The Cobra Effect.

Cue

The dashboard, the payout line climbing month on month. The programme reports success, more units removed than ever, while out on the street the cobras are visibly more, not fewer. At the audit, someone starts to trace where the proof is coming from.

Action

Reporting: The Scoreboard, holding the reporter's seat, shows the rising bounties and calls the rise progress. Detection: The Noticer at the auditor's seat follows the supply, and finds the farm behind the proof.

Stage

The Scoreboard tables Report the Payout: present the metric as the problem shrinking, and the booming metric swears success in the language of the token. The Noticer tables Follow the Supply: ask where the cobras come from, and reads the backfire, payments up and the problem up with them.

Tension

The metric is not lying. Every unit it counts was real and every payment was earned, so the graph looks exactly like victory, and the seat that reads the token drowns out the seat that walked the street. The noticer sees the two lines diverging early and is answered by the boom, so the farming grows undeniable slowly, one honest record at a time, while the dashboard reports the failure as a win.

Cue

The podium, a real problem named and a fair reward announced. There are too many cobras in the city, and the harm is genuine and hard to count, so a price is set on the one thing that can be counted: a dead one, brought in as proof.

Action

Incentivising: The Well-Meaner, holding the sponsor's seat, sets a bounty per unit removed, in good faith, to draw the supply down.

Stage

The Well-Meaner tables Set the Bounty: put a fair price on a dead cobra, and the bounty goes live, a price on a token that stands in for the goal. Behind it sits the real problem: the cobras in the street, wanted gone, and impossible to pay for directly, so the token is paid for instead.

Tension

Nothing here is careless. The problem is real, paying for outcomes is sound, and a per-unit reward is the obvious clean design. But the goal cannot be counted and the token can, and worse, the token can be made, so the price meant to draw the supply down is, to anyone who can breed the thing, an open offer to supply it. The trap is set the moment the reward is aimed at the token instead of the outcome.

Cue

The farm, where the reward meets someone who can supply it. The bounty is live, and breeding a cobra to kill for the price turns out to cost less than hunting a wild one. At the bounty office the till is open and asks no questions.

Action

Farming: The Breeder, holding the farmer's seat, rears cobras as a crop, each one a route from the reward to a pocket. Payout: The Teller at the paymaster's seat pays on proof it cannot question, a dead cobra being a dead cobra at the counter.

Stage

The Breeder tables Farm the Bounty: make the unit rather than hunt it, and the farmed unit is born to be a bounty. The Teller tables Pay on Proof: reward every proof brought in, and the manufactured supply grows in the exact shape of the price.

Tension

Nobody is cheating. The breeder is farming, responding to the price as offered, and the till is paying honestly on real proof. But rewarding the removal of a thing is, to anyone who can produce it, a reward for producing it, so the supply is manufactured instead of drawn down, and every payout funds the next unit bred. The reward is working perfectly, and it is making more of what it pays to remove.

Cue

The street, the farming undeniable and the bounty about to be pulled. The scheme is exposed as a farm, the sensible correction is obvious, and the correction is the trigger: end the reward, and the stock it created is suddenly worth nothing.

Action

Release: The Repealer, holding the comptroller's seat, pulls the bounty to stop the waste, and the breeding sheds, holding cobras now worth nothing, are emptied into the city.

Stage

The Repealer tables Pull the Bounty: end the reward at last, and the dumped stock is loosed, the whole manufactured supply set free the hour its price dies. The Snakebit at the resident's seat tables Live With the Surplus: inherit a city with more cobras than before any of it began, and the cobra effect stands revealed, a reward that bred the problem it paid to remove.

Tension

Nobody cheated, and the fix made it worse. The sponsor meant well, the farmer was rational, the till was honest, and pulling the bounty was the right call, and pulling it strands the supply the bounty created, which has to go somewhere, and goes into the street. The reckoning is not a swindle exposed, it is a price correcting after it has already summoned the harm ... or a new bounty is set on the new surplus, and the farm reopens under a fresh name.

