Floodgate effect
Law, unintended consequences
A floodgate effect occurs when you permit a small thing, which then leads to the permission of many more things.
The name comes from the way a floodgate works: if you open the gate even a little bit, water will flow in until both sides of the gate are in equilibrium. Even the tiniest permission will lead to total permission.
Examples of the floodgate effect:
- If you do a favor to a certain type of person, they'll be always asking for more favors. In Finnish, we say "I gave my pinky, they took the whole arm" (I believe the English equivalent is "give them an inch, they'll take a mile")
- A drop of alcohol to a recovering addict can lead to total relapse
- If you allow one citizen to burn the American flag, you'll allow all of them to do that.
As you can see from the examples, the small permission creates a precedent, which is then exploited/leveraged repeatedly, leading to a flood of such events.