Contemporary · Systems & Incentives · Model

Cobra Effect

Horst Siebert · 2001

"A well-intended incentive can produce exactly what it was meant to prevent."

The idea

The British in colonial Delhi paid a bounty for dead cobras to reduce cobra populations. People started breeding cobras. When the government cancelled the program, the breeders released their now-worthless snakes — and the cobra population increased. The name stuck.

Why it works

The takeaway — recall it first

The French Garden and the English Garden

"New systems are usually built like French formal gardens — a geometry imposed from above that flattens whatever was already there — when they could instead be built like English landscape gardens, which study the existing terrain and work with what's already load-bearing."

Will Manidis · EssayContinue→