The Response Vector: Why Interventions Route Through the Cheapest Channel

A policy does not get the response it wants. It gets the response its architecture makes cheapest. This episode introduces the response vector: a way to see why taxes, regulations, KPIs, carbon offsets, healthcare targets, and AI safety evaluations often produce gaming, burden-shifting, or capacity loss instead of the intended outcome.We walk through four response channels: target response, base loss, formal gaming, and incidence shifting. The same structure explains Laffer debates, Goodhart failures, carbon-offset over-crediting, hospital waiting-time targets, and why passing an AI safety eval may be weak evidence of real alignment unless the gaming channels are hardened.A mechanism-realist episode about mis-routed pressure, adaptive agents, and why good interventions are designed by shaping the available response channels.https://kunnas.com/articles/response-vector