Well, this is just silly. "We can all agree: the incentives are bad." Seriously?! If I kill someone, or behave like an asshole, everyone will hate me, so I'v

Well, this is just silly. "We can all agree: the incentives are bad." Seriously?! If I kill someone, or behave like an asshole, everyone will hate me, so I've got an incentive not to. Is that so horrible? The reason that people talk about incentives when it comes to politics is that laws and large parts of present day's richer countries economic systems are controlled by laws, contracts, associations between countries, companies, people, etc. and are an artificially created ruleset. That means if you change rules you change incentives. Eg. if you know a government will bail you out, you lose the incentive to avoid risky things, if there is a tax on something you are it will influence your monetary incentives, if being an asshole is looked upon favorably then you have an incentive to be one. Also if tax fraud isn't considered a crime by large parts of people or is seen as smart then you have an incentive to commit it. A lot of social change good and bad came from shifts in good and bad incentives. Even more. If you look at the legal and prison systems in Norway vs eg the US the incentives that individuals, governments and corporations have are a reason for a 5 year recidivism rate of 70% vs 20%. In general if you think your life will be better as a criminal than the alternative then you will be incentivized become one. If you can choose between joining the mafia that might even care for you or barely getting through with day jobs then you are incentivized to do so. So if a government manages to make sure your life will certainly better, than the incentive to join is a whole lot lower. If you are shamed vs praised (or otherwise feel supported) for sexism or racism you will have an incentive to go a certain way. Cults and so on used incentives in a bad way, many parents use incentives in a good way ("if you clean up your room/finish your homework/behave you'll get ice cream later"). The reason people talk about incentives is because they shape whether things are likely to work out. As we've seen big public companies usually will do everything they can get away with and will break laws if the expected profit is higher than the potential fine. That is a wrong and very much changeable incentive. And it doesn't have to be laws. It can be public opinion. If the marketing is more expensive than just not doing a bad thing in first place then that's an incentive as well. Incentives are the things that make people do things good and bad. Incentives are the reason people go out of bed and be it just the incentive to ease the pressure on their full bladder. And even there if getting up will cost you great pain you might have a higher incentive there. Just like people going to doctors is often dominated by incentives of getting rid of a sickness vs not having to pay money or endure a potentially painful or side effect rich treatment.