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This is interesting. By making things more transparent, you have obvious and measurable positive effects. Here's my question. What happens when someone moves
by PakG1 8y ago
This is interesting. By making things more transparent, you have obvious and measurable positive effects. Here's my question. What happens when someone moves up a social class such that they're no longer in poverty? I suppose then that they're no longer eligible for the program. How do you administrate the program so that those people are no longer given rice?
I suppose then that the lists held by the distribution centers need to be regularly updated. But then when someone is on the margin (or perhaps for everyone above the poverty line), they can have incentive to say, "Look, here's my card, I'm eligible!" Then the distribution center says, "Nope, says here that you're not poor anymore." Those disputes would need to get resolved, and I can imagine that they can get bogged down in bureaucracy. Worse still, for cases on the margin, distribution centers may have ability to let corruption decide that recipients should be ineligible when they're eligible.
I think that the idea and results are great. I'm just curious how they deal with the cases on the margin. Or does resolution just wait until the next year's income taxes get filed and everyone gets reprocessed accordingly to check for status changes?
- azinman2 8y agoQuestion is, how often does that happen? You can also send these cards yearly, and mark then as such.
- 394549 8y ago> You can also send these cards yearly, and mark then as such. And send the village head a paper saying so-and-so is no longer eligible this year, and also post that info in the local newspaper, etc. The system depends on common, widespread knowledge to prevent people from cheating. If it depends too much on a single proof like the postcard, it's vulnerable to forgery.
- frostwhale 8y agoI think the difference is that there are other safety nets in place to prevent people from taking too much. Those are most likely still in effect with the postcards, the only difference is people now know when they can escalate their issues with not getting rice from a local official and succeed. The local official never wants this since the official knows what the citizen is actually due and escalating the issue will confirm this. If someone is demanding too much from the local official, they will have no worries about the complaint running up the chain because they are doing their job correctly.
- fjsolwmv 8y agoIf there are so many rich people that this becomes a concern, simply *don't worry a out it". A little free rice to a rich person is a "Cadillac problem".
- dmd 8y agoA much cheaper way is to not care. If someone wants their Us$0.50 of rice allotment just give it to them. Universal basic rice.
- AceJohnny2 8y agoNo. "Free" has an odd effect on people. For example they may think the item has less or no value ("Why are they just giving this to us? Are they trying to poison us?"), or think the item is unlimited. The point isn't to recoup costs, but to make the recipients value the item.
- dmd 8y agoI don't mean "just give it to them" as in without cost, I mean don't disallow anyone from getting it, regardless of whether they're supposedly eligible or not.
- Proziam 8y agoIf you are struggling enough to go through the effort to try and scam the government for a small portion of free rice then I think it's obvious they value the item. Not caring about the edge cases is almost certainly the correct choice here.
- oh_sigh 8y agoNope, because you will find that people will start using rice for unintended purposes like bean bags, animal food, and smuggling rice into other nations that need to pay money for rice, etc.
- boomboomsubban 8y ago>Look, here's my card, I'm eligible! The card doesn't tell a person that they are eligible, the card tells a person what makes them eligible for what. The problem you're mentioning is an unrelated problem that every income based social program faces.