Tenor

Purposeful, fair, results-driven. There is a real problem, and a clear reward for anyone who helps solve it, paid on proof. The voice of a programme that pays for outcomes, spoken by people who mean well and pay honestly.

Undertow

Under the fairness, a price on a token. The reward is paid per unit removed, and a unit removed can be a unit first made, so the price quietly becomes an offer to produce. The payouts never stop climbing: they only climb because the thing being paid for is now being farmed.

Nerve

The feeling of a scheme working perfectly, the numbers up, the bounties flowing, the proof in hand, while the streets fill with more of exactly what it was meant to clear.

Echo

After the run: a bounty cancelled and a surplus loosed, a problem worse than the one that started it, and a ledger in which every payment was honest and every snake was real.

Projection

Enterprising. Rational. Works the price on offer. Sees a rate posted and does the arithmetic. No malice in it: only supply meeting demand.

Action

Rears the unit as a crop. Making beats hunting: steadier yield, lower cost. Breeds to the bounty and delivers the proof.

Shadow

Not a cheat, a farmer: it responds to the incentive exactly as designed. Every unit it breeds is one that would not exist but for the reward. Rational supply, meeting an offered price.

Tell

Says "the price is good, so I'll make them." Does, honestly.

Projection

Careful. Sceptical. Walks the street instead of the dashboard. Trusts what the ground shows over what the ledger claims. Asks where the supply is actually coming from.

Action

Follows the supply. Finds the farm behind the proof. Traces the token back to the shed that grew it.

Shadow

The seat that sees the two lines diverging early: payments up and cobras up. It is answered by the boom, the very numbers it doubts. Being right first is not enough to be heard until the farming is undeniable.

Tell

Says "where are these coming from?" To a room reading the dashboard.

Projection

Decisive. Prudent. Stops the waste the moment it is proven. Will not keep paying for a lie once the lie is clear. Cuts the loss cleanly.

Action

Pulls the bounty once the farming is exposed. Ends the reward, ends the payments. Closes the market with a signature.

Shadow

The right call that is also the trigger. Ending the reward strands the manufactured stock: worthless now, and turned loose. The sane fix is what makes the day the city is most overrun.

Tell

Says "we're shutting this down." The sheds empty into the street.

Projection

Proud. Data-driven. Shows the numbers to anyone who asks. The line goes up, and up reads like winning. Every month a bigger figure to be proud of.

Action

Reports the rising payouts. Calls the rise progress. More removed, more paid, more to celebrate.

Shadow

It measures the token and not the goal. So it swears success in the exact language of the failure. The louder its good news, the deeper the farm it is really counting.

Tell

Says "removals up again this month." Up is the farm.

Projection

Plain. Unlucky. Lives where the scheme ran. Never sponsored it, never farmed it, never called the numbers good. Just here when the sheds opened.

Action

Inherits a city with more cobras than before any of it began. Walks the same street, now thick with the surplus. Carries what the reward left behind.

Shadow

Not a hero, just the one left standing in the result. It never set a price or bred a unit and carries the whole perverse sum. A surplus that outlives the scheme that made it.

Tell

Says "there are more of them now than when they started." There are.

Projection

Honest. Procedural. Pays exactly what is owed. No favor, no skim, no delay. The proof comes in, the money goes out.

Action

Pays on proof it cannot question. A dead cobra is a dead cobra. The till sees a token, matches the rate, settles the claim.

Shadow

The till cannot tell a wild pest from a farmed one. Its honesty is the farm's cash register. Paying straight on real proof is exactly what funds the manufactured supply.

Tell

Says "proof in, payment out, no questions." No question is the whole problem.

Projection

Earnest. Public-spirited. Sees a real problem and moves to fix it. Wants the streets safer, the count lower, the harm drawn down. Good faith, all the way through.

Action

Sets a fair bounty: so much per unit removed. A price meant to pull the supply toward zero. Pay for the removal, and the removals will come.

Shadow

It priced the token because the goal itself could not be counted. A price on a producible token is an offer to produce it. The good intent aimed at the countable proxy is what opens the farm.

