Unintended consequences: the Frank-Dodd edition

Incredibly sad - because their lives weren't already miserable (Reason):

There's strong evidence to suggest that "conflict mineral" regulations in Section 1502 of Dodd-Frank directly led to an increase in looting in affected regions of the Congo.

The result was a drop in demand that caused the DRC's tin, tantalum, and tungsten mines to become much less profitable. Section 1502 succeeded, in other words, at "cut[ting] off funding" to the region's militias. But the militias responded to the change by hurting more innocent people instead of less.

[...] According to Parker, violence increased on two fronts: First, some of the militias in the 3T regions left for greener pastures—in this case, the regions containing gold rather than tin or tungsten mines. They then went to war against the established militias in those places, vying through violence for control of the now-more-lucrative flow of gold.

But other militias saw a different path to replacing their lost income: looting local villages. Indeed, Parker and Vadheim found the incidence of looting increased by nearly threefold in the two years after Dodd-Frank was enacted. As a side-effect, violence against civilians shot up as well.

Read the whole thing (Reason).