Question

Over the course of the semester we have learned that “Incentives Matter”. Explain how legalized plunder and the incentive motive interact with each other in our society today.

Answer 1

When government approach clear line between the protecting
role into the into the aggressive role of redistributing the wealth and providing so called benefits for some of
its citizens it then becomes a means for what is accurately described as
legalized plunder no one has authority to grant such powers as welfare programs schemes for
redistributing the wealth and activities that force individuals into acting in accordance with a prescribed code of
social designing there's one easy check do I as a personal have a right to use force upon my neighbor to accomplish
this goal if I do have such a right then i could delegate that power to my
government to exercise it on my behalf if I don't have that right as a private then I cannot delegate it to
governments and I cannot ask my government to perform the act for me
listen to best his explanation of this legal blunder when a portion of the wealth is transferred from one person
who owns it without his consent and without compensation but by force are by fraud so anyone who does not own it then
I say that property is violated that an act of plunder is committed history proves that the growth of the welfare
state is tough to examine before it involves its full flower of autocracy
but allow us to hope that this point round the trend is reversed if not
reversed then we'll see the certainty of complete socialism most likely at intervals our time period
it's a lot of interesting history but here's what we got we got a corporation it was chartered by Congress and was given the exclusive franchise to create the
nation's money supply what a coup that was private banks were given the power to create the nation's money supply and
the power of government backed it up so we got a banking cartel that was a partner with the federal government to enforce the cartel agreement and create
the illusion of it being a government agency we got a mechanism whereby Congress can raise unlimited taxes through this process called inflation
and without the public even being aware in most cases that they're paying this tax we got a law that relies the banks to collect interest on nothing and we
created through the Federal Reserve Act a golden parachute which enables the fraudulent banks to pass on their
inevitable losses to the taxpayer in the name of rescuing the economy has set system past on its losses to the
taxpayers of course started way way way back became serious back in 70's when they bailed out Penn Central Railroad
so they could continue making payments to the banks they bailed out Lockheed corporation in 1970 so they could continue making interest payments to the
banks they bailed out Commonwealth Bank itself in Detroit in 1970 New York City
was bailed out in 1975 first Pennsylvania Bank in 80's continental Illinois in 1982 and of course the banks in the third world are even including
Russia and China our beneficiaries of this bailout cash flow and of course by the time we hit 2008-2009 the locomotive was in full runaway mode heading it down as steep grade and since that time they dropped all pretense at being conservative in this matter and seven hundred billion dollars
created in one day and 12 trillion dollars in four months there's nothing like this that's ever happened before in history you don't have to be a rocket
scientist ladies and gentlemen to figure out where this is headed unless that line of history is altered it's headed to the end it cannot be sustained and
even though I see some older heads in here maybe not quite as old as mine and we live to see the end of it now
these are not rescue packages these are not economic stimulus this is nothing less than legalized plunder of the American people. Our world is run by incentives and games are the perfect tool for showing us how.
Not wholly, but in the big, complex machine that is modern society,
how we incentivize things drives on a macro level a lot of what goes on.
The problem is we don't always incentivize things right, and we don't always realize what we're incentivizing.
Actually, heck, sometimes things just are not thought through at all,
and no one is even really considering what they're incentivizing.
But you know what else runs on a system of interlocking incentives?
Video games. One of the most powerful things a game can do is help us to understand the kinds of decisions that human beings make,
given the web of interlocking incentives they're faced with.
So when designing a game experience,
rather than beating the player over the head with what the designer may think is some grand message,
often the best way to get people to understand the world,
and some of the deep-rooted problems within it,
is simply to build it into the game's incentive systems.
Human beings have always been bad with incentives,
getting ourselves into all sorts of situations we don't intend to,
because of how we try to direct how groups behave.
For some more modern examples, how about the welfare system?
Now I am a hundred percent in favor of a social safety net
and there's a lot of economic evidence that it actually benefits everybody to have that sort of system in place,
whether or not you ever end up collecting a welfare check yourself.
But, it's one of those systems, where, at least in its early forms,
nobody in charge seemed to be drawing the connection between the goals they were trying to achieve,
and the incentives they were putting into place.
Imagine a system where you got to collect welfare money up to whatever amount would take you right above the poverty line each year.
Enough to make sure that you didn't starve.
I am sure that some of you are already seeing the potential problems here.
So unless you could find yourself a job that paid like 30,000 or more a year,
it was not worth finding a job at all.
And that's just not how getting out of poverty works.
And while that may sound insane, that's pretty much how aid to families with dependent children.
simply experiencing a simulation of a bad incentive structure
isn't where the exploration of those problems should ever end,
but if you want to make a game to get people thinking,
letting them experience first hand the consequences
of some of these incentive systems we've set up in the world might be the best way.