An interesting part of public policy is the effects that are unforeseen.

Arizona, with its controversial immigration law, is an example. I know that state a bit, since my brother lives in Scottsdale. And I predict: in about two months, Scottsdale residents will rise up as one body to oppose this law.

It’s not because they will be asked to prove their citizenship—no one is likely to demand from my tall, graying, blond-haired brother his passport or birth certificate. Nor is it because they think the new law is unconstitutional.

They’re going to be against it because Scottsdale will go to rack and ruin. You see, Scottsdale residents can operate only in pristine conditions. (They’d never make it in Boston.) Two months from now, if the police enforce the law and send many illegal immigrants back, the rosemary hedges around Scottsdale residents’ houses will be untrimmed, their Bermuda grass lawns will lie unmowed, their adobe-style interiors will be dusty, their cars unwashed, and their swimming pools green with algae.

Until now Scottsdale residents practiced a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy with their household help. What a shocker when the help has been deported. Scottsdale will be begging for illegal immigrants to return since no self-respecting Scottsdale resident wants to trim a hedge.

Nantucket Sound is another place to closely watch. One wind turbine is an industrial encroachment. But 130 of them, geometrically arrayed, become an art installation. In retailing, it’s the Crate and Barrel syndrome. Put one metal grater on the shelf and it’s a metal grater. Arrange 30, and they’re an elevating experience—and a sure sale.

To investigate the design potential of turbine repetition, drive east on I-580 to the Altamont Pass in the Diable mountain range the next time you are in the Bay Area in California. You’re just toodling along, minding your own business and suddenly you come over a rise and you’re in the midst of hundreds of turbines. It’s the same feeling you get in Luxor when you’re standing in the midst of its tall thick columns. It takes your breath away, or at least it did mine thirty or so years ago when I knew nothing of wind power and last took that memorable drive.

But there is an ominous result of wind turbines that I’ve not read about in the Nantucket plan.  Without good agreements with wind farm developers, areas in Hawaii and California—including my favorite old Altamont Pass, apparently— have been left with unpleasant, rusting support towers when they are abandoned. No attractive array can counteract dereliction.

If this is avoided in Nantucket Sound, many will still not like the turbines. But other groups will probably acclaim them as a contemporary Luxor.

Table manners aren’t public policy, but at one time they almost became such if the story I was told is true. The unexpected outcome is befuddlement—a great word if there ever was one.  As the west opened to settlers, Victorian ladies reportedly were disgusted by the etiquette of the rough kinds of people (mainly men) who were the first to arrive in lawless places with no civic structure or polite society.

In the spirit of the time the reformers are said to have promoted manners that discouraged diners from shoveling food into their mouths like animals might. Instead they slowed dining down by ‘civilizing’ behavior. Cut food with the fork in your left hand, knife in your right. Then lay down the knife and transfer the fork into your right hand. Only at that point, you may, according to the reformers, daintily scoop up the food. And, by the way, lay your napkin, folded in half, on your lap, where it does no good.

So the reformers won: Americans continue to manage their eating utensils in this inefficient way, unlike the rest of the knife-and-fork-wielding world. It’s probably another American trait that Europeans consider strange.

Perfection, frankly, isn’t attainable, whether it’s in one’s life, dining habits or public policy. That means immigration laws, wind turbines, the health care bill, financial reform, and table manners will have unintended consequences as they play themselves out. As for me, I’m planning a trip to my brother’s to watch the fun as Scottsdale tries to cope without their household helpers.