Incentives Quotes

“Pick a leader who will keep jobs in your country by offering companies incentives to hire only within their borders, not one who allows corporations to outsource jobs for cheaper labor when there is a national employment crisis. Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance. Stability, not fear and terror. Peace, not chaos. Love, not hate. Convergence, not segregation. Tolerance, not discrimination. Fairness, not hypocrisy. Substance, not superficiality. Character, not immaturity. Transparency, not secrecy. Justice, not lawlessness. Environmental improvement and preservation, not destruction. Truth, not lies.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“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.”
― Charles Wheelan, Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science

“Pick a leader who will not only bail out banks and airlines, but also families from losing their homes -- or jobs due to their companies moving to other countries. Pick a leader who will fund schools, not limit spending on education and allow libraries to close. Pick a leader who chooses diplomacy over war. An honest broker in foreign relations. A leader with integrity, one who says what they mean, keeps their word and does not lie to their people. Pick a leader who is strong and confident, yet humble. Intelligent, but not sly. A leader who encourages diversity, not racism. One who understands the needs of the farmer, the teacher, the doctor, and the environmentalist -- not only the banker, the oil tycoon, the weapons developer, or the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyist.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“When the solution to a given problem doesn’t lay right before our eyes, it is easy to assume that no solution exists. But history has shown again and again that such assumptions are wrong. This is not to say the world is perfect. Nor that all progress is always good. Even widespread societal gains inevitably produce losses for some people. That’s why the economist Joseph Schumpeter referred to capitalism as “creative destruction.” But humankind has a great capacity for finding technological solutions to seemingly intractable problems, and this will likely be the case for global warming. It isn’t that the problem isn’t potentially large. It’s just that human ingenuity—when given proper incentives—is bound to be larger. Even more encouraging, technological fixes are often far simpler, and therefore cheaper, than the doomsayers could have imagined. Indeed, in the final chapter of this book we’ll meet a band of renegade engineers who have developed not one but three global-warming fixes, any of which could be bought for less than the annual sales tally of all the Thoroughbred horses at Keeneland auction house in Kentucky.”
― Steven D. Levitt, SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes And Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance

“Are people innately altruistic?" is the wrong kind of question to ask. People are people, and they respond to incentives. They can nearly always be manipulated--for good or ill--if only you find the right levers.”
― Levitt & Dubner, SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes And Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance

“When only the present is incentivized, the impact on the future tends to be ignored.”
― Roger Spitz, The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume II - Essential Frameworks for Disruption and Uncertainty

“With limited accountability, misaligned incentives, and lagging legislation, today’s governance systems and structures do not align with the sustainability of humanity or the planet that hosts us.”
― Roger Spitz, The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume IV - Disruption as a Springboard to Value Creation

“The only way of life satisfying the need of all times must be motivated by incentives and rewards – materially, morally and spiritually because motivation for work is produced by incentives and rewards only, an aspect built into the fundamental specification of human nature itself. Any prescription not recognising this important aspect of life is bound to fail in the life-styles of human beings.”
― Mohammed Ali Muhiyaddin, A Comparative Study of the Religions of Today

“The key to classroom behavior management is to have a structured system in place whereby good behaviors are actively and abundantly rewarded, and bad behaviors are promptly and efficiently punished. Rewards should be like the air, ever present and always lingering. Punishment should be like a thunderstorm that is obvious and inconvenient yet quick, temporary and not abusive. The predominant theme of classroom management should be good behaviors and continuous rewards.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr

“Good management has a lot to do with incentives and decentives. It's about making sure the company has systems in place that incentivize desired behaviors and decentivize undesirable behavior.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“Can the CEO of a pharmaceutical company prioritize opioid addiction as a top concern if they are making a profit from opioids?”
― Kat Lahr, What the U.S. Healthcare System Doesn't Want You to Know, Why, and How You Can Do Something About It

“While the existing practitioners in a given field may be adequately (or even excessively) rewarded for their performance level, there may nevertheless be a case to be made for raising salaries in a particular field, in order to attract a higher caliber of person, capable of a higher level of performance, than the current norm in that field. This argument might be made for school teachers but it applies even more so to politicians and judges. Yet people who are preoccupied with merit are highly susceptible to demagogues who denounce the idea of paying politicians, for example, more money that they clearly do not deserve, in view of their current dismal performances. To get beyond this demagoguery requires getting beyond the idea of considering pay solely from the standpoint of retrospective reward for merit and seeing it from the standpoint of prospective incentives for better performances from new people.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice

