This probably depends heavily on whether people are capturing all the benefit of the good they do.
If Bob inflicts $100 of harm to do $1000 of good, and Bob was rewarded by $1000 for the good he did, taking $100 of that away for the bad seems reasonable. If he was not rewarded for the good he did, punishing him for the bad seems very strange.
It makes a difference whether punishment is zero-sum or negative-sum. If we can’t take $100 from Bob to give to someone else but can only impose $100 of cost on him to no one’s benefit, we’d rather not do that.
In that case I think the answer is to forego the punishment if you’re sufficiently confident the harm is an inevitable result of a net-good decision.
Agreed. It seems the right move should be to estimate the current net externalities (bearing in mind incentives to hide/publicise the negative/positive), and reward/punish in proportion to that.
This probably depends heavily on whether people are capturing all the benefit of the good they do.
If Bob inflicts $100 of harm to do $1000 of good, and Bob was rewarded by $1000 for the good he did, taking $100 of that away for the bad seems reasonable. If he was not rewarded for the good he did, punishing him for the bad seems very strange.
It makes a difference whether punishment is zero-sum or negative-sum. If we can’t take $100 from Bob to give to someone else but can only impose $100 of cost on him to no one’s benefit, we’d rather not do that.
In that case I think the answer is to forego the punishment if you’re sufficiently confident the harm is an inevitable result of a net-good decision.
Agreed. It seems the right move should be to estimate the current net externalities (bearing in mind incentives to hide/publicise the negative/positive), and reward/punish in proportion to that.