Common good is best achieved through rewards, not punishment

[Acrylicist]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=common-good-is-best-achieved-throug-2009-09-03

Interesting studies that bode well for the social credit ideas where
public funding by communities are rewarded by making them "cheaper" to
fund (within a limit) than "pork" projects where only a few special
interests would benefit. The foundation of the social credit system
will rely on continuous feedback from the community instead of the
current system that encourages empty political gestures and dirty-
tricks for re-elections regardless of performance.

From the Article:

To promote the common good, should helpers be rewarded, or should free
riders be punished? Although the bulk of previous research has
fingered punishment as the best enforcer, a new study published online
today in Science found that rewards are more effective.

"Groups that used rewards got significantly higher payoffs than groups
that punished," David Rand, a lead study author and postdoctoral
researcher at Harvard University's Program for Evolutionary Dynamics,
said in a Science podcast.

He and his team used a classic public goods game to study how groups
of volunteers encouraged the best outcome for the most people. In a
series of monetary interactions, individuals decided how much money to
contribute to a common pot, and they could then decide whether to
reward good contributors or punish bad—both of which would entail
spending money.

Previous public goods studies had focused on one-time interactions and
found that people were more likely to swindle or punish others. But in
situations where interactions were repeated, people found greater
success in reward-based structures—in which those that contributed
were rewarded and those who didn't were ignored—than those in which
costly punishment was doled out to those who didn't contribute.