Incentive Plan Quotes

In a word, learning is decontextualized. We break ideas down into tiny pieces that bear no relation to the whole. We give students a brick of information, followed by another brick, followed by another brick, until they are graduated, at which point we assume they have a house. What they have is a pile of bricks, and they don't have it for long.

People will typically be more enthusiastic where they feel a sense of belonging and see themselves as part of a community than they will in a workplace in which each person is left to his own devices

Some who support [more] coercive strategies assume that children will run wild if they are not controlled. However, the children for whom this is true typically turn out to be those accustomed to being controlled— those who are not trusted, given explanations, encouraged to think for themselves, helped to develop and internalize good values, and so on. Control breeds the need for more control, which is used to justify the use of control.

In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when I'm as good as you has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish.The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers--or should I say, nurses?--will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us.

The strategy for the discoverers and entrepreneurs is to rely less on top-down planning and focus on maximum tinkering and recognizing opportunities when they present themselves. So I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or “incentives” for skill. The strategy is, then, to tinker as much as possible and try to collect as many Black Swan opportunities as you can.

Dangling a carrot in front of a donkey—or anyone else for that matter—is not nice, and not fair, unless you eventually plan to give it up to them.

Independence is useful, but caring attitudes and behaviors shrivel up in a culture where each person is responsible only for himself.

When I applied to graduate school many years ago, I wrote an essay expressing my puzzlement at how a country that could put a man on the moon could still have people sleeping on the streets. Part of that problem is political will; we could take a lot of people off the streets tomorrow if we made it a national priority. But I have also come to realize that NASA had it easy. Rockets conform to the unchanging laws of physics. We know where the moon will be at a given time; we know precisely how fast a spacecraft will enter or exist the earth's orbit. If we get the equations right, the rocket will land where it is supposed to--always. Human beings are more complex than that. A recovering drug addict does not behave as predictably as a rocket in orbit. We don't have a formula for persuading a sixteen-year-old not to drop out of school. But we do have a powerful tool: We know that people seek to make themselves better off, however they may define that. Our best hope for improving the human condition is to understand why we act the way we do and then plan accordingly. Programs, organizations, and systems work better when they get the incentives right. It is like rowing downstream.

Like any other tool for facilitating the completion of a questionable task, rewards offer a "how" answer to what is really a "why" question.

We tell them how good they are and they light up, eager to please, and try to please us some more. These are the children we should really worry about.

Our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people. People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-respect, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning. The forces of destruction begin with toddlers—a prize for the best Halloween costume, grades in school, gold stars—and on up through the university. On the job, people, teams, and divisions are ranked, reward for the top, punishment for the bottom. Management by Objectives, quotas, incentive pay, business plans, put together separately, division by division, cause further loss, unknown and unknowable.

Due to my self-employment, I had to report my income every few months. Earning $50 extra could make my co-pay at day care go up by the same amount. Sometimes it meant losing my childcare grant altogether. There was no incentive or opportunity to save money. The system kept me locked down, scraping the bottom of the barrel, without a plan to climb out of it.

Even with the best intentions, choices made in the boardroom can have unintended, devastating consequences. These risks, ranging from poor strategic planning to misaligned incentives, can be equally or even more damaging than external threats like market fluctuations or competition.

Far from helping students to develop into mature, self-reliant, self-motivated individuals, schools seem to do everything they can to keep youngsters in a state of chronic, almost infantile, dependency. The pervasive atmosphere of distrust, together with rules covering the most minute aspects of existence, teach students every day that they are not people of worth, and certainly not individuals capable of regulating their own behavior.

What rewards and punishments do is induce compliance, and this they do very well indeed. If your objective is to get people to obey an order, to show up on time and do what they’re told, then bribing or threatening them may be sensible strategies. But if your objective is to get long-term quality in the workplace, to help students become careful thinkers and self-directed learners, or to support children in developing good values, then rewards, like punishments, are absolutely useless. In fact, as we are beginning to see, they are worse than useless—they are actually counterproductive.

Students get the message bout what adults want. When 4th graders in a variety of classroomswere asked what their teachers most wanted them to do, they didn't say, "Ask thoughtful questions" or "Make responsible decisions" or Help others." They said, "Be quiet, don't fool around, and get our work done on time.

Putting aside the concerns about the intentions of the rulers and the incentives for the workers, socialism cannot work because the central planner(s) would lack market prices and hence would have no way of determining, even after the fact, if their “rational” plan for production made an efficient use of resources.

All rewards have the same effect,” one writer declares. “They dilute the pure joy that comes from success itself.

a grade can be regarded only as an inadequate report of an inaccurate judgment by a biased and variable judge of the extent to which a student has attained an undefined level of mastery of an unknown proportion of an indefinite amount of material.

Few readers will be shocked by the news that extrinsic motivators are a poor substitute for genuine interest in what one is doing. What is likely to be far more surprising and disturbing is the further point that rewards, like punishments, actually undermine the intrinsic motivation that promotes optimal performance.

We complain loudly about such things as the sagging productivity of our workplaces, the crisis of our schools, and the warped values of our children. But the very strategy we use to solve those problems—dangling rewards like incentive plans and grades and candy bars in front of people—is partly responsible for the fix we’re in. We are a society of loyal Skinnerians, unable to think our way out of the box we have reinforced ourselves into.

The United States has not consciously chosen a grand strategy over the last several decades; rather it has made a series of policy decisions that have largely resulted from political motivations while being sold as part of a coherent plan after the fact, or more precisely, as a collection of coherent plans that are advocated for or forgotten about depending on the needs of the moment. Thus, those who want to change American foreign policy should not expect to succeed primarily by making arguments as to why the United States is implementing the wrong grand strategy. Rather, one would have to work to change the incentive structures that lead some ideas to gain currency, and government officials to make certain decisions but not others.

Since the very beginning of the Communist regime, I had carefully studied books on Marxism and pronouncements by Chinese Communist Party leaders. It seemed to me that socialism in China was still very much an experiment nad had no fixed course of development for the country had yet been decided upon. This, I thought, was why the government's policy was always changing, like a pendulum swinging from left to right and back again. When things went to extremes and problems emerged. Beijing would take corrective measures. Then these very corrective measures went too far and had to be corrected. The real difficulty was, of course, that a state-controlled economy only stifled productivity, and economic planning from Beijing ignored local conditions and killed incentive. When a policy changed from above, the standards of values changed with it. What was right yesterday became wrong today, and visa versa. Thus the words and actions of a Communist Party official at the lower level were valid for a limited time only... The Cultural Revolution seemed to me to be a swing to the left. Sooner or later, when it had gone too far, corrective measures would be taken. The people would have a few months or a few years of respite until the next political campaign. Mao Zedong believed that political campaigns were the motivating force for progress. So I thought the Proletarian Cultural Revolution was just one of an endless series of upheavals the Chinese people must learn to put up with.

In my view, there are two fundamentally different ways one can respond to a child who does something wrong. One is to impose a punitive consequence. Another is to see the situation as a “teachable moment,” an opportunity to educate or to solve a problem together. The response here is not “You’ve misbehaved; now here’s what I’m going to do to you” but “Something has gone wrong; what can we do about it?

Central planning was just not good at replacing what the great eighteenth-century economist Adam Smith called the “invisible hand” of the market. When the plan was formulated in tons of steel sheet, the sheet was made too heavy. When it was formulated in terms of area of steel sheet, the sheet was made too thin. When the plan for chandeliers was made in tons, they were so heavy, they could hardly hang from ceilings.

The key difference between foot voting and ballot box voting is that foot voters don’t have the same incentive to be rationally ignorant as ballot box voters do. In fact, they have strong incentives to seek out useful information. They also have much better incentives to objectively evaluate what they do learn. Unlike political fans, foot voters know they will pay a real price if they do a poor job of evaluating the information they get... The informational advantages of foot voting over ballot box voting strengthen the case for limiting and decentralizing government. The more decentralized government is, the more issues can be decided through foot voting. It is usually much easier to vote with your feet against a local government than a state government, and much easier to do it against a state than against the federal government. It is also usually easier to foot vote in the private sector than the public. A given region is likely to have far more private planned communities and other private sector organizations than local governments. Choosing among the former usually requires far less in the way of moving costs than choosing among the latter. Reducing the size of government could also alleviate the problem of ignorance by making it easier for rationally ignorant voters to monitor its activities. A smaller, less complicated government is easier to keep track of.

