the.com/perverse outcomes
the plan works perfectly and everyone still suffers, that's the whole trick.
means a policy or incentive that produces the exact opposite of its intended effect because it rewards the wrong behavior.
from rooted in economics and cybernetics, but crystallized as a concept once colonial officials in delhi paid bounties for dead cobras and got, unsurprisingly, more cobras.
cobra effectnamed after the delhi bounty backfire, 1900s
goodhart's law cousina measure gamed stops measuring anything
root causealmost always a misaligned incentive, not stupidity
fix is hardremoving the incentive rarely undoes the damage
for instance
cobra bounty delhi — colonial india paid per dead cobra, people bred cobras to cash in
hanoi rat bounty — 1902 vietnam paid for rat tails, rats kept alive, tails just cut off
soviet nail quotas — factories paid by weight made giant useless nails
endangered species act — landowners clear habitat preemptively to avoid regulation