Tell

Says "we'll pay for results," and means outcomes. Buys tokens.

Shown

The street set beside the ledger, one against the other. A quiet desk where the two counts refuse to agree.

Holds

The divergence, payments up and problem up together. The proof that the reward fed what it swore to starve.

Offers

The truth of the supply, traced back to its shed. A finding plain enough to end the boom on paper.

Withheld

A hearing, while the boom is loud and the line still climbs. The pause needed before the loud thing is believed.

Shown

The till, open, a clerk who counts and pays. Proof laid on the counter, coin slid back across it.

Holds

The payout, made on sight, no questions past the tally. A rule so fair it cannot see the hand that feeds it.

Offers

Fair reward for valid claims, every time, without favour. The dignity of a promise kept to the letter.

Withheld

Any way to tell a farmed unit from a wild one. The single question that would break the whole machine.

Shown

The payout line, up and to the right, glowing. A room that reads the curve and calls it progress.

Holds

The booming metric, the token counted and recounted. A number rising fast enough to hush every doubt.

Offers

The shape of success, plotted, framed, presentable. A story the chart tells better than the street ever could.

Withheld

The goal, which the token stands in for and moves against. The gap where climbing here means losing there.

Shown

The breeding sheds, warm, rows deep, well kept. The crop reared for reward, tended like any harvest.

Holds

The manufactured supply, growing to meet the price. Stock that answers the bounty and nothing else.

Offers

Income from making what is priced, steady and lawful. A trade like any other, where demand was published.

Withheld

The wild pest the bounty meant to clear. The distance between what is bred here and what was feared out there.

Shown

A real problem named, from the rostrum, in daylight. A reward announced, a number attached, a promise of results.

Holds

The bounty, a price nailed to a token. The certainty that paying for the sign will move the thing.

Offers

The look of results-based policy, clean and countable. A public good, purchased by the head.

Withheld

Any way to pay for the goal instead of its proxy. The reason the two will part the moment money touches one.

Shown

The city the scheme ran on, the ground under the numbers. The place where every clever curve finally lands.

Holds

The real problem, and then the dumped stock atop it. Two piles now, the one feared and the one bred.

Offers

The plain count anyone can see, no ledger required. A tally that walking gives for free.

Withheld

Any undoing of the surplus once it is loosed. The way back, closed the moment the sheds emptied.

Place

Across the whole programme, the two lines pulling apart under the same hand. The payouts rising on the dashboard, the cobras rising on the street, both driven by the one bounty that was meant to make the second fall.

Load bearing

Without it the play is a scheme that under-delivered and cost some money. With it it is a scheme that ran in reverse: the Backfire is the reward turning back on its own goal, the mechanism by which spending more to solve the problem produces more of the problem, so effort and harm rise together and the harder the programme pushes the worse it does. It travels one way, because every bounty paid finances the next unit bred, so the loop tightens with use: success on the metric is failure in the world, and the two diverge exactly as fast as the money flows.

Apparent

A programme gaining momentum. Read on the dashboard it looks like acceleration toward the goal, the reward working harder every month. The momentum is real. It is pointed the wrong way, and the dashboard is built to read that as speed toward, not speed away.

Yearbook

Driven by the manufactured supply, unread until the release. It carries the programme from a fix to a factory, the payout line and the problem line climbing together the whole way, and it is not seen as a backfire while the money flows, only named as one on the day the bounty stops and the dumped stock shows how much of the problem the reward had been keeping alive.

Place

On the dashboard, a line going up and to the right. The count of units removed and rewards paid: the programme's headline number, higher every month, exactly the shape success is supposed to have.

Load bearing

Without it the farming would show as a cost with no story, and someone might ask sooner. With it the farming shows as triumph, because the Booming Metric measures the token, not the goal, and the token is booming precisely because it is being manufactured: the same breeding that worsens the real problem is what drives the payout line up, so the graph that looks most like victory is the direct readout of the failure. It is not falsified. Every unit was real and every payment earned. It simply counts the wrong thing, and counts it beautifully.

