I'm reading a book called Freakonomics. Just barely into it, but one of the behaviors it discussed hit home for me. A day care had a problem with parents arriving late. So they decided to enact a penalty system to charge tardy parents (this was years ago, I know it is quite common now). They charged $3 any time the parent was late.
Guess what happened? Incidences of lateness increased! Because the presence of the penalty removed the moral stricute to arrive on time, and the penalty wasn't large enough to hurt. Not to mention it didn't distinguish between 5 minutes late and 1 hour late.
The thing is, I have independently thought of a very comparable example, close to home. Our library does not charge a late fee. But I have noted I wish it did. Because the standard $0.25 per day fee is still a pretty cheap price to rent a book, if you think about it that way. For instance, if I need another 10 days to finish a book---well, that's only $2.50, which is way cheaper than buying it. And I knew I would feel less guilty if they charged that quarter a day!
11:19:54 PM 
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