It could be argued that one of democracy’s greatest weaknesses is the ability to reform itself. Reform of democracy must, however, be at the heart of a successful plan to improve economic growth and global prosperity. So far this chapter has detailed how the democratic system inherently contains incentives for policymakers to implement bad policy choices that undermine long-term economic success. Nevertheless, as we seek solutions to remedy democracy’s failings, we should acknowledge that politicians in a liberal democracy need not be malicious or even inept to fall prey to short-term thinking. They are wholly rational actors—responding to voters, succumbing to media pressure, and battling to stay in office, even if it means they do so at the expense of the economy’s longer-term success. When democracy works, it delivers economic growth and fundamental freedoms in a way that no other system can. And when it fails, it is rarely, if ever, replaced by a system that can do a better job of delivering for its population. Therefore, creating growth requires that we preserve democratic capitalism’s core strengths—freedom, efficient markets, transparency, and correctly constructed incentives—and reform its weaknesses. Something must be done to remedy the political class’s severe case of myopia, correcting the mismatch between long-term economic challenges and election cycles, safeguarding independent economic choices from political pressures, and eliminating dysfunction and gridlock.

the importance of sound money can be explained for three broad reasons: first, it protects value across time, which gives people a bigger incentive to think of their future, and lowers their time preference. The lowering of the time preference is what initiates the process of human civilization and allows for humans to cooperate, prosper, and live in peace. Second, sound money allows for trade to be based on a stable unit of measurement, facilitating ever-larger markets, free from government control and coercion, and with free trade comes peace and prosperity. Further, a unit of account is essential for all forms of economic calculation and planning, and unsound money makes economic calculation unreliable and is the root cause of economic recessions and crises. Finally, sound money is an essential requirement for individual freedom from despotism and repression, as the ability of a coercive state to create money can give it undue power over its subjects, power which by its very nature will attract the least worthy, and most immoral, to take its reins.

One of the incidental benefits of price sharing and competition is that people don't tend to see themselves as rivals, nor do they develop the kind of hostility that rivalry can bring. For example, much of the labor force and building materials needed to build a Protestant church can be used to build a Catholic church. But if a Protestant congregation is collecting money to build their church, the concern will be how much money they can raise and how much they will need to build the kind of church they want. Construction prices may force them to forego some of their more elaborate plans in order to stay within the limits of what they can afford. But they are unlikely to blame Catholics, even though the competition with them for the same building materials drives prices higher. If, on the contrary, the government built churches and distributed them among the different religious groups, Protestants and Catholics, they would be rivals and neither of them would have any financial incentive to cut their construction plans for the benefit of the other. Instead, each would have an incentive to justify, in the strongest possible way and in favor of their needs, the mobilization of their followers in the political arena, to insist on receiving what they want and to oppose any intention to reduce their plans. . The scarcity of materials and labor would still limit what can be built, but that limit would be imposed politically and seen by both groups as a result of their rivalry.

Westerners, not just Lincoln Steffens. It took in the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. It even took in the Soviet Union’s own leaders, such as Nikita Khrushchev, who famously boasted in a speech to Western diplomats in 1956 that “we will bury you [the West].” As late as 1977, a leading academic textbook by an English economist argued that Soviet-style economies were superior to capitalist ones in terms of economic growth, providing full employment and price stability and even in producing people with altruistic motivation. Poor old Western capitalism did better only at providing political freedom. Indeed, the most widely used university textbook in economics, written by Nobel Prize–winner Paul Samuelson, repeatedly predicted the coming economic dominance of the Soviet Union. In the 1961 edition, Samuelson predicted that Soviet national income would overtake that of the United States possibly by 1984, but probably by 1997. In the 1980 edition there was little change in the analysis, though the two dates were delayed to 2002 and 2012. Though the policies of Stalin and subsequent Soviet leaders could produce rapid economic growth, they could not do so in a sustained way. By the 1970s, economic growth had all but stopped. The most important lesson is that extractive institutions cannot generate sustained technological change for two reasons: the lack of economic incentives and resistance by the elites. In addition, once all the very inefficiently used resources had been reallocated to industry, there were few economic gains to be had by fiat. Then the Soviet system hit a roadblock, with lack of innovation and poor economic incentives preventing any further progress. The only area in which the Soviets did manage to sustain some innovation was through enormous efforts in military and aerospace technology. As a result they managed to put the first dog, Leika, and the first man, Yuri Gagarin, in space. They also left the world the AK-47 as one of their legacies. Gosplan was the supposedly all-powerful planning agency in charge of the central planning of the Soviet economy. One of the benefits of the sequence of five-year plans written and administered by Gosplan was supposed to have been the long time horizon necessary for rational investment and innovation. In reality, what got implemented in Soviet industry had little to do with the five-year plans, which were frequently revised and rewritten or simply ignored. The development of industry took place on the basis of commands by Stalin and the Politburo, who changed their minds frequently and often completely revised their previous decisions. All plans were labeled “draft” or “preliminary.” Only one copy of a plan labeled “final”—that for light industry in 1939—has ever come to light. Stalin himself said in 1937 that “only bureaucrats can think that planning work ends with the creation of the plan. The creation of the plan is just the beginning. The real direction of the plan develops only after the putting together of the plan.” Stalin wanted to maximize his discretion to reward people or groups who were politically loyal, and punish those who were not. As for Gosplan, its main role was to provide Stalin with information so he could better monitor his friends and enemies. It actually tried to avoid making decisions. If you made a decision that turned

Here’s the four point battle plan, which we’ll return to at the end of the book: Disregard the Doomsayers: The misguided belief that “it’s too late” to act has been co-opted by fossil fuel interests and those advocating for them. It’s just another way of legitimizing business-as-usual and a continued reliance on fossil fuels. We must reject the overt doom and gloom that we increasingly encounter in today’s climate discourse. A Child Shall Lead Them: The youngest generation is fighting tooth and nail to save their planet, and there is a moral authority and clarity in their message that none but the most jaded ears can fail to hear. They are the game-changers that climate advocates have been waiting for. We should model our actions after theirs and learn from their methods and their idealism. Educate, Educate, Educate: Most hard-core climate-change deniers are unmovable. They view climate change through the prism of right-wing ideology and are impervious to facts. Don’t waste your time and effort trying to convince them. But there are many honest, confused folks out there who are caught in the crossfire, victims of the climate-change disinformation campaign. We must help them out. Then they will be in a position to join us in battle. Changing the System Requires Systemic Change: The fossil fuel disinformation machine wants to make it about the car you choose to drive, the food you choose to eat, and the lifestyle you choose to live rather than about the larger system and incentives. We need policies that will incentivize the needed shift away from fossil fuel burning toward a clean, green global economy. So-called leaders who resist the call for action must be removed from office.

The Republic of Foo, our high-investment, intangible economy of the future, has significantly overhauled its land-use rules, particularly in major cities, making it easier to build housing and workplaces; at the same time, it invests significantly in the kind of infrastructure needed to make cities livable and convivial, in particular, effective transport and civic and cultural amenities, from museums to nightlife. In some cases, this involves rejecting big development plans that destroy existing places. It has faced political costs in making this change, especially from vested interests opposed to new development or gentrification, but the increased economic benefits of vibrant urban centers have provided enough incentive to tip the balance of power in favor of development. The cities of the Kingdom of Bar have chosen one of two unfortunate paths: in some cases, they have privileged continuity over dynamism in its towns—creating places like Oxford in the UK, which are beautiful and full of convivial public spaces, but where it is very hard to build anything, meaning few people can take advantage of the economic potential the place creates. Other cities resemble Houston, Texas, in the 1990s—a low-regulation paradise where an absence of planning laws keeps home and office prices low, but where the lack of walkable centers and convivial places makes it harder for intangibles to multiply. (To Houston’s credit, it has changed for the better in the last twenty years.) The worst of Bar’s cities fail in both regards, underinvesting in urban amenities and making it hard to build. In all three cases, the economic disadvantage of not having vibrant cities that can grow have become larger and larger as the importance of intangibles has increased.

