Overview
In the excerpts, “incentives” is treated less as a technical term of art than as a general theory of human behavior with direct application to law and policy. Bob Zadek states the premise plainly: everybody responds to incentives, which he calls as core to human nature as anything can be, and people who are paid to do something are more likely to do it Cops Are No Better Than Criminals (2011). The same premise recurs in a discussion of poverty programs, where Zadek says all rational humans respond in a predictable manner to incentives, whether the incentive is provided privately in a relationship or by government Libertarian Anti-Poverty Policy (2019). In a later episode he frames the concept as one of three core economic principles, alongside cost and marginalism, that he asks his guest to explain for listeners The Economist’s View of the World (2022).
The recurring corollary in these episodes is that the actors are not the problem. Mike Riggs says the police officers are not bad people; legislators created the laws Cops Are No Better Than Criminals (2011). Joel Engel says most prosecutors and most cops are terrific, and locates the distortion in a system that rewards convictions and cash rather than justice [[episodes/joel_engel_on__scorched_worth__a_true_story_of_des|Joel Engel on Scorched Worth: A True Story of Destruction, Deceit, and Government Corruption, 6/3 (2018)]]. Zadek makes the point with a hypothetical about a meter maid paid a percentage of the tickets she writes Cops Are No Better Than Criminals (2011).
Civil asset forfeiture and policing for profit
The most developed treatment of incentives in the excerpts concerns civil asset forfeiture. Riggs describes a cycle in which legislators beefed up forfeiture laws, police departments and federal agencies started making a lot of money off them, and law enforcement groups then lobbied to make the laws more expansive Cops Are No Better Than Criminals (2011). He contrasts civil forfeiture with criminal forfeiture, where conviction is required and property can be taken only if it was used or gained as a result of the crime; under civil forfeiture, he says, a claim that property was used in the commission of a crime suffices, which he characterizes as punishing someone without ever trying them and as a circumvention of due process.
Zadek identifies two levers. The first is the standard of proof: criminal cases require clear and convincing evidence, while civil forfeiture requires only a preponderance of the evidence, and he argues that raising the civil standard to the criminal standard would make most of the abuses go away. The second is the profit motive — he calls for eliminating what the Institute for Justice calls policing for profit, and objects to a system that pays cops directly for finding property used in the commission of a crime Cops Are No Better Than Criminals (2011).
The episode also supplies a concrete illustration of how forfeiture reaches third parties. Zadek, describing his day job in commercial lending, recounts a Miami bank client that had given a first mortgage on a residence the federal government was confiscating; the government told the bank it would lose the mortgage, and when the bank asked what it had done wrong, the feds said it knew or should have known the borrower was a drug dealer, citing a cash down payment and the borrower’s Colombian citizenship as red flags. The bank lost the house, and Zadek says the lesson was that the bank had better not make a loan if somebody pays the down payment in cash, and better not make a loan to Colombians Cops Are No Better Than Criminals (2011).
On reform, Riggs says the two sides are changing incentives for law enforcement agencies and pressuring legislators, and that the most effective immediate step is raising awareness by pointing to civil asset forfeiture as theft Cops Are No Better Than Criminals (2011).
Prosecutors, judges and the justice system
Engel’s account of the justice system parallels the forfeiture discussion. He says that in criminal courts and in civil cost recovery units, promotions do not come from doing justice but from bringing in convictions and/or cash, depending on what is appropriate, and that relying on people’s consciences is a very slim thread on which to base the entire criminal justice system. He adds that a capable defense attorney matters enormously, because the power of the state is very difficult to fight otherwise [[episodes/joel_engel_on__scorched_worth__a_true_story_of_des|Joel Engel on Scorched Worth: A True Story of Destruction, Deceit, and Government Corruption, 6/3 (2018)]].
Zadek generalizes from this to the incentive facing a trial assistant U.S. attorney: paid for wins, he or she will do whatever they can to win, when the incentive should be to do justice — but, he says, there is no money in doing justice and only money in getting wins at whatever cost. He concludes that the incentive and the system deserve as much or more criticism than the actors who respond to them [[episodes/joel_engel_on__scorched_worth__a_true_story_of_des|Joel Engel on Scorched Worth: A True Story of Destruction, Deceit, and Government Corruption, 6/3 (2018)]].
The same episode raises judicial engagement. Zadek notes that Judge Nichols threw the case out at the state level while the federal court was reluctant to go forward, and that the Ninth Circuit took the other approach; he describes judges as the only barrier and protection available, and calls for an engaged judiciary rather than one that rubber-stamps behavior because the bad actor is the government [[episodes/joel_engel_on__scorched_worth__a_true_story_of_des|Joel Engel on Scorched Worth: A True Story of Destruction, Deceit, and Government Corruption, 6/3 (2018)]].
