Incentive: Fill & Download for Free

So it’s the story of a guy, who was working.He was doing a good job. For years. He put his heart into it.But one day, he had a fight with his partner. He ended up sleeping on the couch. He didn’t sleep much. But he did sleep a little.He got to work the next day, and he tried his best, as usual. But he was tired. So he made a mistake.In order for him to have an incentive to work better, his boss fired him.That will teach him to be more careful!That way, he has an incentive to avoid mistakes in the future!He went home, and his partner decided to leave him. So that he has an incentive to take better care of his life. To get his shit together.He tried to find work, but he couldn’t find anything straight away.He missed a rent payment.So his landlord evicted him. To give him a better incentive to find work, and not be so lazy.Soon, people saw how desperate he was starting to get.They wanted to help!To give him more incentives!His phone and internet was cut off so he would have more incentives to earn money.A helpful stranger ran away with most of his stuff to give him an incentive to have some safety.Even nature seemed to be on his side.It started raining, just to give him an incentive to have a shelter.Everyone around him was so helpful!The shop owners were helping too!Putting up little spikes, so he would have an incentive to sleep less, and keep going.People made an effort to go out of their way to help him by giving him great advice!Despite all of those incentives, he just was too lazy.One morning, he was found dead.He had frozen to death.There was another guy, with a different story.He started out homeless.But instead of being nice, people were mean to him!They took away all his incentives!Someone gave him free shoes! And he no longer had any reason to want to buy any :(A kid gave him some free food. Violently taking away his incentive to dig in the trash.A social worker found him, and took away most of the rest of his incentives.He was given access to a tiny house. And he no longer had any incentive to get off the streets.He had an address, and the ability to shower. He was even given a free medical exam!The people really had it out for him, it seems like they were trying to make him as lazy as possible!He was even given some education, so he would be able to work. Taking away his incentive to get into debt.It’s like they were trying to take all his motivation away.He was being completely spoiled. An address. Access to a shower. Health. Clean clothes. A way to go on the internet. Training to be able to work.All his incentives had been taken away.He became entitled.He felt like he deserved more!He was no longer happy begging for spare change.No, he wanted more money, thousands of it, every month!He started to abuse the system.Instead of just using the internet for looking at cat videos, he started sending out letters to anyone he could think of.Thousands of them, to try and find someone who would give him what he wanted.Eventually, he found someone who would give him that.He wanted more and more!Because of his total lack of incentives, he did not even have to focus on bare survival.He started to waste his money on buying a bigger house.He bought things he had no incentive to want, like a new carEventually, he worked himself to death.He died alone.But he died rich!There was a third guy, who lived in an even worse society.The people were so terrible there, so mean, they completely took away his freedom to be homeless.He never ended up on the streets at all, and it wasn’t even really a possibility.He had access to housing. Without the threat of freezing to death as an incentive to pay rent, he was able to do some gardening.He even started annoying the neighbors, taking away their incentives too by offering them fresh produce!He was able to spend time taking care of his house. And helping the people in his community with their house too.He was able to get access to education. During his entire life. He could learn, for free! Without any incentive to get into huge debt.He became so knowledgeable, a real nerdy know-it-all.He began forcing his knowledge onto others, uploading it on shared platforms, like Wikipedia.He started to focus on frivolous things, that would not bring him any additional income.Like a family.He got bored, and started some new hobbies.He got into woodworking.Started making furniture, quality furniture, that would last, that his kids would still be able to use.He started being a pain again to everyone in his community.Giving them wooden stuff, trying to figure out what they need, and surprising them with that.He always had to deal with a couple of annoying people now and then who came around to check that he was in good health.He volunteered for bigger projects.Putting his skill and knowledge to help others, and it made him happy.Every time he took away other people’s incentives, he felt a surge of happiness. It must have been a form of sadism.He even started getting into arguments and fights with people!People respected him.It’s a little bit like fear, except that instead of him having to go out and tell people what to do, they came to him to ask for his advice.He even got together with others, and helped build a railroad, so that everyone would have access to better transportation.He eventually retired, and started painting.And died of old age at 97.Having lived a life full of happiness, focused on sharing, on giving, on respect. On making the world a better place.Without ever having had the incentive to accumulate as much as he could for himself, to try and screw everyone else over as much as possible, because else he would be forced into a life of misery and potentially death.He left his children nothing.Except for all he had already given.Nothing except for a better world.I made those stories up. You can poke them full of holes in the comments if you want.They are not 100% realistic.Incentives alone are meaningless.Opportunities are worth more than incentives.And money is not the only thing that motivates people to do things.

In the US, everything is allowed unless someone can prove it’s harmful.In the EU, everything is banned until someone has proved it’s safe.This means that in the EU, the manufacturer of an additive or a pesticide has a very strong incentive to prove it’s safe. In the US, the manufacturer of an additive or a pesticide has a very strong incentive to do f*ck all.(Yes, it’s simplified. But it’s accurate enough for this discussion.)

The current economic system is full of perverse incentives.Ever heard of the phrase “identifying your customer’s needs”?The thing is, creating or maintaining needs so that you know what people need is more profitable than trying to identify new needs every time.Problems cause need, and so problems are encouraged.Imagine there is a pothole in the street.That’s a problem. It’s going to cause issues.If you identify it, then you could set up a company to fix roads, and try to get paid to fix it.But what would be even more profitable would be to lobby so that it doesn’t get fixed, and then open a shop next to it to fix people’s suspensions after they break, or to offer towing services.Because then you have a repeated source of income.And then anyone trying to fix the pothole becomes a threat to your bottom line.People benefit from the existence of problems, because then they can be paid to provide a temporary solution.And this impacts many areas of our lives.The legal system currently is bloated, and overly complicated. But the lawyers have a job thanks to that, so they don't want it to change.Government officials are corrupted by bribes and lobbying, and their perverse incentive is to take the money instead of working for the good of people.Planned obsolescence leads to people making items that don't last a long time but break fast, and have to be replaced, because that’s an opportunity for profits.We are scared of human labor being replaced by machines. A weird incentive to be against progress and automation, because our access to resources depends on our labor being needed.Health insurance is a business that tries to deny as many claims as possible to increase profits.The owners and workers of the factories producing bombs and munition rely on constant wars for their income.Creating emotionally laden clickbait attracts more attention than rational discourse.If you identify a problem somewhere, fixing it is not the most profitable thing you can do; letting it happen, and then swooping in is.If you want maximum profits, and know that the housing market will crash, you don't want to try and avoid that, you want to short the market and make billions. And then use the billions to buy up the low price property from the desperate people in need who just lost their life savings.There are perverse incentives all around us.The perverse incentive is to do the easy thing, for short term profits.Doing the right thing, even when it’s hard, to reap the long term benefits? That’s what we should be aiming for.