gave up on the idea of creating “socialist men and women” who would work without monetary incentives. In a famous speech he criticized “equality mongering,” and thereafter not only did different jobs get paid different wages but also a bonus system was introduced. It is instructive to understand how this worked. Typically a firm under central planning had to meet an output target set under the plan, though such plans were often renegotiated and changed. From the 1930s, workers were paid bonuses if the output levels were attained. These could be quite high—for instance, as much as 37 percent of the wage for management or senior engineers. But paying such bonuses created all sorts of disincentives to technological change. For one thing, innovation, which took resources away from current production, risked the output targets not being met and the bonuses not being paid. For another, output targets were usually based on previous production levels. This created a huge incentive never to expand output, since this only meant having to produce more in the future, since future targets would be “ratcheted up.” Underachievement was always the best way to meet targets and get the bonus. The fact that bonuses were paid monthly also kept everyone focused on the present, while innovation is about making sacrifices today in order to have more tomorrow. Even when bonuses and incentives were effective in changing behavior, they often created other problems. Central planning was just not good at replacing what the great eighteenth-century economist Adam Smith called the “invisible hand” of the market. When the plan was formulated in tons of steel sheet, the sheet was made too heavy. When it was formulated in terms of area of steel sheet, the sheet was made too thin. When the plan for chandeliers was made in tons, they were so heavy, they could hardly hang from ceilings. By the 1940s, the leaders of the Soviet Union, even if not their admirers in the West, were well aware of these perverse incentives. The Soviet leaders acted as if they were due to technical problems, which could be fixed. For example, they moved away from paying bonuses based on output targets to allowing firms to set aside portions of profits to pay bonuses. But a “profit motive” was no more encouraging to innovation than one based on output targets. The system of prices used to calculate profits was almost completely unconnected to the value of new innovations or technology. Unlike in a market economy, prices in the Soviet Union were set by the government, and thus bore little relation to value. To more specifically create incentives for innovation, the Soviet Union introduced explicit innovation bonuses in 1946. As early as 1918, the principle had been recognized that an innovator should receive monetary rewards for his innovation, but the rewards set were small and unrelated to the value of the new technology. This changed only in 1956, when it was stipulated that the bonus should be proportional to the productivity of the innovation. However, since productivity was calculated in terms of economic benefits measured using the existing system of prices, this was again not much of an incentive to innovate. One could fill many pages with examples of the perverse incentives these schemes generated. For example, because the size of the innovation bonus fund was limited by the wage bill of a firm, this immediately reduced the incentive to produce or adopt any innovation that might have economized on labor.

Growth was so rapid that it took in generations of Westerners, not just Lincoln Steffens. It took in the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. It even took in the Soviet Union’s own leaders, such as Nikita Khrushchev, who famously boasted in a speech to Western diplomats in 1956 that “we will bury you [the West].” As late as 1977, a leading academic textbook by an English economist argued that Soviet-style economies were superior to capitalist ones in terms of economic growth, providing full employment and price stability and even in producing people with altruistic motivation. Poor old Western capitalism did better only at providing political freedom. Indeed, the most widely used university textbook in economics, written by Nobel Prize–winner Paul Samuelson, repeatedly predicted the coming economic dominance of the Soviet Union. In the 1961 edition, Samuelson predicted that Soviet national income would overtake that of the United States possibly by 1984, but probably by 1997. In the 1980 edition there was little change in the analysis, though the two dates were delayed to 2002 and 2012. Though the policies of Stalin and subsequent Soviet leaders could produce rapid economic growth, they could not do so in a sustained way. By the 1970s, economic growth had all but stopped. The most important lesson is that extractive institutions cannot generate sustained technological change for two reasons: the lack of economic incentives and resistance by the elites. In addition, once all the very inefficiently used resources had been reallocated to industry, there were few economic gains to be had by fiat. Then the Soviet system hit a roadblock, with lack of innovation and poor economic incentives preventing any further progress. The only area in which the Soviets did manage to sustain some innovation was through enormous efforts in military and aerospace technology. As a result they managed to put the first dog, Leika, and the first man, Yuri Gagarin, in space. They also left the world the AK-47 as one of their legacies. Gosplan was the supposedly all-powerful planning agency in charge of the central planning of the Soviet economy. One of the benefits of the sequence of five-year plans written and administered by Gosplan was supposed to have been the long time horizon necessary for rational investment and innovation. In reality, what got implemented in Soviet industry had little to do with the five-year plans, which were frequently revised and rewritten or simply ignored. The development of industry took place on the basis of commands by Stalin and the Politburo, who changed their minds frequently and often completely revised their previous decisions. All plans were labeled “draft” or “preliminary.” Only one copy of a plan labeled “final”—that for light industry in 1939—has ever come to light. Stalin himself said in 1937 that “only bureaucrats can think that planning work ends with the creation of the plan. The creation of the plan is just the beginning. The real direction of the plan develops only after the putting together of the plan.” Stalin wanted to maximize his discretion to reward people or groups who were politically loyal, and punish those who were not. As for Gosplan, its main role was to provide Stalin with information so he could better monitor his friends and enemies. It actually tried to avoid making decisions. If you made a decision that turned out badly, you might get shot. Better to avoid all responsibility. An example of what could happen

[...] Kevin had grown up playing left-handed. Seeing him take on Andrew right-handed was ballsy enough, seeing him actually score was surreal. Kevin kicked them off the court [...], but instead of following [...] he stayed behind with Andrew to keep practicing. Neil watched them over his shoulder. "I saw him first," Nicky said. "I thought you had Erik," Neil said. "I do, but Kevin's on the List," Nicky said. When Neil frowned, Nicky explained. "It's a list of celebrities we're allowed to have affairs with. Kevin is number three." Neil pretended to understand and changed the topic. "How does anyone lose against the Foxes with Andrew in your goal?" "He's good, right? [...] Coach bribed Andrew into saving our collective asses with some really nice booze." "Bribed?" Neil echoed. "Andrew's good," Nicky said again, "but it doesn't really matter to him if we win or lose. You want him to care, you gotta give him incentive." "He can't play like that and not care." "Now you sound like Kevin. You'll find out the hard way, same as Kevin did. Kevin gave Andrew a lot of grief this spring [...]. Up until then they were fighting like cats and dogs. Now look at them. They're practically trading friendship bracelets and I couldn't fit a crowbar between them if it'd save my life." "But why?" Neil asked. "Andrew hates Kevin's obsession with Exy." "The day they start making sense to you, let me know," Nicky said [...]. "I gave up trying to sort it all out weeks ago. [...] But as long as I'm doling out advice? Stop staring at Kevin so much. You're making me fear for your life over here." "What do you mean?" "Andrew is scary territorial of him. He punched me the first time I said I'd like to get Kevin too wasted to be straight." Nicky pointed at his face, presumably where Andrew had decked him. "So yeah, I'm going to crush on safer targets until Andrew gets bored of him. That means you, since Matt's taken and I don't hate myself enough to try Seth. Congrats." "Can you take the creepy down a level?" Aaron asked. "What?" Nikcy asked. "He said he doesn't swing, so obviously he needs a push." "I don't need a push," Neil said. "I'm fine on my own." "Seriously, how are you not bored of your hand by now?" "I'm done with this conversation," Neil said. "This and every future variation of it [...]." The stadium door slammed open as Andrew showed up at last. [...] "Kevin wants to know what's taking you so long. Did you get lost?" "Nicky's scheming to rape Neil," Aaron said. "There are a couple flaws in his plan he needs to work out first, but he'll get there sooner or later." [...] "Wow, Nicky," Andrew said. "You start early." "Can you really blame me?" Nicky glanced back at Neil as he said it. He only took his eyes off Andrew for a second, but that was long enough for Andrew to lunge at him. Andrew caught Nicky's jersey in one hand and threw him hard up against the wall. [...] "Hey, Nicky," Andrew said in stage-whisper German. "Don't touch him, you understand?" "You know I'd never hurt him. If he says yes-" "I said no." "Jesus, you're greedy," Nicky said. "You already have Kevin. Why does it-" He went silent, but it took Neil a moment to realize why. Andrew had a short knife pressed to Nicky's Jersey. [...] Neil was no stranger to violence. He'd heard every threat in the book, but never from a man who smiled as bright as Andrew did. Apathy, anger, madness, boredom: these motivators Neil knew and understood. But Andrew was grinning like he didn't have a knife point where it'd sleep perfectly between Nicky's ribs, and it wasn't because he was joking. Neil knew Andrew meant it. [...] "Hey, are we playing or what?" Neil asked. "Kevin's waiting." [...] Andrew let go of Nicky and spun away. [...] Nicky looked shaken as he stared after the twins, but when he realized Neil was watching him he rallied with a smile Neil didn't believe at all. "On second thought, you're not my type after all [...].

