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Robert Mckee's avatar

Perverse indeed, many such scenarios exist Today which mirror your examples. Banks are always a prime example of such incentives, first time home-buyers are almost criminally allowed to apply for loans which stretch their finances to the limit. When interest rates inevitably climb the homeowners cannot afford to maintain instalments, and thus put up their house up for sale to settle the original debt. The house of course has re-entered the market place for the next potential buyer ensuring that the perverse incentive forms a continuous loop at ever increasing interest rates.

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Tom Graves's avatar

Yep - there are huge numbers of these. One the main examples - which I'll use for the post next week - is GDP: in essence it's a very good metric, not of how successful the economy is, but actually of how _wasteful_ it is. It's basically perversity-personified. Not A Good Idea...

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Robert Mckee's avatar

An ideal measure of the differential between what is actually generated vs what is actually applied to better the lives of the citizens, just like you mention not a good idea or a pretty picture.

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