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Friday, November 09, 2012

I Make a Bold Prediction

I am confident that South Africa is about to get a lesson in how incentives work in the real world with real people (and real rats).

Alexandra, South Africa has too many rats and many people who have little money. Killing two birds with one stone, the South African township government has a simple solution:

As it was in medieval Hamelin, so it is today in the South African township of Alexandra: wherever you go, you are never far from a rat.

But residents of the Johannesburg suburb have been offered a deal unavailable in the era of the Pied Piper – a free mobile phone for every resident who catches 60 of the rodents.

Let me go out on a limb and predict that if this bounty system lasts any time at all, that people will find it far more cost effective to raise rats in captivity rather than go to the effort to catch wild rats.

What a deal!