Instead, the problem that has made the world so dark and crazy lately is the BUMMER machine, and the core of the BUMMER machine is not a technology, exactly, but a style of business plan that spews out perverse incentives and corrupts people. Lanier, Jaron. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (Posición en Kindle508-510). Henry Holt and Co.. Edición de Kindle.

It is an integral part of the American myth that anyone who sets his mind to it can succeed, that diligence eventually pays off. It seems to follow, then, that people who do not succeed can be held responsible for their failure. Failure, after all, is prima facie evidence of not having tried hard enough. This doctrine has special appeal for those who are doing well, first because it allows them to think their blessings are deserved, and second because it spares them from having to feel too guilty about (or take any responsibility for) those who have much less.

That is when Thaler intervened by offering David the following deal. David would write Thaler a series of checks for $100, payable on the first day of each of the next few months. Thaler would cash each check if David did not put a copy of a new chapter of the thesis under his door by midnight of the corresponding month. Furthermore, Thaler promised to use the money to have a party to which David would not be invited. David completed his thesis on schedule four months later, never having missed a deadline (though most chapters were completed within mere minutes of being due). It is instructive that this incentive scheme worked even though David’s monetary incentive from the university was greater than $100 a month, just from the retirement contribution alone. The scheme worked because the pain of having Thaler cash the check and consume some good wine without him was more salient than the rather abstract and pallid forgone contribution to his retirement savings plan.

After only eight months in office, Meadows made national headlines by sending an open letter to the Republican leaders of the House demanding they use the “power of the purse” to kill the Affordable Care Act. By then, the law had been upheld by the Supreme Court and affirmed when voters reelected Obama in 2012. But Meadows argued that Republicans should sabotage it by refusing to appropriate any funds for its implementation. And, if they didn’t get their way, they would shut down the government. By fall, Meadows had succeeded in getting more than seventy-nine Republican congressmen to sign on to this plan, forcing Speaker of the House John Boehner, who had opposed the radical measure, to accede to their demands. Meadows later blamed the media for exaggerating his role, but he was hailed by his local Tea Party group as “our poster boy” and by CNN as the “architect” of the 2013 shutdown. The fanfare grew less positive when the radicals in Congress refused to back down, bringing virtually the entire federal government to a halt for sixteen days in October, leaving the country struggling to function without all but the most vital federal services. In Meadows’s district, day-care centers that were reliant on federal aid reportedly turned distraught families away, and nearby national parks were closed, bringing the tourist trade to a sputtering standstill. National polls showed public opinion was overwhelmingly against the shutdown. Even the Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, a conservative, called the renegades “the Suicide Caucus.” But the gerrymandering of 2010 had created what Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker called a “historical oddity.” Political extremists now had no incentive to compromise, even with their own party’s leadership. To the contrary, the only threats faced by Republican members from the new, ultraconservative districts were primary challenges from even more conservative candidates. Statistics showed that the eighty members of the so-called Suicide Caucus were a strikingly unrepresentative minority. They represented only 18 percent of the country’s population and just a third of the overall Republican caucus in the House. Gerrymandering had made their districts far less ethnically diverse and further to the right than the country as a whole. They were anomalies, yet because of radicalization of the party’s donor base they wielded disproportionate power. “In previous eras,” Lizza noted, “ideologically extreme minorities could be controlled by party leadership. What’s new about the current House of Representatives is that party discipline has broken down on the Republican side.” Party bosses no longer ruled. Big outside money had failed to buy the 2012 presidential election, but it had nonetheless succeeded in paralyzing the U.S. government. Meadows of course was not able to engineer the government shutdown by himself. Ted Cruz, the junior senator from Texas, whose 2012 victory had also been fueled by right-wing outside money, orchestrated much of the congressional strategy.

Even when bonuses and incentives were effective in changing behavior, they often created other problems. Central planning was just not good at replacing what the great eighteenth-century economist Adam Smith called the “invisible hand” of the market. When the plan was formulated in tons of steel sheet, the sheet was made too heavy. When it was formulated in terms of area of steel sheet, the sheet was made too thin. When the plan for chandeliers was made in tons, they were so heavy, they could hardly hang from ceilings.

Individuals should be given every incentive possible to work as a team. If the team’s throughput is increased by my helping someone else, that’s what I should do. Team velocity matters; individual velocity doesn’t.

Norway is working on a combination of taxes, subsidies, infrastructure, and other incentives in an effort to end sales of gasoline cars in the country by 2025. In October 2016, Germany’s federal council voted for a nonbinding resolution to end all sales of gasoline cars with internal combustion engines by 2030. In May 2017, India’s power minister announced a plan to have only electric cars—and “not a single petrol or diesel car”—sold in the country from 2030 on. Both the UK and France have said they will end sales of diesel and gasoline cars by 2040. And even China has said it will set a date that will signal the end of all gasoline car sales in the country (although it hasn’t said what that date will be). All these scenarios could have a drastic effect on the uptake of electric vehicles, which would in turn have a dramatic impact on the consumption of oil.

the most notable aspect of a positive judgment is not that it is positive but that it is a judgment.

Black Swans being unpredictable, we need to adjust to their existence (rather than naïvely try to predict them). There are so many things we can do if we focus on antiknowledge, or what we do not know. Among many other benefits, you can set yourself up to collect serendipitous Black Swans (of the positive kind) by maximizing your exposure to them. Indeed, in some domains—such as scientific discovery and venture capital investments—there is a disproportionate payoff from the unknown, since you typically have little to lose and plenty to gain from a rare event. We will see that, contrary to social-science wisdom, almost no discovery, no technologies of note, came from design and planning—they were just Black Swans. The strategy for the discoverers and entrepreneurs is to rely less on top-down planning and focus on maximum tinkering and recognizing opportunities when they present themselves. So I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or “incentives” for skill. The strategy is, then, to tinker as much as possible and try to collect as many Black Swan opportunities as you can.

rewards, like punishments, actually undermine the intrinsic motivation that promotes optimal performance.

Over the course of many years, Amazon has put in place mechanisms to ensure that the Leadership Principles translate into action. Three foundational mechanisms are: the annual planning process; the S-Team goals process (the S-Team consists of the senior vice presidents and direct reports to Jeff Bezos); and Amazon’s compensation plan, which aligns incentives with what’s best for customers and the company over the long term.

It is one of the curiosities of Communist reformers that they always set out with the quixotic goal of reforming some aspects of their system while keeping others unaffected—introducing market-oriented incentives while maintaining central planning controls, or allowing greater freedom of expression while retaining the Party’s monopoly of truth.

Buybacks: How the Game Works Imagine a company – let’s call it FinEng Corp – with sales of $1 billion and a 5 per cent profit margin. The $50 million of profits are taxed at a 30 per cent rate. The company has 500 million shares outstanding and shareholders’ equity of $500 million. The shares trade at 15 times earnings. The corporate incentive plan provides senior executives with 50 million stock options, which strike at the current market price. At this point, FinEng has no

Margaret: Volunteered to help with assets Showing more incentive and engagement Increased participation effort 04.02.FR Cancel yoga Kim: Get birthday cake Celiac: Needs to be gluten-free The party’s on Thursday

Here are four examples of Lead Magnets I use: A checklist that can be used to properly perform something I explained in a video. A template for determining, say, a business’s profit margin. An advanced guide that goes further into the details of a subject of one of my videos. A unique book that provides substantial value but is offered for free. For me, it is 11 Side Hustle Ideas to Make $500/Day from Your Phone. The appropriate opt-in incentive depends on your content. Here are other types of examples: A DIY carpenter could offer plans to make a corner table. A marketing YouTuber could offer scripts of what to say on sales phone calls. A landscaping expert might offer recommendations for which kinds of grass to use around the United States. YouTuber Nick True at Mapped Out Money, who makes video tutorials that teach the best practices for using the personal budgeting software YNAB, found that he gets the highest sign-up rates when he offers a checklist that relates to the video. His followers really like having a resource that they can use to put his advice into practice. Jess Dante of Love and London runs a YouTube channel helping viewers plan their trips to London by suggesting lesser-known restaurants and stores to visit. Her superstar opt-in incentive is a free London 101 Guide with everything a first-time visitor needs to know. It’s been downloaded more than 45,000 times. Where you make your call to action will also have an impact on your success building your email list. You can make your call to action in a variety of places or ways inside your videos. One of the best ways is to give a short, relevant tease of the bonus or resource you’re offering within the YouTube video and tell people where they can learn more. CHALLENGE Create a Lead Magnet. It’s time to create your first Lead Magnet using the process we’ve just outlined above. You can use your piece of content from the previous chapter as a base or start something new. Don’t spend more than two hours on the first iteration. If you want to turn it into a big thing later on, great. But start SMALL. Go to MillionDollarWeekend.com to get Lead Magnet templates! (See what I did there?)