Apparent

Success, measured. It looks like proof the programme works: more removed each month, the reward clearly motivating action. The motivation is real. What it is motivating is production, and the metric cannot tell the difference between a pest cleared and a pest created and cleared.

Yearbook

Reported by the scoreboard, who shows the payouts and calls them progress. It is the false witness of the play: it rises with the farmed unit and swears the problem is shrinking, so the louder the success it reports, the deeper the farm it is really measuring, and it drowns out the noticer with its own good news.

Place

Announced from the podium, a fixed price per dead cobra. The clean, fair instrument: bring in the proof, collect the reward, no questions about where it came from.

Load bearing

Without it there is only a problem and no lever, and the play has no engine. With it there is a price on a token, and a price on a token is an offer to supply it: the Bounty pays for a unit removed, and never asks whether that unit was in the city yesterday or bred this morning, because it cannot tell and was not built to. It is not a bad idea, it is a precise one, aimed at the countable proxy for the goal, and precision aimed at a proxy is exactly what a farm needs to sell into.

Apparent

A fair reward for real work. It looks like results-based policy at its cleanest: pay for the outcome, let anyone earn it, no bureaucracy. Paying for outcomes is sound. Paying for the token that stands in for the outcome is where the door opens.

Yearbook

Set by the well-meaner, who priced the token because the goal could not be counted. It is the instrument the whole play turns on: a reward pointed at the real problem through a proxy anyone can produce, so the better it pays, the more worth making the proxy becomes, and the price meant to draw the supply down is the price that calls it into being.

Place

The gap between the reward and its goal. On one side, a bounty paid honestly for every unit removed. On the other, a city with more of the unit than before the bounty existed. The Cobra Effect is the standing distance between what was rewarded and what resulted, and the certainty that the reward widened it.

Load bearing

Without it the play is a run of honest payments and one policy that did not work. With it those are one object: an incentive that produced the exact thing it paid to remove, held whole by nobody, because the seat that set the price never met the farm, the seat that ran the farm never set the price, and no seat was ever answerable for the distance between the token and the goal. It is the perverse incentive complete: not a reward that failed, a reward that reversed, funding its own defeat one honest payout at a time.

Apparent

A well-run programme. From every seat inside it, the scheme is working: the sponsor set a fair price, the office paid on real proof, the farmer earned honestly, the metric rose. The trap is invisible from within because there is no cheat to find, only a price on a token that could be made, and everyone doing exactly what the price invited.

Yearbook

The programme built it in good faith: the bounty set, the farmed unit raised, the booming metric reported, the manufactured supply grown. The repealer ended it and, ending it, loosed the surplus and made it worse, proving the whole shape at once: the reward had been breeding the problem all along. Nobody had a name for the scheme while the payouts climbed ... until the day the streets were fuller than when it began.

Place

Released onto the street, the moment the bounty is pulled. The breeding sheds emptied: cobras worth money yesterday and nothing today, let go rather than fed, straight into the city they were bred beside.

Load bearing

Without it the cancellation would simply end the programme and cut the losses. With it the cancellation is the worst moment of all, because the Dumped Stock is what the manufactured supply becomes when its price hits zero: an inventory of the exact harm the programme fought, now valueless, and cheaper to release than to keep. So the fix does not just fail, it leaves a residue larger than the original problem, and the day the incentive is corrected is the day the city is most overrun, because everything bred for the reward is set free at once.

Apparent

The end of a failed scheme. Pulling the bounty looks like the responsible correction, the moment sanity returns. It is the correction, and it is also the trigger: stopping the reward strands the supply the reward created, and the supply has to go somewhere.

Yearbook

Loosed by the breeder the hour the price dies, inherited by the snakebit. It is the sting in the tail of the play: the programme is judged by whether it left the problem better or worse, and it left it worse, because the reckoning that ended the farm also emptied it into the street, and the surplus outlives the scheme that made it.

Place

On the farm, bred, raised, and killed on schedule. The cobra born to be a bounty: reared not as a pest but as a crop, its whole existence a route from the reward to a pocket.

