I'm reminded of Mechanism Design: a Nobel prize winning theory of economics that starts with the supposition that agents in any system will exploit its rules to

I'm reminded of Mechanism Design: a Nobel prize winning theory of economics that starts with the supposition that agents in any system will exploit its rules to maximize their personal gain. The corollary, which I've been quite taken by, is that where we can influence the rules of the game, we should design them such that exploitation serves a social good.