"Good" is a bit tricky to define, but I take your meaning broadly. I think maybe the biggest obstacle to getting anything productive done in society is that we

"Good" is a bit tricky to define, but I take your meaning broadly. I think maybe the biggest obstacle to getting anything productive done in society is that we seem (in an almost fractal way, from like a nation-wide election down to an HN comment section) just so fucking committed to pretending that mechanism design doesn't work. It absolutely, 100% does. People as individuals, organizations composed of individuals, fucking viruses, the whole show: these things respond to incentives. Even the "higher" stuff is easily modeled as slightly more abstract incentives. These 2022 S&P 500 corporations are stupidly, absurdly, Ronald Reagan-spontaneous-hard-on "good" at cranking "shareholder value". Which is precisely the job we've set them and the executives tasked with running them. They're doing their job. That goal happens to align only coincidentally and peripherally with a more abstract goal I like a lot better: something like "the broader social good". Edit: On a second read, it might not have been clear that I was elaborating on your point, not arguing with it.