Welfare and marginal tax rates
Michael Tanner applies the concept to anti-poverty programs. He notes that Washington worries about high marginal tax rates because they discourage investment, entrepreneurship and work, but argues that the highest marginal tax rates in America are not on the rich — they fall on somebody who leaves welfare and starts a job. Payroll taxes begin on the first dollar earned, welfare benefits are lost as soon as a dollar is earned outside the system, and going to work brings childcare, transportation and clothing expenses, so a person can end up worse off financially by taking the job than by staying on welfare. Tanner’s conclusion is that the existing welfare programs create the wrong incentives Libertarian Anti-Poverty Policy (2019).
Zadek restates the mechanism: if the marginal tax rate — the tax on the very next dollar earned — is too high, the incentive is not to earn it, or to earn it off the books in the underground economy, and the welfare system operates in effect like such a tax Libertarian Anti-Poverty Policy (2019).
Socialism, property and consumer variety
Ben Powell offers a comparative case from Cuba. He describes a natural experiment: private restaurants operate alongside state-owned restaurants, and the private ones converge on the same dozen to 18 items prepared basically the same ways because of how they obtain ingredients through the Cuban supply chain, producing sameness and blandness. He contrasts this with Little Havana in Florida, where Cuban cuisine is delicious and highly varied, and summarizes: take the same Cubans, give them a socialist economic system, and you’ve got a crappy ham and cheese sandwich Socialism… Still Not Cool (2019).
Powell extends the comparison to hotels. Because the hotels are government-owned, they do not make a profit by having guests stay, and managers have no incentive to serve guests better; he describes shattered balcony glass, missing ceiling tiles, a morning without hot water, holes in a towel, the previous guest’s soap left in the holder, and a toilet seat not bolted to the toilet. By contrast, casas particulares — apartments rented out for private profit — are well-kept, punctual and wonderful at the same or lower price, which he attributes to the residual claimant’s profit incentive. He likens the state-owned version to having the DMV run your whole economy Socialism… Still Not Cool (2019).
Zadek frames the same material as the absence of incentives in a socialist system — the incentive to give people what they want — and as an entirely different incentive system that sucks the energy out of the economy Socialism… Still Not Cool (2019).
Opportunity cost, marginalism and public spending
Steven E. Rhoads treats incentives as one of three concepts, with cost and marginalism, that he explains for listeners The Economist’s View of the World (2022). His illustrations of opportunity cost are everyday ones: a shopper who finds steak expensive and buys hamburger instead, and the gap between the share of the public that says insurance companies should cover every person with a disability or medical problem and the smaller share that still says so when taxes go up. He notes that in a public context, with one person out of hundreds of millions, it is easy to forget opportunity cost.
His marginalism example is rumble strips: putting them where traffic was heaviest saves lives, but extending them to every country road would cost an enormous amount of money, and additional expenditures will not get as much benefit because the greatest problems were addressed first. He also describes the economist at the dedication of a new recreation center as the sourpuss who notes that the same money could have gone to education for the poor, or to basketball courts, or been left for the public to decide The Economist’s View of the World (2022).
Across episodes
The excerpts show the same question argued across episodes without a change in position: Riggs in 2011 and Engel in 2018 both locate the distortion in what the system rewards rather than in the character of officials, and Zadek states the underlying premise in both episodes and again in 2019 Cops Are No Better Than Criminals (2011) [[episodes/joel_engel_on__scorched_worth__a_true_story_of_des|Joel Engel on Scorched Worth: A True Story of Destruction, Deceit, and Government Corruption, 6/3 (2018)]] Libertarian Anti-Poverty Policy (2019). The 2018 omnibus-bill episode touches the topic through structural incentives such as “spend it or lose it” policies, but the excerpt is a summary rather than a transcript and supplies no development of the argument Cheap Hawks; Not Cheap Talk (2018).
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the outcome of the Miami bank matter beyond the loss of the house, nor the disposition of the case against Anthony Smelley, who is named only in passing. They do not give the text, scope or legislative history of the Hyde Amendment beyond Zadek’s description of it as 2000 legislation affecting federal law only, nor the Institute for Justice survey’s methodology beyond its A-through-F grades and the finding that 47 of 50 states were rated D or F. The 2018 omnibus episode survives only as a topic summary, so its treatment of regular order, sequester and zero-based budgeting cannot be attributed to any speaker. Rhoads’s discussion of economic incentives breaks off at the section heading, so only his treatments of opportunity cost and marginalism appear here.