Breed You A Snake

Song Background/Inspiration

Centuries ago, a colonial government tried to solve its cobra problem by paying a bounty for dead snakes - so people started breeding cobras to cash in, and when the bounty ended they set the snakes loose, leaving the city worse off than before. Breed You A Snake tells that old fable and then tells it again, almost note for note, in the present day: a company puts up a leaderboard rewarding AI usage, developers burn through the budget gaming the metric, and the numbers look spectacular while nothing real gets done. It is a song about perverse incentives - the iron law that the moment you reward a measure instead of the thing itself, people will hand you exactly what you asked for and nothing you actually wanted. Pay a bounty for the body, and they will breed you a snake.