Taylor's second principle is that economic policy must be designed around how people actually respond to incentives, not how policymakers wish they would respond. High tax rates create incentives to avoid taxes. Subsidies for specific industries create incentives to lobby for subsidies rather than to build competitive products. Price controls create shortages because they make production unprofitable. These are not failures of morality — they are predictable rational responses to the incentive structures that policy creates. For a builder in Nigeria: this principle operates at every scale. The incentive structures in your team determine what behaviours you actually get, regardless of what your values statement says. The incentive structures in your market determine what products succeed. Understanding what incentives are actually in play — rather than what you intend — is the starting point for designing systems that produce the behaviour you want.