Saturday, March 22, 2008

The Accountability Dodge

Economist Gary Becker has some interesting thoughts on efforts to avoid accountability. An excerpt:

Successful attempts to shift the responsibility for bad decisions toward others and to society more generally create a "moral hazard" in behavior. If individuals are not held accountable for decisions and actions that harm themselves or others, they have less incentive to act responsibly in the first place since they will escape some or all of the bad consequences of their actions.

2 comments:

Scott D. McArthur said...

Don't you just h8 people who do that. For goodness sake tell the truth, say the truth and live the truth!

Michael Wade said...

Scott,

It can be very hard to do but the alternative can be so much harder.