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The Firefighters The Firefighters' Guild has been formed and dissolved repeatedly throughout the history of Ankh-Morpork. Usually formed in response to fires w

The Firefighters The Firefighters' Guild has been formed and dissolved repeatedly throughout the history of Ankh-Morpork. Usually formed in response to fires which cause significant damage to large parts of the city, the guild is usually dissolved in response to... er, fires which cause significant damage to large parts of the city. The Guild suffers from the undying capitalist spirit of Ankh-Morpork, as those men who are paid per-fire extinguished eventually begin to guarantee a regular supply of fires to be put out. This has led to the frequent destruction of large portions of the city and ultimately to the Guild's being banned.

nosuchthing 9y ago
Eventually, the colonists realized that, even with this small army of paid rat killers, they were failing to make a dent in the rat population. They proceeded to Plan B, offering any enterprising civilian the opportunity to get in on the hunt. A bounty was set—one cent per rat—and all you had to do to claim it was submit a rat’s tail to the municipal offices. That way, the government wouldn’t be overrun with bulky rat corpses. “I always think about that,” Dr. Vann says. “Who is the poor guy counting all these rat tails?” The Vietnamese, too, were pleased with the arrangement, but not for the same reason. In the beginning, rat-tails poured in as locals slaughtered them by the dozen. Their entrepreneurial spirit took over though, and soon enough, French health officials began to notice a strange phenomenon: tailless rats proliferating in the outskirts of the capital. Upon further investigation, it became apparent that the Vietnamese were breeding rats specifically to receive cash for their tails. Reports also suggest some people smuggled out-of-town rats into Hanoi. By 1906, there was an outbreak of plague as a result of the infected rat population. At least 263 people died, most of whom were Vietnamese. http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hanoi-rat-massacre-1902 http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hanoi-rat-massacre-1902 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
- honestoHeminway 9y ago
  The easy solution is to scream "the goverment is to blame" - while the truth is "complex reality is to blame". These very same perverse incentives are raging in every company. The scale of goverment alone, with whom we all interact, and a lack of good PR-Work, makes them more visible. So how reduce this? Slowing down processes was the answer, basically, replace the lack of human thought and planning, with a meta-machine which was able to plan, think, react and control. Is there software to model this? To treat every part of a organisations process also as agents, and thus prevent free-loading and incentive perversion? Better even, a software that remodels a process, once free-loading appears? Also, in a world, where freeloading is soon to be the majoritys occupation, due to robots and NN taking over work, is it still meaning-full to apply this software? Are companys in such a world not just daycare-centers for otherwise unemployed grown-ups, and paid for that by society?

nosuchthing 9y ago

Eventually, the colonists realized that, even with this small army of paid rat killers, they were failing to make a dent in the rat population. They proceeded to Plan B, offering any enterprising civilian the opportunity to get in on the hunt. A bounty was set—one cent per rat—and all you had to do to claim it was submit a rat’s tail to the municipal offices. That way, the government wouldn’t be overrun with bulky rat corpses. “I always think about that,” Dr. Vann says. “Who is the poor guy counting all these rat tails?” The Vietnamese, too, were pleased with the arrangement, but not for the same reason. In the beginning, rat-tails poured in as locals slaughtered them by the dozen. Their entrepreneurial spirit took over though, and soon enough, French health officials began to notice a strange phenomenon: tailless rats proliferating in the outskirts of the capital. Upon further investigation, it became apparent that the Vietnamese were breeding rats specifically to receive cash for their tails. Reports also suggest some people smuggled out-of-town rats into Hanoi. By 1906, there was an outbreak of plague as a result of the infected rat population. At least 263 people died, most of whom were Vietnamese. http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hanoi-rat-massacre-1902 http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hanoi-rat-massacre-1902 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

honestoHeminway 9y ago
The easy solution is to scream "the goverment is to blame" - while the truth is "complex reality is to blame". These very same perverse incentives are raging in every company. The scale of goverment alone, with whom we all interact, and a lack of good PR-Work, makes them more visible. So how reduce this? Slowing down processes was the answer, basically, replace the lack of human thought and planning, with a meta-machine which was able to plan, think, react and control. Is there software to model this? To treat every part of a organisations process also as agents, and thus prevent free-loading and incentive perversion? Better even, a software that remodels a process, once free-loading appears? Also, in a world, where freeloading is soon to be the majoritys occupation, due to robots and NN taking over work, is it still meaning-full to apply this software? Are companys in such a world not just daycare-centers for otherwise unemployed grown-ups, and paid for that by society?