What are examples of the opposite of perverse incentives?
post by JohnGreer · 2021-06-18T16:04:44.158Z · LW · GW · 3 commentsThis is a question post.
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Answers 6 antanaclasis 3 Dagon None 3 comments
I think a lot about the importance of incentives. There are numerous historical examples of perverse incentives but what are some examples of times where people got the incentives right?
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I’d say a lot of domains have reasonably-aligned incentives a lot of the time, but that’s a boring non-answer. For a specific example, there’s the classic case of how whenever I go to the grocery store, I’m presented with a panoply of cheap, good quality foodstuffs available for me to purchase. The incentives along the chain from production -> store -> me are reasonably well-aligned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax is likely a good example - if implemented well, the incentive effect scales precisely with remediating the harm caused.
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