Randall Holcombe is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, and DeVoe Moore Professor of Economics at Florida State University. In the past He has also served as President of the Public Choice Society, President of the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics and as a member of the Florida Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors as well as a number of academic roles.

He’s written many books, the most recent of which is Liberty in Peril: Democracy and Power in American History, which was published last September.

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I saw a little

story from Chicago during the week. Not something that’s going to make

headline news, but it’s interesting. It comes from a City Council budget

hearing submission by Library Commissioner Andrea Telli. I told you, this isn’t

headline news.

But it is interesting. What the Chicago

public libraries did was abolish fines for the late return of books. You know the

sort of thing, you get two weeks to read the book, but if you don’t bring it

back in time, you have to pay a dime or whatever for every extra day. The theory

is that people will be more likely to bring back their books on time if they

have to pay a fine for them being late.

 Well,

Chicago said, forget it, bring us back the books when you can, no worries.

What happened? The return rate soared by

240 per cent. That goes against what you might expect, why would so many more people

bring back their books when the penalty is removed? There’s a couple of

reasons.

First, these fines are comparatively tiny,

and they were only ever likely to be enforced when someone came into the

library, probably to return the books, so to a degree they were more of a

deterrent than an encouragement to bring the books back.

But secondly, human motivations aren’t as

simple as that. People often do things for people, not because they have a

financial motivation,