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> I heard a story from a friend in South Africa that their town had legalized the hunting of endangered rhinoceroses. This sounds like a shockingly bad idea. [...] There are more examples like this. [...] Sex education reduces incidences of teen pregnancy.

After initially being confused, this reminded me that there are still people who consider sex education to be a "shockingly bad idea". And that made me sad...



Why is that a clever idea? If you can make the landowners pay a fee when a rhino gets killed on their land, why not just make them pay a fine instead? But, it's South Africa so the thinking there seems a little muddled recently.


Might be human nature.

Fee. People will pay huge 'fees' for some feature or access, or privilege.

Fine. People will riot in the streets if the exact same value was applied as a fine or a tax. 'what a huge fine, that is totally un-fair'.

A fee makes it seem like a choice.

A fine, everyone is mad, even people that it wont ever apply too.


Plus, a fee has an element of conspicuous consumption to it, where people are proud to pay the fee (if they value the thing), and will simply avoid it if they don't care about the thing.




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