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by daurnimator
4242 days ago
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> They should be paid using tax money based on how well they're doing their actual job So.... if the police do a bad job; and crime is rife; we get rid of the police department?
Or conversely, if there is no crime, we give more and more money to the police? |
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I read your basic point as, "Sure, we all like to use incentives to encourage good behavior, but there are some special cases where incentives completely backfire. In general, feedback systems arise in public services, especially where funding is correlated with or necessary for performance.
e.g., If a middle of the road school starts to falter, you don't strip away all its funding and expect it to start churning out well rounded prodigies. No, you have to roll up your sleeves and do the hard work of figuring out, "ok, what broke down? Is this a morale issue, something with leadership/management, is the cohort of students a bad outlier, did materials quality decline?" Recovery might take more funds, not less.
Other public services would see similar results. A struggling fire department shouldn't lose its trucks. A police department that can't effectively deter or arrest criminals needs a little more work than just being driven into bankruptcy.
To panic's point, maybe there are other ways to incentivize good behavior. The fruit of the poisonous tree and miranda both operate on the premise that when the cops misbehave, criminals go free.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_warning
For civil asset forfeiture it's trickier, because there's not any criminal when police are doing their job poorly. You almost have to fine them, unless maybe you're willing to release some random offender from prison every time the police cross the line? :)
I'm with you, insofar as your point was just, "There aren't simple solutions here, it's a difficult issue."