Incentives are for losers • Hacker News Board

Re: Incentives are for losers

#121

Post by samirillian » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 10:41 PM UTC

fittingopposite wrote: post #120

samirillian wrote: post #105

I agree, I also think it’s more like delayed gratification. Good incentives are for good people bad incentives are for fools. The further you can push back short-term incentives in favor of long-term, the better your life will be. Like we all “know” that love is better than coffee but in the morning many of us would/do choose coffee. Food, drugs, porn all short-term pleasures are “less good” than prosperity, but we o…

Curious, what do you mean with prosperity in this context?

I mean, tautologically, I guess all the good parts of prosperity and none of the bad. Not a proof of correctness but a list:

1. Wealth gotten by one’s own work, or by wise management 2. A lender never a borrower 3. Desires generally satisfied 4. Leaving an inheritance for children/future generations

I tend to think of the Kulaks that Trotsky wanted to work with but that Stalin sent to Siberia

Re: Incentives are for losers

#123

Post by brainwad » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 6:27 AM UTC

stymaar wrote: post #106

spicyusername wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real natural law is scarcity. We will always need a system to decide who gets to live by the ocean better than the default one, violence.

> The real natural law is scarcity. That's the biggest myth of economics. It wasn't even true the pre-modern world except occasionally (famines were a real thing, but they were still kinda infrequent), and it's pretty much never true in an industrial civilization, let alone in an era of growing automation capabilities.

If resources are not scarce in industrial civilisation, why do you suppose people pay for them? Why is there a spot oil market, if oil is not scarce? And the same for all other commodities...

Re: Incentives are for losers

#124

Post by brainwad » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 6:34 AM UTC

zdc1 wrote: post #6

Completely agree. Incentives are for the statistical masses. As thinking individuals we can and should use our awareness and courage to make biggest "good" choices we can bear to. We can't all be zero-waste vegan community organisers lobbying for renewables and free education/healthcare, but I doubt living life with the blinders on leads any kind of moral or spiritual growth or fulfilment either.

Incentives are also for when a principal just doesn't care about the difference between two possible choices. But maybe other people indirectly do, and an incentive like price can weigh the scales so that people indifferent to the choice choose the right one.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#125

Post by AureliusMA » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 5:02 PM UTC

rf15 wrote: post #40

thelastgallon wrote: post #32

I remember this book: Punished by Rewards, Alfie Kohn "The basic strategy we use for raising children, teaching students, and managing workers can be summarized in six words: do this and you'll get that. We dangle goodies (from candy bars to sales commissions) in front of people in much the same way that we train a family pet. The quick fix of rewards may seem to be effective, but manipulating people with external in…

Thanks to something (possibly the ruinous adhd medication regime I went through for my entire childhood) I don't really get any motivation from promises of carrots, only the sticks I try to avoid. Works great though, not unhappy, because doing good work still intrinsically satisfies me. I just really don't care about pleasing people (and yet I often do)

You might want to look into the difference between : positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and type 1/2 punishments.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#126

Post by stymaar » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 7:41 AM UTC

brainwad wrote: post #123

stymaar wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real natural law is scarcity. That's the biggest myth of economics. It wasn't even true the pre-modern world except occasionally (famines were a real thing, but they were still kinda infrequent), and it's pretty much never true in an industrial civilization, let alone in an era of growing automation capabilities.

If resources are not scarce in industrial civilisation, why do you suppose people pay for them? Why is there a spot oil market, if oil is not scarce? And the same for all other commodities...

> If resources are not scarce in industrial civilisation, why do you suppose people pay for them?

Like most people I used to pay for a Windows license key, do you think that I had to pay for it because license keys are scarce?

> Why is there a spot oil market, if oil is not scarce?

Because we designed the oil market this way. In Europe, we didn't have a spot electricity price decades ago, but we have now.

Oil is typically a good example as the Saudi could pump twice as much oil whenever they like (and still have oil when we phase out oil consumption as we move to EV).

Resources are obviously finite, but most of them can't be called scarce because the natural limits aren't the limiting factor for how much there are of them in the market.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#127

Post by stymaar » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 8:00 AM UTC

spicyusername wrote: post #122

stymaar wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real natural law is scarcity. That's the biggest myth of economics. It wasn't even true the pre-modern world except occasionally (famines were a real thing, but they were still kinda infrequent), and it's pretty much never true in an industrial civilization, let alone in an era of growing automation capabilities.

scarcity myth wasn't true in pre-modern Got bad news for you bub...

That I spend too much time reading history books? I know, but old habits die hard.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#128

Post by brainwad » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 11:20 AM UTC

stymaar wrote: post #126

brainwad wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If resources are not scarce in industrial civilisation, why do you suppose people pay for them? Why is there a spot oil market, if oil is not scarce? And the same for all other commodities...

> If resources are not scarce in industrial civilisation, why do you suppose people pay for them? Like most people I used to pay for a Windows license key, do you think that I had to pay for it because license keys are scarce? > Why is there a spot oil market, if oil is not scarce? Because we designed the oil market this way. In Europe, we didn't have a spot electricity price decades ago, but we have now. Oil is typi…

I wouldn't normally call a license key a resource. But to the extent I entertain the hypothetical: illegal windows unlocks aren't scarce, only the legal keys are, because the scarcity is purely legal. People pay for the legal keys to stay on the right side of the law.

> Oil is typically a good example as the Saudi could pump twice as much oil whenever they like (and still have oil when we phase out oil consumption as we move to EV).

A brave take when Saudi production is currently massively curtailed due to events out of their control. Sure _pumping_ is cheap, but that's only helpful if you want to consume the oil at the well head. Otherwise the true scarcity is in the whole supply chain. Resources are scarce because even if the reserves exist, extracting and distributing them is hard.