it's easy to see why he or she would merely say everything the voters want to hear. What stops a candidate from saying anything and everything to get elected and once in office, reneg on every promise? There's some built in control with term limits and even impeachment, but what happens when the politicians are bought and people stop caring? What do you expect to happen when they know people have stopped caring? David Icke calls it the totalitarian tip toe. We should start valuing consistency in politics more importantly and elect someone like Ron Paul.
Many more examples are out there, and anyone reading this can come up with handfuls of others. It is absolutely permeated in the fabric of our society.
Computer security has a safety (te)net called "defensive programming." It states that programs should be written assuming everything that can go wrong will go wrong. It would be wise to apply a little cross-pollination between these two disciplines because an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It's about time we start practicing some defensive politics and squelch these "moral hazards." Stop propping up this house-of-cards with man-made laws so nature's laws can run their course.