“Nearly all large healthcare organizations make their top executives extremely rich, a perverse incentive to profit off the sick.”
― Kat Lahr, What the U.S. Healthcare System Doesn't Want You to Know, Why, and How You Can Do Something About It

“Godliness must be presented with its profit and incentives, not only for the good of the nation and society, but of eternal value.”
― Sunday Adelaja, The Mountain of Ignorance

“Economics, when you strip away the guff and mathematical sophistry, is largely about incentives.”
― John Cassidy, How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities

“When government services are driven by high ideals- like selfless service,nationalism, rather than by practical considerations, like incentives for performance and punishment for non-performance the officers tend to become more corrupt. Most people work hard when their hard work is recognised and adequately compensated. When there is no legally allowed performance incentive, often that extra compensation comes in the form of bribe in such a government organisation, which alone motivates people to work more.”
― Awdhesh Singh, Myths are Real, Reality is a Myth

“As men, we live for sensual incentives. Everything else has to revolve around that.”
― Lebo Grand

“Without sensuality, a relationship is merely a matter of duty.”
― Lebo Grand

“Can specialty physicians prioritize preventative health, physicals, and early screenings if they are doctors for people who are sick?”
― Kat Lahr, What the U.S. Healthcare System Doesn't Want You to Know, Why, and How You Can Do Something About It

“Managers who want to expand their domain at the expense of owners might better consider a career in government.”
― Warren Buffett, The Essays of Warren Buffett : Lessons for Corporate America

“The communists operated on the assumption that once capitalism and its attendant economic abuses were eliminated, and once social production was communalized and people were afforded some decent measure of security and prosperity, they would contentedly do their fair share of work. That often proved not so.”
― Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

“La religion est un moyen efficace de modifier la structure des jeux de ce type. [...] Dieu est peut-être encore plus efficace qu'un gouvernement à cet égard, puisque son omniscience et omnipotence apportent une garantie très forte que les mauvaises actions vaudront des sanctions sévères à leurs auteurs. Dieu est le parrain absolu”
― Brian Chistian, Tom Griffiths

“Incentive structures work, so you have to be very careful of what you incent people to do, because various incentive structures create all sorts of consequences that you can’t anticipate.”
― Steve Jobs

“The best incentives in the life of a person involved in sales can be offering valuable products and solving end user problems.

No bonus can replace that. Remember that.”
― Ankit Samrat

“The kibbutz experience suggests that income equality does not come for free. What you gain in a safety net, you lose in individual incentives; but if you raise incentives, inequality follows.”
― Ran Abramitzky, The Mystery of the Kibbutz: Egalitarian Principles in a Capitalist World

“The man who does not feel the slightest remorse when poisoning his customers with noxious drugs covered with pompous labels, thinks he is in honour bound to keep his engagements. But if this relative morality has developed under present conditions, when enrichment is the only incentive and the only aim, can we doubt its rapid progress when appropriation of the fruits of others' labour will no longer be the basis of society?”
― Pyotr Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread and Other Writings

“You know it is good music when what you listen to spurs you on to create something.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Night of a Thousand Thoughts

“It is interesting how the advocates of social inequality think that the wealthy respond to quite different incentives from the poor. If the rich are to be persuaded to work, they require the stimulus of still greater wealth: hence the paramount importance of reducing taxes on high incomes. When dealing with the poor, in contrast, it is held that there is nothing like the prospect of still greater poverty as a work incentive: hence the paramount importance of strictly limiting the benefits to which they are entitled.”
― Paul Cockshott, Towards a New Socialism

“In gathering data from more than five hundred people about their experience on more than one thousand teams, I have found a consistent
reality: When there is a serious lack of clarity about what the team stands for and what their goals and roles are, people experience confusion, stress, and frustration. When there is a high level of clarity, on the other hand, people thrive.

When there is a lack of clarity, people waste time and energy on the trivial many. When they have sufficient levels of clarity, they are capable of greater breakthroughs and innovations—greater than people even
realize they ought to have—in those areas that are truly vital. In my work, I have noticed two common patterns that typically emerge when
teams lack clarity of purpose.

PATTERN 1: PLAYING POLITICS

In the first pattern, the team becomes overly focused on winning the attention of the manager. The problem is, when people don’t know what the end game is, they are unclear about how to win, and as a result they
make up their own game and their own rules as they vie for the manager’s favor. Instead of focusing their time and energies on making a
high level of contribution, they put all their effort into games like attempting to look better than their peers, demonstrating their self-importance, and echoing their manager’s every idea or sentiment. These kinds of activities are not only nonessential but damaging and
counterproductive.”
― Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

“The behaviors you incentivize are the ones you get.”
― Brian Reese