Han Feizi
Don't build a system that needs good people
Make the right move the cheap one
Han Feizi, Eminent Learning; The Five Vermin
A system that only runs when people are conscientious hasn't started working yet. How to design rules that don't need it.
What actually happened?
Han Feizi puts it coldly: I do not count on people being good to me; I make it so they cannot do wrong. He offers an arithmetic. Wait for arrow shafts that straighten themselves and in a hundred generations you get no arrows; wait for wood that rounds itself and in a thousand you get no wheels. Yet everyone has arrows and wheels, because someone invented the jig that straightens them. His conclusion: government cannot wait for sages. It builds tools.
Conscientiousness is scarce and can't be the foundation
Depending on people to be conscientious stakes the system's stability on its least controllable variable. His alternative is the jig — the tool that straightens timber. Rules don't exist to improve people. They exist so that ordinary people produce acceptable results.
'Everyone please follow the style guide' won't converge in ten years. A linter converges it in a day. Not conscience — tooling.
Make the right road the least effortful one
The practical version of 'make it so they cannot do wrong' is to build the non-compliant road so it costs more than the compliant one. If going round the process is faster than going through it, no amount of exhortation matters. People are choosing the cheaper path.
Expenses take five steps and three signatures, and paying yourself back later takes one. Somebody will pay themselves back later.
Don't design for the rare case
The commonest misuse is constraining everyone to stop one or two. Han Feizi is describing universal tools, not patches aimed at individuals. The cost of a rule is borne by everybody and the benefit accrues against a few. That ledger rarely balances.
One faked claim, so now every claim needs three photos. The faker adapts; several hundred people lose two hours a month.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: the same class of problem keeps recurring and you've raised it many times.
Ask first: is the right road currently more effort than the wrong one?
Where it goes wrong: substituting announcements for tools; making everyone pay a cost in order to block a handful.
Lines to keep
I do not count on people being good. I make wrong impossible.
Wait for arrows that straighten themselves and you get no arrows.
Rules don't make people better. They make ordinary work acceptable.