To appreciate the unintended consequences produced by the market process helps to understand the possibilities and the limits implied in designing public policies.
To understand economics means to be equipped with the intellectual tools allowing us to appreciate the dynamic and complex nature of the market seen as an endless process rather than a state of affair.
The market is often looked at as a state of affair, to be judged by its outcomes, and somehow potentially subject to central direction. Such a perspective fails to appreciate the complex dynamics that generates those outcomes: consequences are the result of human actions and interactions. Moreover, the consequences are often unintended and the market outcome can be defined as the result of human action but not of human design (spontaneous order).