#robertkmerton — Public Fediverse posts

@kensanata
An alternative is the traditional "chinese doctor payment model": you pay the doctor when you're well, the doctor's incentive is to keep you well, and to restore your health at minimal cost and time.

Keep in mind that this can still be a market-based mechanism. What's changed, though, is the notion of what specificially the good or service being sought is, where the value lies, and what constitutes cost.

Though it might also be considered a state (or other collective) interest, and that the healthcare sector is delivering a service (a healthy and capable population) to the community as a whole.

(Education and other social services might be similarly considered, though here, education as a service to employers in delivering a capable workforce is another interpretation --- not without its own set of implications.)

#RobertKMerton #Hygiene #CovertFunctions #ManifestFunctions #TechOntology

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@kensanata
Because of numerous aspects of market function, we tend to compensate based on service or product delivery rather than based on achieved results. There's also a challenge in measuring or assessing hygiene interventions, simply because they're long-term, indirect, and in general covert rather than manifest.

The sociologist Robert K. Merton came up with (or substantially developed) the notions of manifest & covert functions as well as intended and unintended consequences. He makes a strong argument that covert functions are conceptually more significant knowledge simply by fact that they're less evident or obvious.

#TechOntology #ManifestFunctions #CovertFunctions #Hygiene #RobertKMerton

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@baldur Information asymmetries arise where one party to a transaction has more information than the other. Or, more often, each party has information unknown to the other, though in different areas.

This means that a key assumption of free and competitive markets is violated: equal access to information. One party is advantaged over the other. In at least part. The topic has been a fairly hot area of research since the 1950s, notably by Kenneth Arrow and George Akerloff (#MarketForLemons).

Information frictions affect both parties, and affect current awareness of long-term outcomes. The issue here is that neither side has a clear view of the ultimate benefit, or cost, of some decision.

This is fundamental to the intersection of economics and technology, because all technologies, as means to some ends, have multiple dimensions:

• Effects: positive and/or negative
• Timeframe: short and/or long
• Manifestation: high and/or low

"Manifestation" is a term I'm using to indicate how apparent an outcome is, near-equivalent terms are "latent vs. manifest funtions" (#RobertKMerton), "overt vs. covert", or "cognizability". A manifest outcome is one clearly perceived, a non-manifest outcome is one poorly perceived. Or understood, communicated, detected, etc.

#capitalism #InformationAsymmetry #InformationFriction

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