BARTON CENTRE, 912, 9th Floor, Mahatma Gandhi Rd, Bengaluru, Karnataka - 560 001 Phone Number +91 8884400919 Investigate the Best with Surfnxt Might it be said that you are searching for an extraordinary tropical escape? Look no farther than Bali! Known for its perfect sea shores, rich scenes, and energetic culture, Bali has turned into a fantasy objective for voyagers around the world. With Surfnxt's selective bali tour package from bangalore, your fantasy excursion is only a booking ceaselessly! Why Pick Bali? Bali is a heaven that takes special care of each and every kind of explorer. Whether you're an ocean side darling, nature devotee, experience searcher, or culture buff, Bali offers something special for everybody. From the notorious sea shores of Kuta and Nusa Dua to the quiet rice patios of Ubud and consecrated sanctuaries like Tanah Parcel, Bali has everything. On the off chance that you're hoping to loosen up, the island's extravagant hotels and elite spas will spoil you unimaginable. For the experience addicts, exercises like surfing, scuba jumping, and traveling anticipate. Advantages of Picking Surfnxt's Bali Visit Bundle Surfnxt furnishes you with a consistent travel experience intended to guarantee a problem free occasion. Here's the reason you ought to pick Surfnxt's bali tour package from bangalore: Thorough Agenda: Surfnxt curates point by point schedules that cover Bali's top attractions and unlikely treasures. You'll encounter Bali's rich culture, investigate stunning scenes, and get the ideal mix of unwinding and experience. Reasonable Bundles: Surfnxt offers cutthroat evaluating, guaranteeing you get the best incentive for your cash. Browse financial plan amicable to extravagance bundles custom fitted to your requirements. Adaptable Customization: Surfnxt comprehends that each explorer is unique. You can without much of a stretch modify your Bali visit bundle to incorporate the objections, facilities, and exercises that suit your inclinations. Advantageous Takeoffs from Bangalore: With simple takeoffs from Bangalore, Surfnxt simplifies it for you to leave on your Bali process. You can sit back, unwind, and let Surfnxt handle everything — from trips to inn appointments, air terminal exchanges, and touring visits. Master Neighborhood Guides: With Surfnxt, you gain admittance to educated nearby aides who offer shrewd insights concerning Bali's set of experiences, culture, and secret spots. Their skill adds profundity to your excursion, making it more significant. What's in store in Your Bali Visit Bundle? Here is a brief look at what you can expect in a commonplace Bali visit bundle from Bangalore: Full circle Flights: Bother free departures from Bangalore to Bali, guaranteeing an agreeable excursion. Convenience: Look over spending plan lodgings, store stays, or extravagance resorts, all halfway found. Touring Visits: Visit notorious milestones like Uluwatu Sanctuary, Tegallalang Rice Porch, and the delightful sea shores of Seminyak and Jimbaran. Experience Exercises: Choices to enjoy surfing, swimming, jumping, and social studios. Social Encounters: Appreciate conventional Balinese dance exhibitions, visit craftsman towns, and investigate old sanctuaries. Book Your Bali Visit Bundle from Bangalore with Surfnxt Today! With Surfnxt's Bali visit bundles from Bangalore, your fantasy occasion is nearer than you suspect. Whether you're arranging a heartfelt escape, a family get-away, or a performance experience, Surfnxt guarantees an outing loaded up with critical encounters. Try not to pass up the tropical heaven of Bali — book your visit bundle today and prepare for an experience that could only be described as epic!

Suraj solar and allied industries, Wework galaxy, 43, Residency Road, Bangalore-560025. Mobile number : +91 808 850 7979 Sun oriented streetlamps are a creative and practical lighting arrangement that bridles the force of the sun to enlighten streets, pathways, and public spaces. In urban communities like Bangalore, where energy proficiency and natural manageability are key needs, the reception of sun based streetlamps has been picking up speed. This article investigates the different parts of sun based streetlamps, including their advantages, estimating factors in Bangalore, an examination of various items, experiences into a main supplier like SuneaseSolar, ways to choose the right streetlamp, and rules for establishment and support. 1. Prologue to Sunlight based Streetlamps What are Sunlight based Streetlamps? Sun oriented streetlamps are independent lighting frameworks that bridle the force of daylight to enlighten open air spaces like roads, pathways, and public regions. These lights comprise of sun powered chargers, Drove lights, batteries, and a regulator to deal with the energy stream. Significance of Sun based Streetlamps Sun based streetlamps assume a significant part in improving wellbeing, security, and perceivability in metropolitan and provincial regions where customary lattice power might be untrustworthy or inaccessible. They offer a practical and productive lighting arrangement that decreases reliance on non-renewable energy sources and adds to a greener climate. 2. Advantages of Sun powered Streetlamps Energy Effectiveness Sun oriented streetlamps are profoundly energy-effective as they work by changing over daylight into power, taking out the requirement for lattice power. This outcomes in lower energy utilization and decreased fossil fuel byproducts, making them an economical lighting choice. Cost Reserve funds By using sun powered energy, sun based streetlamps help in chopping down power charges fundamentally over their life expectancy. The underlying interest in sun powered streetlamps is balanced by long haul cost reserve funds because of negligible upkeep prerequisites and no power costs. Ecological Effect Sunlight based streetlamps add to natural preservation by using inexhaustible sun oriented energy and decreasing carbon impressions. They help in fighting environmental change and advancing a cleaner, greener planet by diminishing dependence on non-sustainable power sources. 3. Factors Influencing solar street light price in bangalore Nature of Parts The cost of sun oriented streetlamps in Bangalore can change in view of the nature of parts utilized, like sun powered chargers, batteries, and Drove lights. More excellent parts frequently bring about better execution and strength, yet may come at a greater cost. Government Endowments and Motivators Government endowments and motivators can affect the last expense of sun based streetlamps in Bangalore. Different plans and projects might offer monetary help or tax reductions, making sunlight based lighting more reasonable and appealing for shoppers. Establishment and Support Expenses Extra factors like establishment and upkeep expenses can impact the general cost of sunlight based streetlamps. Legitimate establishment and normal support guarantee ideal execution and life span, prompting likely expense reserve funds over the long haul. 4. Examination of solar street light price in bangalore Market Investigation of Various Brands A correlation of sunlight based streetlamp costs in Bangalore ought to incorporate an examination of various brands and their contributions. Factors like brand notoriety, item quality, and after-deals backing can affect the cost and generally an incentive for purchasers. Highlights and Particulars While contrasting sun powered streetlamp costs in Bangalore, it's fundamental to consider the highlights and determinations presented by various models.

Were I Queen, my principal affirmative action plan would have three legs. First, it would promote equal educational opportunity, and effective job training for women, so they would not be reduced to dependency on a man or the state. Second, my plan would give men encouragement and incentives to share more evenly with women the joys, responsibilities, worries, upsets, and sometimes tedium of raising children from infancy to adulthood. (This, I admit, is the most challenging part of the plan to make concrete and implement.) Third, the plan would make quality day care available from infancy on. Children in my ideal world would not be women’s priorities, they would be human priorities. —Ruth Bader Ginsburg Two

For an extensive and fascinating discussion of the use and pitfalls of rewards, see Edward Deci, Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation (New York: Penguin, 1996); Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999); Daniel Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (New York: Riverhead, 2009).

Communication.  Communication is an often-overlooked aspect of incentive plan implementation and can be one of the most critical aspects of ensuring plan effectiveness.

