'“People do bad things because they are encouraged and rewarded for doing bad things.” Well, why else would you do them?'
Since the author seems genuinely baffled, the answer is "because they are just bad people". They're bad people, nothing we can do will fix that they are bad people, it's so their fault, so there's no need to consider incentive structures or anything like that. They're just going to have to be better people and the things providing bad incentives have no fault or responsibility for the bad behavior and/or bad outcomes.
The sad and ugly truth is that there's is a certain amount of that in play in the real world. However if I could only pick one of the two extremes, "it's all incentives" works be the more productive one. It's not the whole truth but I do think it is substantially closer than the other extreme.
Since the author seems genuinely baffled, the answer is "because they are just bad people". They're bad people, nothing we can do will fix that they are bad people, it's so their fault, so there's no need to consider incentive structures or anything like that. They're just going to have to be better people and the things providing bad incentives have no fault or responsibility for the bad behavior and/or bad outcomes.
The sad and ugly truth is that there's is a certain amount of that in play in the real world. However if I could only pick one of the two extremes, "it's all incentives" works be the more productive one. It's not the whole truth but I do think it is substantially closer than the other extreme.