Quote of the day

With markets, "trial and error" works, because error gets killed off. With politics, error often survives.--Arnold Kling

He also writes:

For example, suppose we want doctors to have incentive pay. That means that we want them to change their behavior in response to bonus criteria. An effective system would create a large change in behavior at relatively low cost.

Politically, however, the survival of a system is likely to be related inversely to its effectiveness. If a system does not cost much and yet it pressures doctors to change their behavior, they will lobby to kill it. On the other hand, in the UK, a new incentive system generates large pay increases for doctors with little change in behavior. In that case, doctors will lobby to keep it.