Load bearing

Without it the bounty only draws down the wild supply and might even work. With it the bounty grows the supply, because the Farmed Unit is cheaper to make than to hunt: rearing a cobra to claim its bounty costs less effort than tracking a wild one, so a rational earner breeds rather than hunts, and every unit farmed is a unit that would not have existed but for the reward. It is indistinguishable at the counter from a wild one, identical proof, identical payout, which is precisely why it works: the till cannot tell a pest from a product.

Apparent

A dead pest, same as any other. At the bounty office it looks like exactly what the programme wanted: one fewer cobra, proof in hand. It is one fewer cobra and two more in the breeding shed, and nothing on the proof says so.

Yearbook

Raised by the breeder, who is not cheating but farming, responding to the price as offered. It is the perverse output at the heart of the play: the reward for removing the thing becomes a reason to make the thing, so the manufactured supply grows in the exact shape of the incentive, one bred cobra per bounty, forever, as long as making beats hunting.

Place

Between the farm and the bounty office, a stock that exists only because the reward does. The population of cobras that would not be alive but for the price on their deaths: a supply summoned by its own demand.

Load bearing

Without it the play is a reward that merely fails to work. With it the reward does worse than fail, it reverses, because the Manufactured Supply is the mechanism that makes the cure a cause: a bounty on removal is, to anyone who can produce the thing, a standing offer to produce it, so the reward does not find the problem and shrink it, it prices the problem and grows it. This is the line that separates the cobra effect from a merely gamed metric: the target is not just miscounted, it is manufactured, brought into the world by the incentive meant to clear it.

Apparent

Demand being met. It looks like the market responding to a price, which is what a good incentive is supposed to cause. The response is real and rational. The thing it is supplying is the very harm the price was meant to end.

Yearbook

Grown by the breeder, priced by the bounty, unseen by the booming metric. It is the engine of the backfire: every reward paid funds the next unit made, so the programme buys its own worsening, and the stock keeps growing for exactly as long as the price stays up, waiting for the day it comes down.

Place

Out on the street, the thing everyone can see and no one can count exactly. The cobras in the city, the harm to be lessened: real, urgent, and impossible to measure directly, which is why a countable proxy was rewarded in its place.

Load bearing

Without it there is no goal, and the bounty is a reward for nothing. With it there is a goal that cannot be seen whole: the Real Problem is what everyone actually wants reduced, and the very reason a proxy was needed, because you cannot pay per cobra-not-in-the-city, only per cobra-handed-in. The gap between the goal and the token is where the whole play lives: the token can be manufactured and the goal cannot be faked, so the reward flows to the token and the goal is left to move on its own, which, under a breeding incentive, is the wrong way.

Apparent

The thing being solved. From the podium it looks like the target of the programme, and it is, in intent. The trouble is that it is never what the money touches: the money touches the token, and the goal only benefits if the token and the goal happen to move together, which the bounty ensures they do not.

Yearbook

Named by the well-meaner, and lived with by the snakebit. It is the quiet centre of the play: everyone is working on it, talking about it, funding its reduction, and nobody's reward is actually tied to it, because it could not be counted, so the booming metric rises in its name while it, unmeasured, gets worse.

Has

The street and the ledger, and the eye to compare them. The payouts climbing on paper, the harm climbing on the ground.

Orders

Check the programme. Follow the supply, not the count. Say what the two lines mean, early, while the price still holds.

Loses

The argument to the boom, early and often. The number is winning; the warning is not. Being right is not the same as being heard.

Drives

Toward the truth of the supply. Unheard until too late. By the time the boom concedes the point, the surplus is already made.

Has

The authority to end the programme. The pen that pulls the bounty and closes the till.

Orders

Stop the waste. Pull the reward, once the farm is undeniable. End the payout that funds the thing it pays to remove.

Loses

Control of the stock the reward created, the moment the price dies. What was worth keeping while it paid is worth nothing when it stops. The surplus was held only by the bounty; cut the bounty and it is loosed.

Drives

Toward a sane correction. That looses the surplus it corrects. The fix ends the paying and releases the farm onto the street.