Most contemporary option plans have provisions whereby all granted options fully vest immediately prior to an acquisition should the plan and/or options underneath the plan not be assumed by the buyer. While this clearly benefits the option holders and helps incentivize the employees of the seller who hold options, it does have an impact on the seller and the buyer. In the case of the seller, it will effectively allocate a portion of the purchase price to the option holders. In the case of the buyer, it will create a situation in which there is no forward incentive for the employees to stick around since their option value is fully vested and paid at the time of the acquisition, resulting in the buyer having to come up with additional incentive packages to retain employees on a going-forward basis. Many lawyers will advise in favor of a fully vesting option plan because it forces the buyer to assume the option plan, because if it did not, then the option holders would immediately become shareholders of the combined entities. Under the general notion that fewer shareholders are better, this acceleration provision motivates buyers to assume option plans. This theory holds true only if there is a large number of option holders. In the past few years we've seen cases where

In a stable, predictable environment it is possible to make quite good plans by gathering and analyzing information. We can learn enough about the outside world and our position in it to set some objectives. We know enough about the effects any actions will have to be able to work out what to do to achieve the objectives. We can then use a mixture of supervision, controls, and incentives to coerce, persuade, or cajole people into doing what we want. We can measure the results until the outcomes we want are achieved. We can make plans, take actions, and achieve outcomes in a linear sequence with some reliability. If we are assiduous enough, pay attention to detail, and exercise rigorous control, the sequence will be seamless.

Westerners, not just Lincoln Steffens. It took in the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. It even took in the Soviet Union’s own leaders, such as Nikita Khrushchev, who famously boasted in a speech to Western diplomats in 1956 that “we will bury you [the West].” As late as 1977, a leading academic textbook by an English economist argued that Soviet-style economies were superior to capitalist ones in terms of economic growth, providing full employment and price stability and even in producing people with altruistic motivation. Poor old Western capitalism did better only at providing political freedom. Indeed, the most widely used university textbook in economics, written by Nobel Prize–winner Paul Samuelson, repeatedly predicted the coming economic dominance of the Soviet Union. In the 1961 edition, Samuelson predicted that Soviet national income would overtake that of the United States possibly by 1984, but probably by 1997. In the 1980 edition there was little change in the analysis, though the two dates were delayed to 2002 and 2012. Though the policies of Stalin and subsequent Soviet leaders could produce rapid economic growth, they could not do so in a sustained way. By the 1970s, economic growth had all but stopped. The most important lesson is that extractive institutions cannot generate sustained technological change for two reasons: the lack of economic incentives and resistance by the elites. In addition, once all the very inefficiently used resources had been reallocated to industry, there were few economic gains to be had by fiat. Then the Soviet system hit a roadblock, with lack of innovation and poor economic incentives preventing any further progress. The only area in which the Soviets did manage to sustain some innovation was through enormous efforts in military and aerospace technology. As a result they managed to put the first dog, Leika, and the first man, Yuri Gagarin, in space. They also left the world the AK-47 as one of their legacies. Gosplan was the supposedly all-powerful planning agency in charge of the central planning of the Soviet economy. One of the benefits of the sequence of five-year plans written and administered by Gosplan was supposed to have been the long time horizon necessary for rational investment and innovation. In reality, what got implemented in Soviet industry had little to do with the five-year plans, which were frequently revised and rewritten or simply ignored. The development of industry took place on the basis of commands by Stalin and the Politburo, who changed their minds frequently and often completely revised their previous decisions. All plans were labeled “draft” or “preliminary.” Only one copy of a plan labeled “final”—that for light industry in 1939—has ever come to light. Stalin himself said in 1937 that “only bureaucrats can think that planning work ends with the creation of the plan. The creation of the plan is just the beginning. The real direction of the plan develops only after the putting together of the plan.” Stalin wanted to maximize his discretion to reward people or groups who were politically loyal, and punish those who were not. As for Gosplan, its main role was to provide Stalin with information so he could better monitor his friends and enemies. It actually tried to avoid making decisions. If you made a decision that turned out badly, you might get shot. Better to avoid all responsibility. An example of what could happen

As it happens, most studies have found that unexpected rewards are much less destructive than the rewards people are told about beforehand and are deliberately trying to obtain. But

S. Neill put it, promising a reward for an activity is “tantamount to declaring that the activity is not worth doing for its own sake.”26 Thus, a parent who says to a child, “If you finish your math homework, you may watch an hour of TV” is teaching the child to think of math as something that isn’t much fun.

In an autobiographical essay published in 1946, Albert Einstein reflected on his days as a student of physics some fifty years earlier. He recalled his teachers with affection but, referring to exams, said, “This coercion had such a deterring effect that after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.

The failure to adopt other people’s points of view, to take an imaginative leap out of oneself, is one way to account for much of the behavior we find, troublesome, from littering to murder. (Kafka once referred to war as “a monstrous failure of imagination.”) Perspective taking helps us at once to see others as fundamentally similar to ourselves despite superficial differences (in that we share a common humanity)

the use of rewards for reading, writing, drawing, acting responsibly and generously, and so on is cause for concern, not only because these things could be intrinsically motivating but because we want to encourage rather than extinguish that motivation.

Where did this disposition come from? And what are our long-term goals for people—particularly children—with respect to motivation?

the question is not whether more flies can be caught with honey than with vinegar, but why the flies are being caught in either case—and how this feels to the fly.

four accounts of how praise may impede performance: it signals low ability, makes people feel pressured, invites a low-risk strategy to avoid failure, and reduces interest in the task itself.

Are we encouraging him to make his own judgments about what constitutes a good performance (or a desirable action) ? Are we contributing to, or at least preserving, his ability to choose what kind of person to be? Or are we attempting to manipulate his behavior by getting him to think about whether he has met our criteria? The

The situation was similar in the Soviet Union, with industry playing the role of sugar in the Caribbean. Industrial growth in the Soviet Union was further facilitated because its technology was so backward relative to what was available in Europe and the United States, so large gains could be reaped by reallocating resources to the industrial sector, even if all this was done inefficiently and by force. Before 1928 most Russians lived in the countryside. The technology used by peasants was primitive, and there were few incentives to be productive. Indeed, the last vestiges of Russian feudalism were eradicated only shortly before the First World War. There was thus huge unrealized economic potential from reallocating this labor from agriculture to industry. Stalinist industrialization was one brutal way of unlocking this potential. By fiat, Stalin moved these very poorly used resources into industry, where they could be employed more productively, even if industry itself was very inefficiently organized relative to what could have been achieved. In fact, between 1928 and 1960 national income grew at 6 percent a year, probably the most rapid spurt of economic growth in history up until then. This quick economic growth was not created by technological change, but by reallocating labor and by capital accumulation through the creation of new tools and factories. Growth was so rapid that it took in generations of Westerners, not just Lincoln Steffens. It took in the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. It even took in the Soviet Union’s own leaders, such as Nikita Khrushchev, who famously boasted in a speech to Western diplomats in 1956 that “we will bury you [the West].” As late as 1977, a leading academic textbook by an English economist argued that Soviet-style economies were superior to capitalist ones in terms of economic growth, providing full employment and price stability and even in producing people with altruistic motivation. Poor old Western capitalism did better only at providing political freedom. Indeed, the most widely used university textbook in economics, written by Nobel Prize–winner Paul Samuelson, repeatedly predicted the coming economic dominance of the Soviet Union. In the 1961 edition, Samuelson predicted that Soviet national income would overtake that of the United States possibly by 1984, but probably by 1997. In the 1980 edition there was little change in the analysis, though the two dates were delayed to 2002 and 2012. Though the policies of Stalin and subsequent Soviet leaders could produce rapid economic growth, they could not do so in a sustained way. By the 1970s, economic growth had all but stopped. The most important lesson is that extractive institutions cannot generate sustained technological change for two reasons: the lack of economic incentives and resistance by the elites. In addition, once all the very inefficiently used resources had been reallocated to industry, there were few economic gains to be had by fiat. Then the Soviet system hit a roadblock, with lack of innovation and poor economic incentives preventing any further progress. The only area in which the Soviets did manage to sustain some innovation was through enormous efforts in military and aerospace technology. As a result they managed to put the first dog, Leika, and the first man, Yuri Gagarin, in space. They also left the world the AK-47 as one of their legacies. Gosplan was the supposedly all-powerful planning agency in charge of the central planning of the Soviet economy.

if, like Charles Silberman, we think school “should prepare people not just to earn a living but to live a life—a creative, humane, and sensitive life,”22 then children’s attitudes toward learning are at least as important as how well they perform at any given task.

The research is clear: getting children to focus on their performance can interfere with their ability to remember things about the challenging tasks they just worked on.67

The most significant factor in an individual’s ability to remain in good health may be a sense of control over the events of life,” one psychologist has remarked.

Rewards usually improve performance only at extremely simple—indeed, mindless—tasks, and even then they improve only quantitative performance.

