Who Benefits: An Incentive Case Study

An incentive map for one machine, naming who profits from its worst behaviour and what evidence supports the claim

Due: 9 April 2027 · Weight: 30%

The brief#

Pick one machine’s worst habit, and show who is paid, protected, or made more efficient by it staying that way.

This is the semester’s recurring question, made into a single piece of work: not “is this bad,” but “who benefits when it stays bad.” A convincing incentive map names a specific party — an operator, a franchise holder, a vendor’s contract terms — and backs the claim with something more than intuition: a fee schedule, a maintenance pattern, a support policy, a contract clause if you can find one.

What you submit#

Two parts:

1. The incentive map — one page, diagram or structured prose, your choice of form. It names the machine, the worst behaviour, and the party who benefits from it staying that way. A diagram labels every node and arrow; structured prose is laid out so a reader can find claim, evidence, and counter-argument at a glance.
2. The written case (600–900 words) — states the claim, lays out the evidence for it (a fee schedule, a maintenance pattern, a support policy, a contract clause — something a reader could go check themselves), and closes by naming the strongest argument against your own claim and why it doesn’t overturn it.

The map and the case have to agree with each other: the map is not a decorative summary of an argument that only actually gets made in the prose.