Has

The means to produce the unit, and a price to sell it at. A reward posted per unit removed reads as a price per unit made.

Orders

Earn the reward. Breed the unit, kill it, hand it in. Answer the price rationally, since the price is the whole instruction.

Loses

Nothing; it supplies exactly what is priced. No rule is broken; the market is only obeyed. The seat that never cheats is the seat that does the harm.

Drives

Toward income. By making what the bounty buys. The reward set to end the thing becomes the reason to grow it.

Has

The till and the rule to pay on proof. A dead unit in hand, and coin to hand back.

Orders

Reward every valid claim. Check the proof, not the origin. Pay honestly, and fast, so honest hunters keep coming.

Loses

Any way to tell a farmed unit from a wild one. The proof is real; the story behind it is not asked. Honesty at the window funds dishonesty upstream.

Drives

Toward honest payment. Which honestly funds the farm. Every clean payout is a bred unit made worth breeding.

Has

The payout data and the headline to make of it. Units handed in, bounties paid, a number that climbs.

Orders

Report progress. Publish the count, plainly, as the problem coming down. Let the rising line stand for the falling harm.

Loses

The goal, measured only through its token. The token climbs, so the story says the harm falls. The one number reported is the one number the farm produces.

Drives

Toward a rising number. Which is the farm rising. Every record payout reads as a win and reports a loss.

Has

The city the scheme was run on. The streets where the reward met the ground.

Orders

Live there. Walk the same streets, before and after the fix. Bear the outcome the programme leaves behind.

Loses

The streets, to a surplus none of it was theirs to make. The farm bred here, and the release lands here. The bill for the fix is paid by the ones who never set the price.

Drives

Toward a solved problem. And inherits a worse one. The bounty ends, the surplus is loosed, and the harm is left larger than it found.

Has

The mandate and the budget to fix a real problem. The good faith to spend both on it.

Orders

Reduce the harm. Reward the result, per unit removed. Pay for outcomes, plainly, so the plain incentive can work.

Loses

The goal to its proxy, priced because it could not be counted. What was rewarded was the token, not the thing. The design that would have worked was the one never chosen.

Drives

Toward fewer of the thing. Through a reward that buys more of it. Every unit paid for is a unit worth making.

Initiated by

A street fuller than the numbers say it should be. The eye that trusts the ground over the graph.

Direction

The ledger traced to the farm, claim followed to its shed. The line walked back from payout to breeding.

Lever

The walk against the dashboard, what you see against what you count. Feet on the street outvoting the curve on the wall.

Echo

An alarm drowned by the boom, until undeniable. The finding that must grow loud enough to beat the number.

Initiated by

A price worth supplying, posted where anyone can read it. The plain sum where breeding beats searching.

Direction

The unit made, not hunted, on schedule and at scale. Production pointed straight at the counter's open door.

Lever

Making against hunting, breed cheaper than track. The market picks the cheaper path every single time.

Echo

A supply that exists only because the reward does. Stock with no reason to be, save the coin that calls for it.

Initiated by

A real problem and a countable proxy standing beside it. The wish to buy an outcome through the thing it leaves behind.

Direction

A price onto the token, fixed and public. Reward flowing toward the sign, not the state it signals.

Lever

Outcome against token, pay for what you can count. The count is cheap, so the count is what gets paid.

Echo

An offer to produce the thing you meant to remove. A demand curve raised for the very pest in question.

Initiated by

Proof at the counter, a claim laid down for coin. A rule that reads the token and reaches for the till.

Direction

Reward out on sight, fast and even. Money moving from office to hand the moment proof appears.

Lever

Honesty against origin, pay the proof and do not ask its source. The one unasked question that keeps the queue moving.

Echo

The farm's cash register, run straight. A lawful till turned, quietly, into the buyer of its own supply.

Initiated by

The bounty pulled, the price struck from the board. The moment the reward dies and the stock loses its buyer.

Direction

The stranded stock into the street, worthless and alive. Sheds emptied outward the instant the coin stops.