By contrast, training and goal-setting programs had a far greater impact on productivity than did anything involving payment.32

what matters is not just how motivated someone is but the source and nature of that motivation.13

The more we try to measure, control, and pressure learning from without, the more we obstruct the tendencies of students to be actively involved and to participate in their own education. Not only does this result in a failure of students to absorb the cognitive agenda imparted by educators, but it also creates deleterious consequences for the affective agendas of schools [that is, how students feel about learning]. . . . Externally imposed evaluations, goals, rewards, and pressures seem to create a style of teaching and learning that is antithetical to quality learning outcomes in school, that is, learning characterized by durability, depth, and integration.

But my point is not just that the psychological theory is inadequate; it is that the practice is unproductive. If we do not address the ultimate cause of a problem, the problem will not get solved. This is not to say

The troubling truth is that rewards and punishments are not opposites at all; they are two sides of the same coin. And it is a coin that does not buy very much.

There is a time to admire the grace and persuasive power of an influential idea, and there is a time to fear its hold over us. The time to worry is when the idea is so widely shared that we no longer even notice it, when it is so deeply rooted that it feels to us like plain common sense. At the point when objections are not answered anymore because they are no longer even raised, we are not in control: we do not have the idea; it has us.

He comes to a stop, plants one foot on the ground firmly, and uses his other foot to kick start his bike. He revs the throttle back a few times and looks over at me with complete excitement in his eyes as he kicks the start back into place. He nods his head back over his shoulder. “Hop on behind me and wrap your arms around my waist. You’re going to want to scoot close up against me and hold on tight, but not so tight that I can’t move freely.” I step up beside him and he reaches out his hand for me to take hold as I throw my leg up and over the seat. I scoot forward enough that my center is pressed tightly up against his rear end, and wrap my arms around his waist. Even if we didn’t move any further than this position right here, I would be a very happy girl. Adam lets out a laugh. “Even though I’m really enjoying you being this close, you might need to scoot yourself back just a bit so you can actually lean and move with me. Having you’re coochie pressed against my body has crossed my mind, but it might have to wait until later. Right now, you’re just going to manage pushing me forward.” My cheeks feel like they are on fire and my mouth drops open. I release my arms from around Adam’s waist and scoot back on the seat. “Did you just call my woman parts a coochie, and should I even ask about the wait until later comment?” I’m not going to tell him right now, but with that one simple sentence Adam has gotten me very worked up, in a very good way. Adam looks back over his shoulder and I can tell he’s smiling by the look in his eyes. “Well, I wasn’t sure what type of girl you were as far as vagina terminology goes? Coochie seemed like a safe word, but I have many options you can choose from that you might prefer. There is always the common pussy and cunt terms, then there are the more original ones like; cockpit, mud flaps, love tunnel, bone cave, meat massager, theme park, dick mitten….” I start shaking my head back and forth. “Ok, Ok, I got it. Coochie will do for now, I guess, and I will give it some more thought later as to a term I more prefer. I don’t think we need to keep talking about this right now if you plan on actually showing me why I should be your biggest fan and you my favorite rider out at the races. This is just a big distraction instead.” Adam reaches back and places his hand on my knee. “Maybe it’s a major part of making you my biggest fan as well as showing you that I’m meant to be your favorite rider. It can wait, though. Hold on and we can head on out toward the field.” I grab back hold of Adam and keep my coochie slid back further on the seat this time. “That might be a very strong incentive, Adam, for us both. I agree. Oh and you forgot to mention; purple people penis eater, honey pot, poody tat, stop-n-pop….” Adam releases my leg and grabs back hold of the handle. “Ok, you’re right; we will continue this conversation later on.

Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes BY ALFIE KOHN

phone subscriber networks, the connection fee was calculated as an incentive for building FTTx. The KCC is planning to form connection

For the anthropomorphic view of the rat, American psychology substituted a rattomorphic view of man. —Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation

A person is not an originating agent; he is a locus, a point at which many genetic and environmental conditions come together in a joint effect.

Some behavioral psychologists defend the practice of punishing employees on the grounds that it helps to “clarify management’s expectations of performance and promote goal setting.”81 (This is comparable to the claim that throwing employees out an office window helps to clarify what floor they work on.) One

Main Benefits of Federal Student Loans Following are the Benefits of Federal student loan as per our CEO, Bruce Mesnekoff. You can get federal loans without a credit history. You can get federal loans without a co-signer. Federal loans offer lower interest rates than private loans. You can postpone federal loan payments for up to three years. The government pays the interest on deferred subsidized federal loans. You can choose from seven federal student loan repayment plans. Federal loans offer forgiveness opportunities. It takes longer for federal loans to go into default. You can consolidate federal loans without having good credit. Your federal loans will be canceled if you die. Federal Student Loans Are Flexible. With good Records Student can Get Incentives or Waiving of origination fees. No penalties or fees for early repayment. For Any kind of Student Loan consolidation or consulting you can contact The Student Loan Help Center.

Tips to Manage your student loan by The Student Loan Help Center Managing Your Student Loans Apply these responsible financial management principles, as you repay your student loans: Consider the advantages of loan forgiveness programs. These programs are available to students who agree to work in high-need fields like nursing and education. Enrolling in the military often makes you eligible for loan forgiveness. Essentially, you commit to work or serve for a designated period of time, in exchange for complete or partial loan forgiveness. Make student loan payments on time. In some cases, your interest rate may qualify for reduction after you make a certain number of consecutive on-time payments. If you have a cosigner, he or she may also be released from responsibility for the loan, once you have exhibited a required level of consistency with your repayments. Defaulting on your student loans has far-reaching consequences, so it should never be an option. Manage your loan repayment schedule using online calculators. If you are considering a consolidation loan, use these tools to quickly determine your total loan repayment obligation. Take advantage of federal education tax incentives, like the student loan interest deduction and Hope Scholarship Credit. Student Loan Tips: Use student loans to supplement other financial aid awards, like grants and scholarships. Make sure to start a college savings plan as early as possible. College accounts like the 529 savings plans allow you to save pre-tax money for college. Understand the terms of your federal and private student loans, before you sign on. You will be bound to the conditions of your loans for many years. Don’t miss payments. Be proactive in protecting your credit, by contacting your lender before you default. You can consider consolidation loans, deferments and other accommodations of the available options, to keep your repayment schedule on track. For more Questions you can contact The Student Loan Help Center.

Control breeds the need for more control, which then is used to justify the use of control.

As it happens, most studies have found that unexpected rewards are much less destructive than the rewards people are told about beforehand and are deliberately trying to obtain.

If we believed that God was in charge and our actions meant nothing, it would lead to discouraged passivity. If on the other hand we really believed that our actions changed God’s plan—it would lead to paralyzing fear. If both are true, however, we have the greatest incentive for diligent effort, and yet we can always sense God’s everlasting arms under us. In the end, we can’t frustrate God’s good plans for us (cf. Jer 29:11).

Often counselors find it necessary to spell out for clients methods for getting things done. They teach them first to plan their long-range goals. Then they show them how to plan the short-range goals which must be reached along the way to attaining long-range objectives. Thirdly, all of the goals are then scheduled as accurately as possible. Fourthly, the planning must be followed by doing. The scheduled goals become (1) incentives: it is easier to shoot for short-term goals; (2) milestones: goals performance may be checked.

Every successful person, no matter whether they realize it or not, has put the 5 Pillars of Success to work for them. They Plan and Prepare properly, they have Professional Accountability and Social Support, they have chosen an Incentive to inspire them, and they have given themselves a Big Deadline.

Success depends on careful behavioral planning, preparing employees and leaders to observe and encourage behavior, and addressing systemic consequences (measurement, incentive, performance-management systems) that might impede new behavior. Choosing

The fact that bonuses were paid monthly also kept everyone focused on the present, while innovation is about making sacrifices today in order to have more tomorrow. Even when bonuses and incentives were effective in changing behavior, they often created other problems. Central planning was just not good at replacing what the great eighteenth-century economist Adam Smith called the “invisible hand” of the market. When the plan was formulated in tons of steel sheet, the sheet was made too heavy. When it was formulated in terms of area of steel sheet, the sheet was made too thin. When the plan for chandeliers was made in tons, they were so heavy, they could hardly hang from ceilings. By

Before the management of the company just described could become fast innovators, they had to develop and embrace a new philosophy of organizing around time. The new philosophy is embedded in these eleven key principles: Time is the key performance variable to be managed to attain improved cost and quality. Time benchmarks are set by the performance of competitors and, if faster, by what is technologically possible. The support functions necessary to advance the development process are actively managed to be “invisible.” Their need is to be anticipated; they are to be invested in and kept up-to-date. They are never to be allowed to slow the development process. Each program is to be managed and executed by a small, dedicated, decision-empowered, and experienced team. Team members have common goals and are measured and evaluated as part of a team. The development programs are to have four steps, and the company will organize itself around these steps: Planning and preparation Product definition Design development Manufacturing ramp-up Product improvement The objective of planning and preparation is to avoid having to invent in the middle of the development process—make unknowns be knowns. After definition, the product specification is frozen. The definition is committed to and not allowed to be changed. The improvement phase is to be used for costs and feature enhancements. Functional expertise resides in the development program. Manufacturing and design resources are full-time participants in the definition team. Manufacturing resources are full time participants in the design team. Team members are collocated. Senior management reviews are few. The role of senior management is to ensure that the program teams have the appropriate resources, incentives and environment to execute their tasks quickly. New programs are generated continuously, at regular market-driven intervals, and incorporate more incremental advances and fewer “great leaps forward.

