Incentives: Rhinos, Cobras, and What Drives People

September 29, 2026

This week we looked at incentives. The big takeaway: incentives drive all action.

What is an incentive?

An incentive is anything that encourages a particular action. Because incentives deal with human behavior, they aren't a perfect science. Sometimes they work in ways nobody planned. We looked at two examples.

Rhinos in Namibia and Kenya

Black rhinos in both Namibia and Kenya were declining fast and getting close to extinction. The two countries tried very different approaches.

Kenya banned hunting completely, with strict fines or even jail if you got caught.
Namibia allowed hunting, but only with a very expensive permit, and only for old male rhinos. It also gave local communities rights over the rhinos on their land.

After the change, Namibia's rhino population took off. Kenya's eventually came back, but much more slowly.

Everyone made predictions about why, and here's what we found. Kenya couldn't really enforce its ban because it didn't have enough police resources. And local people had no reason to keep the rhinos around. All the rhinos did was trample crops and hurt people. In Namibia, communities had a real financial reason to keep rhinos alive, because they could sell the few hunting permits. The incentive lined up with the people who were actually involved.

We also talked about how it's hard to blame poachers in either country. Many of them are poor, and putting food on the table matters more to them than a rhino. It's important to keep their perspective in mind.

Cobras in colonial India

As the story goes, there were too many cobras in Delhi under British rule, so the British government offered a reward to anyone who brought in a dead cobra. Instead of fewer cobras, people started breeding them to collect the reward. When the government found out and canceled the program, the breeders let their cobras go. Delhi ended up with more cobras than when it started. This is sometimes called the "cobra effect."

Not all incentives are money

Some incentives are emotional. You might run a race just for bragging rights.
People don't always respond to incentives rationally. Some people gamble even though they'll probably lose, because the chance of winning feels worth it.

Why it matters

Any solution needs the right incentives, or it won't work. That's important for any compromise, and it's what makes a resolution in committee actually work.