The Incentives Are Wrong

The Incentives Are Wrong

When a system rewards a salesperson for making sales on a commission basis, the temptation is for the salesperson to manipulate, gaslight, lie, deceive and obfuscate to make the sale.

When a system rewards the CEO for profit margins, the temptation is for the CEO to squeeze out everything, get the workers’ wages down to rock bottom, cut corners, anything, to get that profit margin.

When a system allows a politician to be privately funded, the politician is no longer serving the people. They serve the funders and their interests.

The incentives are wrong. In all three cases. Not necessarily bad people. Bad design.

Most of us have experienced sales manipulation and obfuscation. We have all been affected by politicians owned by corporate or state interests. And many of us have worked inside the squeezed margins of corporate profit demand.

Scale these incentives, and our precious Earth and collective future are past the collapse point because of corporate profit margins and the infinite growth demands of capitalism.

We must design incentive structures that deliver both the behaviour we want and a future fit for all. Where moral clarity and all-in accounting are in service to the increased well-being of all of life.

To truly design all-life supporting incentive structures, we need to understand the Syntropic Principle of Precession, from Buckminster Fuller’s work – the action of bodies in motion causes a reaction at 90 degrees.

What is the precession, and is it the outcome we want?

Published September 22nd 2026. Photo taken September 22nd 2026

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