Lever

Correction against residue, stop the price and loose the supply. Ending the scheme cannot end what the scheme already bred.

Echo

A problem left larger than the one it began with. The cure become the surplus, loosed and past recall.

Initiated by

A rising payout line, ready to be read aloud. The urge to show motion as if motion were the aim.

Direction

The token shown as the goal, the proxy dressed as the prize. The chart carried upward to the room that funds it.

Lever

Metric against reality, count what pays not what matters. What is easy to count becomes what is said to count.

Echo

Failure reported as success, in confident ink. The louder the boom, the harder the loss is to hear.

Direction

Make the unit rather than hunt it. Hunting is scarce and hard. Breeding is cheap and endless. Follow the money to the shed.

Orders

(The Breeder does the concrete move: raises the token as stock, harvests it, carries proof to the counter.)

Implementation

(The Farm; the Farming process; a clause of friction: a bred unit and a caught unit read identical at the window.)

Targets

• [ ] breeding beats hunting on cost
• [ ] units are reared as a crop
• [ ] each is proof at the counter
• [ ] the supply is manufactured, not drawn down

Direction

Ask where the proof comes from. The street looks the same, yet the ledger swells. Two numbers that should fall together are pulling apart.

Orders

(The Noticer does the concrete move: counts the street, reads the ledger, marks the gap.)

Implementation

(The Audit; the Detection process; a clause of friction: the seat sees the truth early and holds no lever to act on it.)

Targets

• [ ] the street and the ledger are compared
• [ ] the divergence is seen early
• [ ] the boom answers the alarm
• [ ] the farming grows undeniable slowly, one record at a time

Direction

Inherit whatever the scheme leaves. The reward is gone, the stock is not. The city keeps the crop that the price bred.

Orders

(The Snakebit does the concrete move: opens the door to the freed stock, counts the loss, calls for a fix.)

Implementation

(The Street; the Release process; a clause of friction: the cure for the surplus is another bounty, and the loop begins again.)

Targets

• [ ] the sheds are emptied
• [ ] the city fills with the freed stock
• [ ] the problem is worse than before
• [ ] a new bounty is set on the new surplus

Direction

Reward every valid claim on sight of proof. Count the token. Open the till. Move to the next in line.

Orders

(The Teller does the concrete move: inspects the proof, matches the fee, pays it out.)

Implementation

(The Bounty Office; the Payout process; a clause of friction: proof is honored, never traced, so origin goes unasked.)

Targets

• [ ] proof is presented
• [ ] payment is made
• [ ] no question is asked of its origin
• [ ] the till funds the farm honestly

Direction

End the reward to stop the waste. The scheme funds a farm, not a cure. Close the till and the sheds lose their price.

Orders

(The Repealer does the concrete move: exposes the breeding, cancels the fee, shuts the window.)

Implementation

(The Street; the Release process; a clause of friction: worthless stock has no buyer, so it is simply let go.)

Targets

• [ ] the farming is exposed
• [ ] the bounty is cancelled
• [ ] the manufactured stock is stranded
• [ ] it is loosed into the street

Direction

Present the rising bounties as progress. More paid means more removed. Let the climbing line stand for a shrinking harm.

Orders

(The Scoreboard does the concrete move: totals the payouts, frames them as wins, publishes the curve.)

Implementation

(The Dashboard; the Reporting process; a clause of friction: the metric counts tokens paid, never harm left standing.)

Targets

• [ ] the payout line climbs
• [ ] it is shown as the problem shrinking
• [ ] the token is counted as the goal
• [ ] success is reported in the shape of the failure

Direction

Price the removal of the harm, in good faith. Name the danger in the street. Post a fair fee for each one taken away.

Orders

(The Well-Meaner does the concrete move: names the plague, sets a number, opens the offer.)

Implementation

(The Podium; the Incentivising process; a clause of friction: the price rewards the token, not the outcome behind it.)

Targets

• [ ] a real problem is named
• [ ] a fair price is set per unit
• [ ] the price lands on a producible token
• [ ] the reward becomes an offer to supply it