|
> Penny Problem Gap: Economists assume demand is linear, but people’s behavior totally changes once an action costs money. If the inventors of the Internet had known about it, spam wouldn’t be such a problem. If sending an email cost you $0.001, there’d be way less spam. Freakonomics argues it can have the opposite effect, of "licensing" undesired behavior by those who can afford to pay the cost. Something to think about when it comes to carbon credits, etc.. Here's an idea which will hopefully change someone's life: If you take the best parts of in silico computing and the best parts of synthetic biology, you can make transformative hybrid devices much faster than trying to make just making tinier and tinier computers or smarter and smarter cells. Example: Mimee, M., N. Nadeau, T. J. Hayward, S. Carim, C. A. Flanagan, J. Jerger, S. Collins, T. R. McDonnell, R. N. Swartwout, W. C. Citorik, S. H. Bulovic, R. Langer, and G. Traverso. 2018. An ingestible bacterial-electronic system to monitor gastrointestinal health. Science 360: 915-918. doi: 10.1126/science.aas9315. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6430580/ |
They were sick of parents showing up late to pick their kids up so they instituted a penalty of $x for every minute a parent was late. More parents ended up being late because they felt less guilty knowing they could just pay the penalty. The social pressure to be on time was replaced by a financial one.