Beyond what we can do in our personal lives, however, is what we can do when we’re in positions to influence policy or help reform institutions. This is where an understanding of the elephant really starts to pay off. Maybe most laypeople don’t need to understand their hidden motives, but those who make policy probably should. A common problem plagues people who try to design institutions without accounting for hidden motives. First they identify the key goals that the institution “should” achieve. Then they search for a design that best achieves these goals, given all the constraints that the
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