alt Hacker News> There is a general problem with rewarding people for the volume of stuff they create, rather than the quality. If you incentivize researchers to publish papers, individuals will find ways to game the system,
I heard someone say something similar about the “homeless industrial complex” on a podcast recently. I think it was San Francisco that pays NGOs funds for homeless aid based on how many homeless people they serve. So the incentive is to keep as many homeless around as possible, for as long as possible.
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It's a metric attribution problem. The real metric should be reduction in homeless, for example (though even that can be gamed through bussing them out, etc-- tactics that unfortunately other cities have adopted). But attributing that to a single NGO is tough.
Ditto for views, etc. Really what you care about as eg; youtube is conversions for the products that are advertised. Not impressions. But there's an attribution problem there.
Yeah, it is totally NGO that creates homelessness /s
I don't really buy it. Are we to believe they go out of their way to keep people homeless? Does the same logic apply to doctors keeping people sick?