The Royal Physician

A king hired a physician and paid him a generous salary to keep the royal family healthy.

The physician realized something troubling about his incentives. If the family stayed healthy, his skill was invisible — anyone could seem like a good doctor when patients aren’t sick. But when someone fell ill, his dramatic cures earned praise and gratitude.

Prevention was thankless. Treatment was heroic.

The physician was honest and fought these incentives. But a neighboring kingdom’s physician was not. That physician subtly allowed minor ailments to develop, then cured them spectacularly.

The honest physician was eventually dismissed for seeming unnecessary. The dishonest one was celebrated as indispensable.