# Antivirus Paradox (Perverse incentive)

{ Thanks to an anon who informed me about the correct name of this phenomenon <3 ~drummyfish }

Antivirus paradox (also *perverse incentive* or *cobra effect*) is the paradox of someone who's job it is to eliminate certain undesirable phenomenon actually having an interest in keeping this phenomenon existing so as to keep his [job](work.md). A typical example is an [antivirus](antivirus.md) company having an interest in the existence of dangerous [viruses](virus.md) and [malware](malware.md) so as to keep their business running; in fact antivirus companies themselves secretly create and release viruses and malware. The name cobra effect comes from a story in which government started to pay rewards for dead cobras in order to eliminate their numbers, which resulted in people actually breeding cobras to make more [money](money.md).

Cases of said behavior are common, e.g. the bind-torture-kill serial killer used to work as a seller of home security alarms who installed alarms for people who were afraid of being invaded by the bind-torture-killer, and then used his knowledge of the alarms to break into the houses -- a typical capitalist business. It is also a known phenomenon that many firefighters are passionate arsonists because society simply praises them for [fighting](fight_culture.md) fires (as opposed to rewarding them for the lack of fires).

In [capitalism](capitalism.md) and similar systems requiring people to have jobs this paradox prevents [progress](progress.md), that is to say actual elimination of undesirable phenomena, hence capitalism and similar systems are anti-progress. And not only that, the system pressures people to artificially creating new undesirable phenomena (like a "lack of [women](woman.md) in tech" and similar [bullshit](bs.md)) just to create new [bullshit jobs](bs_job.md) that "[fight](fight_culture.md)" this phenomena. In a truly good society where people are not required to have jobs and in which people aim to eliminate [work](work.md) this paradox largely disappears.

## See Also

- [anticompany](anticompany.md)