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Incentives are for losers

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Re: Incentives are for losers

#41

Post by flaburgan »

ngruhn wrote: post #28

I know it's kinda beside the point but I like incentives compared to hard rules as a policy measure. They are much more effective, less bureaucratic and easier to push through. They are like weights vs. booleans. Don't like smoking? Try out right banning it. It's impossible. You have to fight the lobbyist, the addicted consumers, the workers employed by the industry, ... Slapping a tax on it is much easier. A soft NO…

The problem with "absolute" taxes (A fixed % of the price for everyone) is that they punish the poor but don't affect the rich, while most of the problems out there are caused by the rich, because they are more powerful. You don't care about a carbon tax on your extremely polluting plane tickets if this represents 0,01% of your revenue. One solution is to make the tax proportional to your revenue, like in Switzerland speed tickets are which means someone already got 1.7M fine from one over-speed limit driving. But then people will manage to lie about their revenue, as rich always do. Then you could say that it's linked to the person, not the money, so in France if you drive too fast your driving licence is suspended. But once again, that would completely destroy a poor person life, not being able to go to his job anymore, while a rich will be a bit annoyed but just pay a cab. It would be so much better if people were doing the right thing because they knew it is the right thing, instead of having to add incentive to push them to do so. Our planet is burning right now, that would be a good moment to act.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#42

Post by xyzal »

Even if you think you cannot escape incentives - there exists a thing for shaping them - it is called "regulation". Some still consider it a dirty word though.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#43

Post by foxglacier »

ElProlactin wrote: post #24
laserlight wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is actually a fairly recent concept. Whether people think it's God dictated or it's self invented, sounds to me like people acquire purpose.

There's a difference between being born into a world where you are taught you have a purpose defined by God, the universe, etc., and being born into a culture where you are taught you need to find your own purpose.

You're not disagreeing. They're different ways of acquiring a purpose but they're both acquiring a purpose.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#44

Post by PhilipRoman »

flaburgan wrote: post #41
ngruhn wrote: post #28

I know it's kinda beside the point but I like incentives compared to hard rules as a policy measure. They are much more effective, less bureaucratic and easier to push through. They are like weights vs. booleans. Don't like smoking? Try out right banning it. It's impossible. You have to fight the lobbyist, the addicted consumers, the workers employed by the industry, ... Slapping a tax on it is much easier. A soft NO…

The problem with "absolute" taxes (A fixed % of the price for everyone) is that they punish the poor but don't affect the rich, while most of the problems out there are caused by the rich, because they are more powerful. You don't care about a carbon tax on your extremely polluting plane tickets if this represents 0,01% of your revenue. One solution is to make the tax proportional to your revenue, like in Switzerland…

On the other hand, there are vastly fewer rich people than poor, so for many things it doesn't matter if they can pay the fine. If only millionaires were littering, the streets would be quite clean.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#45

Post by flaburgan »

ElProlactin wrote: post #21
Barrin92 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

develop or rediscover a culture that views people as possessing inherent dignity, reason, empathy and individual freedom instead of promoting a commercial culture whose logical terminus are the Wall-E people.[1] Practical first step would be to return to Humboldt's model of education[2] and to not devalue to arts and humanities at every opportunity. [1] https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Yw7WAq_GZY8/hqdefault.jpg [2] https://en.…

> develop or rediscover a culture that views people as possessing inherent dignity, reason, empathy and individual freedom But you don't have to wait for the entire world to change for you to treat the people around you this way.

And thankfully millions of people are already doing it. But the good of small actions from normal people is in the balance with the evil of terrible actions from powerful people, the last example being the current president of the US.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#46

Post by ElProlactin »

Mikhail_Edoshin wrote: post #39
ElProlactin wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between being born into a world where you are taught you have a purpose defined by God, the universe, etc., and being born into a culture where you are taught you need to find your own purpose.

It's both. You have a purpose defined by God, but you have to understand what it is and the journey is your own. There are a lot of hints, explanations, personal stories, but you have to do some work to understand what they mean.

The historical evidence is pretty clear that the modern idea you have a unique purpose you need to find for yourself started to become common in the 18th and 19th centuries. Before that, purpose was largely a dictate cast upon all members of the society.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#47

Post by drivebyhooting »

discarded1023 wrote: post #30

The game theorists/economists have studied this stuff in depth under the rubric of "mechanism design" or "market design". The relevant concept is "incentive compatibility" where the agents in the system do the right thing (whatever that was intended to be/designed for) because any deviation from that costs them more than playing nice. The Wikipedia article [0] is not yet great but does give the two classic examples o…

There’s no guarantee more general results exist. It’s likely that any sufficiently complex “market” admits no incentive compatibility.

Re: Incentives are for losers

#48

Post by cladopa »

As someone who has helped drug addicts in an organisation called "Proyecto Hombre" in Spain you probably don't understand how hard is to help someone in this situation and that sometimes you CAN'T.

It is very typical that when someone gets on drugs even the father of the person stops trying to help after several failed trials. Only the mothers stay. And it is so painful to watch. The kind of abuses mothers tolerate from their children.

Substances destroys the typical regulating behaviour of the brain. They literally can't see the harm they do to others. You usually can't help them until they hit rock bottom and open a window for you to intervene.

For helping you need knowledge and training and "trying to help" without it could do more harm than good.

About the moral obligation to help the drug addicts, as "social justice", I would call this "injustice". Here is the typical situation: Someone takes drugs in a social group because is "cool". In the same group there is someone that decides not to take them. He is humiliated by the group and it takes a lot of work. One of the members of the group gets addicted, do terrible things and asks for help.

It is usual that the one that did not take drugs, or the brother in the family ask the question "why are you helping this person that decided to go this way herself?" "Why are you expending like 10x more resources in this person that did everything wrong than in me when did everything well (studied instead of earning easy money selling drugs, that had to withstand the pressure and humiliations by the group).

Drugs are super expensive and addicts will do anything to get their dose, supporting the addicts usually takes all the resources from a family, neglecting the resources to other members of the family. If the State provides the support, the same thing happens. Should the State spend exorbitant resources that the rest of the society has to pay taking the resources from everyone that needs them?

Re: Incentives are for losers

#49

Post by hackable_sand »

boxed wrote: post #25
augment_me wrote: post #19

I really like the article but I feel like ignoring incentives always costs something. Only people who can afford the cost get to look principled, which turns having money into looking like having character. Everyone he praises in the article has/had a safety net: Sumner was a Harvard-educated senator with inherited standing, the writer himself still had a career after dropping his uni title. The fish metaphor has the…

I usually go around saying to anyone who will listen "incentives are dangerous". Like... you can't avoid them as people are sneaky bastards and will find what the incentives are even if you didn't design any on purpose, but you should be on the lookout always and be damn careful if you ever get the bad idea to introduce any.

I can't imagine having that kind of free time/boredom

Re: Incentives are for losers

#50

Post by flaburgan »

yieldcrv wrote: post #13

Disagree Very few people are self starters, I’ve become fixated on increasing the productivity of the population. Anyone excluded or encumbered has things to address why that is, and then add them to the productivity machine. At one point women weren’t included, other marginalized people are excluded, some populations have a tendency to suicide unless we affirm their feelings and then they are productive. All of that…

But productive to build what? Is productivity what makes people happy and fulfilled?
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