Hacker News Reader

Comment by webinvest | Hacker News Reader

It really does! It will have perverse unintended consequences. In the field of economics, this is known as “The Cobra Effect”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive#The_origi...

Edit: Just because someone doesn’t live inside your echo-chamber doesn’t mean you should shower them with downvotes.

View on HN

I don't see how the Cobra Effect is even theoretically possible here. To have a possible Cobra Effect you have to be (1) paying to try to achieve a desired outcome, and (2) what you actually payout for is when people do something that correlates with leading to the desired outcome put does not correlate perfectly. People may then find that some of those things that achieve the payout but do not correlate with the desired outcome are easier to do then the things that do correlate with it.

In the original Cobra Effect example the desired outcome was a reduction in the number of wild cobras. The thing that earned the payout was turning in a dead cobra. The way to turn in dead cobras that was easier and did not correlate with a reduction in wild cobras was breeding cobras to kill and turn in.

In the San Fransisco case the desired outcome is that a group of people don't shoot anyone for a month. The payout is earned by not shooting anyone for a month. As far as I can tell not shooting anyone for a month perfectly correlates with not shooting anyone for a month, and hence no Cobra Effect is possible.

So they're paying a specific group of 10 people $300 per month. Suppose someone says, "I'm not in that group, but I'd like to be in it. How do I get into it?" Well... the article specifies "people at high risk of shooting someone", and implicitly it would be "people that those administering this program are aware are at high risk of shooting someone". So, I guess, if you didn't already have a gun, you could get one, and start waving it around; or get into public arguments in bars and do low-level violent crime or theft; or find out whatever risk factors the administrators are specifically looking for, and start exhibiting them. Probably you wouldn't just deliberately go shoot someone, because you might end up in jail; but you might start putting yourself in situations where shooting started looking like your best option.

Do you know why that didn't happen in Richmond CA when they did it? Specifically reports show a 77% drop in homicides (from another comment). Or what were the "cobras" that sprung up there?

The "cobra" here would be to engage in behavior that makes you more likely to be selected for this program so you can then be rewarded for stopping that behavior.

I suspect the odds of unexpected outcomes would be low here though because the program itself is small (only 10 people). And there are inherent downsides to engaging in behavior that make others think you're likely to shoot someone, so it's not something you do on a whim.

Yes. Another unexpected outcome is that it provides an economic competitive advantage to potential murderers and naturally peaceful people become less economically competitive.

If you believe in natural selection and survival of the fittest, you’re increasing the fitness of the potential murderers over the peaceful people.

Too early to tell. Good results can show up initially only to strike back later.

> In the field of macroeconomics

Actually, macro is voodoo ... The sub-discipline of economics that deals with individual incentives and behavior is microeconomics.

i sent the article to a friend and his immediate response was to laugh then reply with /r/NotTheOnion

America really is a very strange place.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com