Looking at and thinking about the human universe in terms of people’s intentions is a fool’s errand. Intentions are essentially mysterious—they occur inside people’s heads and are only available to inspection through what people say and do. In the end, what matters most to the rest of us is not the “why” of how people act but the effect of their actions on the rest of us. And the best way to change outcomes in the real world is not to change people’s intentions—make them “less selfish,” for instance—but to change the conditions under which they make their choices to act. Incentives, not intentions, are the dominant determinant of human behavior.
In our day to day lives the intentions of others take on significance—we often judge the individual actions of our friends and neighbors based at least partly on what we believe they were thinking at the time. But when you are talking policy and politics—about the behavior of vast numbers of people whose intentions and expectations are necessarily opaque to the rest of us—it is far more reliable to think about the incentives we are creating to achieve or discourage a given outcome.
Bono and U2 chose to move their publishing business when Ireland changed its laws in a way that would substantially increase their tax burden. It’s no surprise they did so—and even if they hadn’t, it was entirely predictable that some substantial number of similar actors would do so. Ireland made it more expensive to be an Ireland-based artist, and artists responded by changing their behavior. Decrying the “selfishness” and “hypocrisy” of the artists who did so is about as useful as complaining about the effects of gravity on our ability to flap our arms and fly.
It may be satisfying for a moment to smile at Bono’s apparent hypocrisy in having his business moved to Holland for tax purposes, but conservatives should resist the urge. Bono is doing exactly what free-market economists would predict. We should embrace his example to demonstrate to the economically illiterate the importance of having the right tax structures and incentives to ensure economic growth.
Oh, and that Nobel Peace Prize Bono was nominated for in 2005? It went to Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank, which pioneered the idea of extending micro-loans to individuals in poorer countries to help them start their own business. Yunus has done more to alleviate real poverty in the third world than any foreign aid program ever could. How? Yunus and the Grameen Bank have harnessed the power of the market to help individuals lift themselves out of poverty and build their own wealth--an important lesson on the power of incentives in the real world.