My ECONS102 class covered unintended consequences this week. So, this story from YLE in Finland last month seemed very timely:
The population of the invasive Spanish slug (Arion vulgaris) has exploded in Finland, prompting four cities to offer six euros per litre for dead slugs.
Known as a highly destructive garden pest and even nicknamed the "killer slug" following reports of it preying on bird chicks, this species thrives in wet summers, with each individual capable of laying hundreds of eggs.
To combat infestations this summer, the cities of Lappeenranta, Turku, Kerava and Jämsä are encouraging locals to get the Crowdsorsa app, which allows residents to earn money by helping remove invasive species...
Getting a payout requires a few more steps. To earn a reward, slug killers must film a video showing the slugs being packed into one-litre containers (like milk cartons) sealed with tape and disposed of in designated bins.
The final step is uploading a video of the packing and disposal process to the Crowdsorsa app, and if everything is done correctly, the payment gets credited to the user's account.
These sort of bounty programmes have a habit of backfiring, though. The emblematic example of this is a story I wrote about back in 2015:
The government was concerned about the number of snakes running wild (er... slithering wild) in the streets of Delhi. So, they struck on a plan to rid the city of snakes. By paying a bounty for every cobra killed, the ordinary people would kill the cobras and the rampant snakes would be less of a problem. And so it proved. Except, some enterprising locals realised that it was pretty dangerous to catch and kill wild cobras, and a lot safer and more profitable to simply breed their own cobras and kill their more docile ones to claim the bounty. Naturally, the government eventually became aware of this practice, and stopped paying the bounty. The local cobra breeders, now without a reason to keep their cobras, released them. Which made the problem of wild cobras even worse.
So, how long will it be before an enterprising Finn realises that they can make money by breeding these Spanish slugs? Particularly since:
Hunting down the slugs is not always easy, and the pest can be confused with the homegrown Limax cinereoniger, or ash-black slug.
They would be much easier to hunt down if you are farming them yourself! And, when you are farming the right type of slug, there's no risk of confusing them with a local slug. It would be so much easier to claim the bounty that way, than by fossicking around hunting wild slugs. How long will it be before the Finns work this out?
[HT: Marginal Revolution]
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