Incentives are for losers

I think the point is, society is trying to maximize wealth instead of maximizing happiness and fulfilment. We are being told that to be successful is to be rich, while we should be told that to be successful is to be happy. And the reason is that you don't need much to be happy. So the day we say this to the citizens, the day we all realize buying things is useless, the whole economic system collapses, and no one wants to be in charge during the very hard transition period between the two systems. The interesting thing is, because the planet has limited resources, because we don't take care of it and because we don't control wealth inequality, the switch will happen, unplanified, and millions (billions?) of humans will die.

Well, this is just silly.

"We can all agree: the incentives are bad."

Seriously?!

If I kill someone, or behave like an asshole, everyone will hate me, so I've got an incentive not to. Is that so horrible?

The reason that people talk about incentives when it comes to politics is that laws and large parts of present day's richer countries economic systems are controlled by laws, contracts, associations between countries, companies, people, etc. and are an artificially created ruleset. That means if you change rules you change incentives. Eg. if you know a government will bail you out, you lose the incentive to avoid risky things, if there is a tax on something you are it will influence your monetary incentives, if being an asshole is looked upon favorably then you have an incentive to be one. Also if tax fraud isn't considered a crime by large parts of people or is seen as smart then you have an incentive to commit it.

A lot of social change good and bad came from shifts in good and bad incentives.

Even more. If you look at the legal and prison systems in Norway vs eg the US the incentives that individuals, governments and corporations have are a reason for a 5 year recidivism rate of 70% vs 20%.

In general if you think your life will be better as a criminal than the alternative then you will be incentivized become one. If you can choose between joining the mafia that might even care for you or barely getting through with day jobs then you are incentivized to do so.

So if a government manages to make sure your life will certainly better, than the incentive to join is a whole lot lower.

If you are shamed vs praised (or otherwise feel supported) for sexism or racism you will have an incentive to go a certain way.

Cults and so on used incentives in a bad way, many parents use incentives in a good way ("if you clean up your room/finish your homework/behave you'll get ice cream later").

The reason people talk about incentives is because they shape whether things are likely to work out. As we've seen big public companies usually will do everything they can get away with and will break laws if the expected profit is higher than the potential fine. That is a wrong and very much changeable incentive.

And it doesn't have to be laws. It can be public opinion. If the marketing is more expensive than just not doing a bad thing in first place then that's an incentive as well.

Incentives are the things that make people do things good and bad. Incentives are the reason people go out of bed and be it just the incentive to ease the pressure on their full bladder. And even there if getting up will cost you great pain you might have a higher incentive there.

Just like people going to doctors is often dominated by incentives of getting rid of a sickness vs not having to pay money or endure a potentially painful or side effect rich treatment.

That feels like an incredibly modern view.

The premise of this article only works because the author has taken an overly narrow definition of an 'incentive' - as if an incentive can only be offered by a social media app for a quick dopamine hit.

What's they are missing is that it's all incentives, all the way down. You want to be a good kind person? You feel good when you believe you've demonstrated this - but you're just acting on incentives you've set for yourself to feel good. You want to feel morally superior by quitting social media (thereby avoiding the overt incentives to the contrary) or donating more to charity? Same thing - you're following incentives you've created for yourself to be the person you want to be and be seen as.

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Also, FWIW, I strongly disliked the mid-article moralisation - implying that people are somehow flawed, inferior individuals if they haven't examined every aspect of their world and developed a deep understanding of it that could never be challenged. This is just a self-serving conceit of someone who feels superior because they think they see the matrix (or fish). The world is full of people who live their lives as best they can, trying to be decent people as best they can, without having the time, energy, or incentive to dive deeper into things as the author seems to believe they should. Are they inferior people? No. So f#ck this author and their snide superior moralistic b#llshit.

That's all nice on a theoretical but such ideas quickly fall flat in a world where corporations are owned by rich people and create pollution often whole countries are even unable to pull off, often completely unpunished often economically and politically ("we need more jobs") encouraged.

I think reducing individuals to two people whose only difference is wealth in respect to which goods they can buy is wrong when applied to real world societies in the same way that weather prognosis based on a very limited set of parameters is wrong.

Wealth is not a measure to pay just fines or good, but today effectively the approximation for power that individuals, groups of individuals or legal entities hold. And measuring wealth is a huge complex topic on its own which also makes the taxation topic very complicated.

I think that's a huge flaw in present day economical thought. X is good because it increases X/Y ignoring secondary effects. It's like predicting whether it will rain on a given day by just looking at which way the wind goes on your weather station. There is theoretical truth to it, but given both secondary effects and the rest of the world that you might completely ignore but might have complete or partial reversal effects.

And then you have various groups that anyway mess with the details of the rules and people that ignore them through various other means, like not getting caught.

Classic example is also "We raise taxes, because then the rich will go away" which ignores things from "the rich" potentially not giving you anything if they don't give you taxes and the fact that your country might be able to offer a bit more both as a living and a working place than the level of taxes. In fact there have been studies conducted and the reality is that it barely has an effect. Turns out that people don't just leave for paying something that might even indirectly benefit them. Just like if you are rich you probably don't care much if the price for base goods increases, because you might have way bigger incentives like being in a secure place, having a house and family at a place and your company currently running smoothly with no downtrend in sight.