Incentives Matter

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Coyote Blog describes in the interconnection between incentives and results:

“Here is Coyote’s first law of incentives: There are always incentives. If they are not embodied in written performance metrics, then there are unwritten ones that rule behaviors. And these unwritten incentives are generally a) very powerful and b) almost never aligned with the greater organization’s goals.”

Coyote goes on:

“But in general, government employees operate in a vacuum without any positive metrics — they can’t prove themselves by meeting or exceeding this or that goal because the goals have not been assigned and are not measured. So the default metric becomes this: to avoid screwing up.

Government employees operate in a web of hundreds, even thousands of procedural rules.”

This has been a theme of his for years, incentives drive behavior which is Psychology 101. I have long argued, back to my academic days, that the utility rational actor theory was not a predictive tool regarding individual behavior but rather an analytical tool to discern the underlying incentive structure in an organization.

The incentive structure for public employees is built around risk aversion, not just because of the lack of performance metrics, but also because if you’re a public employee the last thing you want is an elected official or a lawyered-up member of the public coming after you. You also never want to be “above the fold” of a media story.

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Worth Pondering

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A man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him

–Alexis de Tocqueville, from the preface to his The Old Regime and the (French) Revolution.

Translations of this passage differ: the one quoted above is from this version. A different translation renders the phrase as “contempt for one’s country.” The actual French phrase used in the original is son pays. Either way, the point is pretty similar.

Previous Worth Pondering post.

History Friday – The Other Alamo

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(A repost from 2012, from my author blog – for the anniversary of Texas independence.)

The Texas Revolution and War for Independence from Mexico initially rather resembled the American Revolution, some sixty years before— a resemblance not lost on the American settlers in Texas. At the very beginning, both the Colonies and the Anglo-Texans were far-distant communities with a self-sufficient tradition, who had been accustomed to manage their own affairs with a bare minimum of interference from the central governing authority. Colonists and Anglo-Texans started off by standing on their rights as citizens, but a heavy-handed response by the central government provoked a response that spiraled into open revolt. ‘Since they’re trying to squash us like bugs for being rebellious, we might as give them a real rebellion and put up a fight,’ summed up the attitude.

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A Serious Case of the “Mehs”

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It seems that the Oscar Awards happened last weekend. Was there any reason to watch four solid hours of entertainment industry self-congratulation, aside from seeing if any aspiring starlet would parade in a completely transparent dress without any undergarments to speak of. On the day following, just about all the stories about the Oscars on my guilty pleasure of a mainstream newspaper, the English Daily Mail, concerned the fashions – or the bad taste displayed thereof – on the red carpet. There was only a single story or two about the movies and the awards garnered. Although the National Establishment Media organs try to sound chipper and upbeat about the broadcast and streaming audience for the Oscars … general interest in the event seemed pretty restrained.

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Libertarians vs Communitarians?…Is This Really the Primary Split?

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@TedThorson4506 says:

The current American Left (communitarian) and the current American Right (libertarian) are diametrically opposed politically, and thus have no common ground. No reconciliation is possible.

…which inspired @michelletandler to post a poll: is reconciliation possible?  As of this writing, the voting stands at:

–Yes, 29%
–No, 42%
–Maybe, 25%
–Other, 3%

I voted ‘other’, because I’m not sure that ‘libertarians vs communitarians’ really represents the primary factor in the split we are seeing. As I said at Michelle’s post:

I don’t think the current American Left is really communitarian. They use the term ‘communities’ a lot, but their idea of a ‘community’ is basically a demographically-defined group, or a category of people defined by sexual behavior.

What do you think…does ‘libertarians vs communitarians’ really capture the primary factor in the split we are seeing?  And, if not, what factor(s) are primary in this split? And, whatever those factors may be, is there a real chance for reconciliation?