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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   33391 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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Some day care centers had a problem with parents picking up their children late (i.e., they were supposed to be all picked up by 6pm or whatever so that the center could close at that time). In order to try to fix the problem, they implemented a late pickup fee. People follow incentives and will then do a better job of picking up their children, right? Whelp, the result was that the number of late pickups went up.

I've heard that story before and I always feel like it's being subtly misinterpreted. The original source for that anecdote is this paper and the fee was 10 NIS in 1998. Converting from Israeli shekels to USD and then adjusting for inflation, that's a $5 fee.

I would argue that this isn't so much "inserting money changes the culture", it's that putting a fee on something is a signal of how much you want to discourage it, and a fee of $5 is sending a very clear signal that you don't really mind all that much. You would get the same effect if you signalled "I only care about this as much as a cup of coffee" by any other non-monetary means.

Right. If an increase in parents picking up children late is a problem, you're not charging enough. If you charge the right price, either parents will pick their kids up on time, or you'll make enough money from the late fee that you don't care.

I don't think those two interpretations are at odds. Like I had said, "parents apparently valued not being rude (in the prior regime) more than paying the fee (in the current regime) more than picking up their kids on time". Such a relation can be changed by jacking up the amount of the fee, past the amount of value parents get from picking up their kids late. That's not really the important one of the two relations. The important one of the two relations is the one that involves the cultural value - that people didn't pick their kids up late when the monetary cost was $0. Attempting to signal that picking up kids late is bad, but doing so poorly and actually signalling that picking up kids late isn't nearly as bad as you thought it was actually does change the culture around picking up your kids.

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