A vivid feeling of solidarity, whether racial, national or religious, is undoubtedly an effective means of preventing labor unrest. Even when the type of solidarity is such that it cannot comprise the employer, it nevertheless tends to promote labor contentment and efficiency. Experience shows that production is at its best when the workers feel and act as members of a team. Any policy that disturbs and tears apart the team is bound to cause severe trouble. “Incentive wage plans that offer bonuses to individual workers do more harm than good…. Group incentive plans in which the bonus is based on the work of the whole team, including the foreman … are much more likely to promote greater productivity and greater satisfaction on the part of the workers.”21

Suraj solar and allied industries, Wework galaxy, 43, Residency Road, Bangalore-560025. Mobile number : +91 808 850 7979 Understanding the idea of sun oriented streetlamps Sun powered streetlamps have arisen as a feasible and effective lighting arrangement, particularly in metropolitan regions like Bangalore. By bridling the force of the sun, these lighting apparatuses offer various benefits over customary matrix based frameworks. In this article, we dive into the universe of sun powered streetlamps, investigating their advantages, evaluating factors, provider determination best practices, and future innovation patterns. Whether you are a mortgage holder, entrepreneur, or city organizer in Bangalore, understanding the complexities of sunlight based streetlamps can assist you with pursuing informed choices towards a greener and more savvy lighting arrangement. ### 1. Prologue to Sun based Streetlamps #### Understanding the idea of sunlight based streetlamps Hi, brilliant personalities! How about we shed some light on sun oriented streetlamps. These clever creations bridle the force of the sun to enlighten our roads, making them eco-accommodating as well as financially savvy. ### 2. Advantages of Sun powered Streetlamps in Bangalore #### Natural benefits of sun oriented streetlamps By changing to, Solar Street Light Price in Bangalore we're giving contamination a dimmer switch. These lights decrease fossil fuel byproducts and assist with keeping our city's air cleaner and fresher. #### Monetary advantages for Bangalore inhabitants and organizations Who doesn't cherish saving a couple of bucks? Sunlight based streetlamps cut power bills as well as require negligible upkeep, saving the two occupants and organizations in Bangalore some well deserved cash. ### 3. Factors Influencing Sun oriented Streetlamp Costs #### Nature of sunlight based chargers and battery frameworks Very much like a decent sunscreen, quality matters with regards to sunlight based chargers and batteries. Putting resources into first class parts guarantees dependable execution and productivity. #### Establishment and support costs Introducing sunlight based streetlamps resembles sowing seeds for reserve funds. While beginning expenses might shift, the drawn out benefits offset them, with insignificant upkeep expected to keep those lights radiating brilliantly. ### 4. Correlation of Solar Street Light Price in Bangalore #### Cost range examination of sunlight based streetlamps in Bangalore From financial plan cordial choices to grand models, there's a sunlight based streetlamp for each wallet size in Bangalore. Contrasting costs and highlights can assist you with tracking down the ideal fit for your necessities. #### Deciding the best incentive for cash With regards to sun oriented streetlamps, it's about the sticker price as well as the profit from venture. Finding a harmony among cost and quality guarantees you get the best value for your money in Bangalore. In this way, that's essentially it - a focusing manual for sun powered streetlamps in Bangalore. We should light up the roads, each watt in turn! 5. Best Practices for Picking Sun based Streetlamp Providers Exploring trustworthy sun oriented streetlamp producers With regards to picking a sun oriented streetlamp provider, getting your work done is significant. Search for makers with a strong standing for quality items and dependable help. You need a provider that has insight in the business and a history of following through on their commitments. Inspecting client criticism and tributes Client input can give important experiences into the exhibition of a sun based streetlamp provider. Look at surveys and tributes from past clients to measure fulfillment levels. Positive criticism is a decent pointer that the provider is reliable and follows through on their responsibilities.

It is time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy. It’s a bureaucratic system where everyone’s role is spelled out in advance, and there are few incentives for innovation or productivity. It’s not a surprise when a school system doesn’t improve. It more resembles a communist economy than our own market economy.

In Vietnam, lying became so much part of the system that sometimes not lying seemed immoral...The teenage adrenaline-drained patrol leader has to call in the score so analysts, newspaper reporters, and politicians back in Washington have something to do. Never mind that Smithers and his squad may have stopped a developing attack planned to hit the company that night, saving scores of lives and maintaining control over a piece of ground. All they'll be judged on, and all their superiors have to be judged on, is the kill ratio. Smithers's best friend has just been killed. Two other friends are missing pieces of their bodies and are going into shock. No one in the squad knows if the enemy is 15 meters away waiting to open up again or running. Smithers is tired and has a lot of other things on his mind. With scorekeepers often 25 kilometers away, no one is going to check on the score. In short, Smithers has a great incentive to lie. He also has a great need to lie. His best friend is dead. "Why?" he asks himself. This is where the lying in Vietnam all began. It had to fill the long silence following Smithers's anguished "Why?" So it starts. "Nelson, how many did you get?" Smithers asks. PFC Nelson looks up from crying over the body of his friend Katz and says, "How the fuck do I know?" His friend Smithers says, "Well, did you get that bastard that came around the dogleg after Katz threw the Mike-26?" Nelson looks down at Katz's face, hardening and turning yellow like tallow. "You're goddamn right I got him," he almost whispers. It's all he can offer his dead friend. "There's no body." "They drug the fucker away. I tell you I got him!" Nelson is no longer whispering. … The patrol leader doesn't have a body, but what are the odds that he's going to call his friend a liar or, even more difficult, make Katz's death meaningless, given that the only meaning now lies in this one statistic? No one is congratulating him for exposing the enemy, keeping them screened from the main body, which is the purpose of security patrols. He calls in one confirmed kill. ... Just then PFC Schroeder comes crawling over with Kool-Aid stains all around his mouth and says, "I think I got one, right by the dogleg of the trail after Katz threw the grenade." "Yeah, we called that one in." "No, it ain't the one Nelson got. I tell you I got another one." Smithers thinks it was the same one but he's not about to have PFC Schroeder feeling bad, particularly after they've all seen their squad mate die. … the last thing on Smithers's mind is the integrity of meaningless numbers. The message gets relayed to the battalion commander. He's just taken two wounded and one dead. All he has to report is one confirmed, one probable. This won't look good. Bad ratio. He knows all sorts of bullets were flying all over the place. It was a point-to-point contact, so no ambush, so the stinkin' thinking' goes round and round, so the probable had to be a kill. But really if we got two confirmed kills, there was probably a probable. I mean, what's the definition of probable if it isn't probable to get one? What the hell, two kills, two probables. Our side is now ahead. Victory is just around the corner. … [then the artillery has to claim their own additional kills…] By the time all this shit piles up at the briefing in Saigon, we've won the war.

...these beliefs elevates leaders as an elite group, singularly worthy of special development, coaching, and incentives. All of these beliefs have face validity, and they have unintended consequences. When we are dissatisfied with a leader, we simply try harder to find a new one who will perform more perfectly in the very way that led to our last disappointment. This creates a burden of isolation, entitlement, and passivity that our communities cannot afford to carry. The world does not need leaders to better define issues or to orchestrate better planning or project management. What it needs is for the issues and the plans to have more of an impact, and that comes from citizen accountability and commitment. Engagement is the means through which there can be a shift in caring for the well-being of the whole, and the task of leader as convener is to produce that engagement.

First, the people — and not the contracts, methods, machines, procedures, processes, programs, rules, organizations, plans, or incentives — are responsible for producing action.