The Hoover Giveaway Fallacy
Jun. 15th, 2020 01:32 pmThis is a type of bad thinking that I've noticed a lot, and have complained about before; but people find it helpful when you give things names, so I'm giving this one.
The Hoover Giveaway Fallacy is that the rate of people doing a thing will not change when the incentive to do that thing increases. It often takes the form of "Sure, my proposed policy would incentivize doing certain bad things, but hardly anybody does those bad things, so who cares?"
I'm naming this after the infamous Hoover free flights promotion. Originally, as a promotion, Hoover offered free airplane tickets within Europe to people who bought a vacuum cleaner costing £100 or more. People often didn't claim or use the tickets though. Then they expanded the promotion to include tickets to the US -- this is horrifically expensive in comparison, and they'd lose money when people actually used it, but hardly anybody actually used the tickets, right? Except, they did, because they had more reason to, and Hoover lost a lot of money on it.
So, next time you see someone on the internet making this argument, remind them of what happened to the Hoover company!
(Note of course that making this argument doesn't mean the proposed policy is a bad one; a bad argument does not imply a wrong conclusion. But bad arguments are important to point out.)
The Hoover Giveaway Fallacy is that the rate of people doing a thing will not change when the incentive to do that thing increases. It often takes the form of "Sure, my proposed policy would incentivize doing certain bad things, but hardly anybody does those bad things, so who cares?"
I'm naming this after the infamous Hoover free flights promotion. Originally, as a promotion, Hoover offered free airplane tickets within Europe to people who bought a vacuum cleaner costing £100 or more. People often didn't claim or use the tickets though. Then they expanded the promotion to include tickets to the US -- this is horrifically expensive in comparison, and they'd lose money when people actually used it, but hardly anybody actually used the tickets, right? Except, they did, because they had more reason to, and Hoover lost a lot of money on it.
So, next time you see someone on the internet making this argument, remind them of what happened to the Hoover company!
(Note of course that making this argument doesn't mean the proposed policy is a bad one; a bad argument does not imply a wrong conclusion. But bad arguments are important to point out.)
