"Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome."
— Charlie Munger
Show Me The Incentive And I
Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.
About this quote
Munger delivered this observation repeatedly at Berkshire Hathaway annual meetings alongside Warren Buffett, using it to explain a wide range of institutional failures — from corporate fraud to government mismanagement. He considered incentive structures the single most powerful force in human behavior, drawing on economics, psychology, and evolutionary biology to argue that people reliably do what they are rewarded for, regardless of stated intentions or explicit rules.
Source
Attributed, from Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting remarks