Applications
Design systems where individual incentives align with desired outcomes. Don't rely on altruism or oversight—assume people will optimize for what benefits them. If you want behavior X, ensure people benefit from behavior X, not behavior Y that undermines X.
Anticipate unintended consequences of incentive structures. Ask: "If I were trying to game this system, how would I do it?" Then fix those exploits before they emerge. Well-intentioned incentives often backfire because designers didn't think adversarially.
Create mechanisms making good behavior easy and bad behavior hard. Defaults matter enormously—opt-in versus opt-out changes participation rates dramatically. Path of least resistance determines behavior more than explicit rules. Design systems where right thing is easiest thing.
Recognize when policy resistance indicates misalignment. If you're constantly fighting system back to desired state, incentives are probably misaligned. Either change incentives or change goals. Fighting misaligned incentives exhausts energy without producing lasting results.