Smokey the Bear is Dead

Only you (delete) No one can stop forest fires

One of Hayek's tenets is that governmental intervention can not solve complex problems. Indeed, the effort to impose centralized solutions to multi-factorial problems merely creates more problems that must eventually be resolved naturally. If that s true, how can anything be achieved? If we have a government at all, it is bound to do something. So it is bound to create problems that cannot  be helpful and must eventually be unwound. So will we be always at work countering the negative acts of good intentions?

Forest fires have been offered as an example. It was thought for years that forest fires could be prevented by preventing undergrowth fires. Quick and decisive intervention. So the forest service developed an aggressive monitoring system to identify small fires and quickly respond. What developed was larger and taller un-burnt undergrowth so when the undergrowth did catch fire, the flames were able to reach the trees more easily. So the effort to protect the forest by protecting the undergrowth resulted in more and more significant undergrowth fires until the forest finally was caught in a devastating and unmanageable blaze.

So, under the Hayek principle, when do you stop putting out the fire? Or is the forest simply doomed?