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This brings to mind the classic example of "rat hunting". A hundred years ago, the French Government wanted to get rid of the rats plaguing Hanoi, so they offe
by nkurz 10y ago
This brings to mind the classic example of "rat hunting". A hundred years ago, the French Government wanted to get rid of the rats plaguing Hanoi, so they offered a bounty for each rat killed. To collect the bounty, the (presumably) dead rat's tail was turned in as proof. As might be expected, the expected then happened:
Appealing to both civic duty and to the pocketbook, a one-cent bounty was paid for each rat tail brought to the authorities (it was decided that the handing in of an entire rat corpse would create too much of a burden for the already taxed municipal health authorities). Unfortunately, this scheme backfired. Despite initial apparent success, the authorities soon discovered that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. As soon the municipal administrators publicized the reward program, Vietnamese residents began to bring in thousands of tails.
While many desk-bound administrators delighted in the numbers of apparently eliminated rats, more alert officials in the field began to notice a disturbing development. There were frequent sightings of rats without tails going about their business in the city streets. After some perplexity, the authorities realized that less-than-honest but quite resourceful characters were catching rats, but merely cutting off the tails and letting the still-living pests go free (perhaps to breed and produce more valuable tails).
Later, things became even more serious as health inspectors discovered a disturbing development in the suburbs of Hanoi. These officials found that more enterprising but equally deceptive individuals were actually raising rats to collect the bounty. One can only imagine the frustration of the municipal authorities, who realized that their best efforts at dératisation had actually increased the rodent population by indirectly encouraging rat-farming. Evidently, this was not what the French had in mind when they encouraged capitalist development and the entrepreneurial spirit in Vietnam. Faced with such fraudulent schemes, the colonial regime scrapped the rat bounty program.
http://www.freakonomics.com/media/vannrathunt.pdf http://www.freakonomics.com/media/vannrathunt.pdf
If an organization is judged by how many "terrorists" they arrest, one should not be surprised if that organization comes up with a counterproductive means of increasing the number of terrorists arrested.
- Tyr42 10y agoThe best part is that when they removed the bounty, the people breeding rats just let them all go, causing a larger problem than they had at the start.
- e40 10y agoThe above example is the one I used to teach my son about the law of unintended consequences, and it is very on point here.
- Puts 10y agoThere is actually a name for this. The cobra effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect At the time of British rule of colonial India, cobras where a huge problem and rewards for catching cobras resulted in the locals breeding them instead.
- Houshalter 10y agoThis is weird. Humans hunt animals to extinction all the time when have economic value. Look what's happening to elephants or rhinos in Africa. Yet creating an artificial value to killing them isn't enough? Suddenly humans come up with creative ways of breeding them artificially? Perhaps these aren't mutually exclusive. Maybe the bounty program worked to reduce the population to the point that farming was more viable. Maybe the bounty was too high, and if they reduced it farming wouldn't be economical anymore. Perhaps a solution would be to have the bounty in short random bursts. The bounty program only lasts for 1 year, so no one has time to start farms and breed them. Or just investigate the people bringing in lots of cobras, and see if they have a big cobra pit next to their house. I am very curious about these systems because it seems like a very effective method of eliminating invasive species. Australia is being overrun with cane toads, and my local state is complaining about Asian carp and zebra mussels. Yet no one is willing to put up money to see if the market can find an efficient solution to cull the population. Partially because of the infamous stories posted above about how these programs create bad incentives. But I believe they could be minimized. And I can't imagine anyone breeding asian carp or cane toads given how prevalent they are in the wild now.
- cheepin 10y ago> artificial value to killing them Another way to think about it is an artificial value to keeping the population going. All the animals will eventually die yielding a reward, but if you can keep a population going, the reward will keep coming. The "solution" for countries who wanted to remove invasive species is to embrace pretty heavy handed comprehensive enforcement. (See http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/canada-declares-war-on-rats/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/canada-declares-wa...)
- ehudla 10y agoThey should have given rewards for cat tails.