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A Priori
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Post #6111
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Posted: Thu 2004-09-16 01:13
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| Politics: Libertarian-Socialist |
Country: American Empire |
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| Game Theory and Experimental Economics |
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Al Roth's Homepage
Examples of Social Dilemmas
Some of these are questionable, to say the least, but they are interesting nonetheless.
| Some Libertarian jackass wrote: |
Elections
There is some cost to you in voting. While it may be small for some, it is significant for others. Some people go to a great deal of effort just to vote. What return do they get for this effort? Zilch! A single vote can only impact an election when there is a tie, which has essentially zero chance of happening in a state or national election. The typical response to this is "Well, what if everyone did that?" Of course, that would be a disaster. But we are not talking about everyone, we are talking about ONE individual.
Any activity, if "everyone does it", is likely to have a major impact on society. The next time you buy or sell a few shares of stock, consider "What if everyone does it?". What if everyone flushed the commode at the same time you do? Etc.
But like the Prisoner's Dilemma, if you do "cooperate" by voting and everyone else does, society as a whole is greatly benefited. On the other hand if everyone declines to vote -- which rationally they should -- we have a disaster. Yet each individual has a greater reward by not voting! That is the paradox.
Fisheries
Fisheries, particular those part of the earth's oceans, are an excellent example of the "Tragedy of the Commons". As a fisherman, it is certainly in my personal best interest to keep on fishing even though disaster looms for all of us. I justify this by the logic that my fishing is not likely to impact this impending disaster one way or the other.
Insurance Fraud or Abuse
"Well, of course, I really don't need those expensive brain scans for my annoying headache, but what the heck, its my health I am concerned with, it will cost me essentially nothing, and the millions of other insurance members will each see little increase in their premiums".
The Criminal Justice System
We know that crime is out of control and that the various operatives of the legal system are a major source of the problem. So, as a judge, why don't I take necessary, but possibly radical, effort to combat this problem? Because my efforts would do no noticeable good in this massive problem and it might cost me personally dearly.
The National Debt
When a politician adds to the burden of the National Debt, she realizes that incremental addition will be spread over the whole population -- which includes herself. However the rewards to her directly for spending the additional money far outweigh the small impact of the group burden.
Welfare
The welfare program is a social dilemma as there is a greater payoff -- at least in the short run (most people are driven by short run incentives) -- to the freeloader than those who pay their on way. See the recent article, The Value of Welfare, from the Cato Institute, from which I quote: "Since the federal welfare benefits a typical welfare family would be eligible to receive exceed the wages for the type of entry-level job that most welfare recipients could expect, welfare remains a rational choice for many people" (emphasis added by me). The basic study that this article references is available as "THE WORK VERSUS WELFARE TRADE-OFF: AN ANALYSIS OF THE TOTAL LEVEL OF WELFARE BENEFITS BY STATE".
Water Shortage
Let's say you live in Los Angeles and one day the city announces that, due to a water shortage, everyone should cut back on consumption. In particular, the city says that you should only shower once a week. Now you have been working in the garden and you really would like a shower! What are your options? If you don't take a shower, the water situation gets no worse but you are uncomfortable and stink like a clogged sewer. If you do take a shower there is great benefit to you but the small amount of water that you consume is insignificant compared to the total in the reservoir and, in fact, no one will notice. Put another way, your consumption when spread over the millions of residents in Los Angeles is of no consequence.
In fact in late 2000, the state of California started having major power shortages and experienced this dilemma immediately! To avoid black-outs, the utilities pleaded with the consumers to restrict and economize on their usage of electric power. Of course, this was ignored because it is simply not rational for the individual to suffer an inconvenience for the benefit of the whole state. Therefore, the blackouts commensed and California has a real disaster on its hands!
Employee Cooperatives or Ownership
We often hear of some company being bought out by employees or a portion of a company being established as an employee cooperative with rewards based on production of the unit. Such an arrangement should increase production dramatically, right? Not likely. Each employee in such arrangements finds themselves in a "Commons" situation with the usual reward for freeloading. Unless something is done to correct this situation, production will more than likely go down rather than up. A typical correction would be to go back to a heirarchical organization similar to what they had before the employee ownership plan was instituted!
Investment Strategies for Competing Businesses
Pat Dorsey, in his financial article, "The Internet Is Not Yet Finished", discusses how companies overspend in an effort to get the edge over the competition, resulting in a loss for all.
The Internet
Since the internet is a community -- a virtual community, we would expect problems of cooperation as in any other community. And there are. Actually, in the early days -- prior to the opening up of the internet to the masses, that is the start of the "World Wide Web" -- there was remarkable cooperation. At that time the internet was occupied by mostly technical and academic people, fully subsidized by the government or academic institution and it appears that under such conditions, the incentive can be to cooperate.
But then the WWW came along with its easy to use browsers, allowing millions of ordinary people and businesses to use the web. At that point, it was anticipated and observed that there would probably be some "social dilemmas". The primary problems on the internet that have surfaced are massive grabbing of bandwidth (such as the hundreds of radio stations now broadcasting) and the consuming of information from newsgroups, etc. without contributing any.
An early and fairly thorough online paper describing this problem is "Managing the Virtual Commons: Cooperation and Conflict in Computer Communities" by Peter Kollock and Marc Smith.
Fortunately, no real "tragedy" has yet happened since industry and the government continue to supply more and more resources that have met the demand. |
Comments, ladies and gentlemen? |
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soccerman
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Post #6116
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Posted: Thu 2004-09-16 03:12
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| Politics: Libertarian-Socialist |
Country: United States of Oppression |
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wow thats amazingly self centered, and yes he says if one person takes a shower when there is a shortage on water than it wont affect everyone. however if we all thought this way then we would be screwwed.
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the mark of the immature man is that he is willing to die nobly for a cause. the mark of the mature man is that he is willing to live humbly for the same cause
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A Priori
Outer Party
Post #6321
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Posted: Tue 2004-09-21 14:31
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| Politics: Libertarian-Socialist |
Country: American Empire |
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Point for disucussion:
In a game, is the winner usually the player with the greatest number of options available to him? According to game theory, this proposition is true.
Pehaps one could write a program to simulate... |
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JD-sama
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Posted: Tue 2004-09-21 14:45
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| Politics: Communist |
Country: United Kingdom |
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hmm simulate what exactly ... perhaps you could expand a little maybe to the level of a specification then im sure between all the coders on this board something could be pieced together.
As for your original assumption I would claim that while frequency of options does suggest success the true measure is whether or not the option the "player" desires is available, the closer and available option is to their idea the closer to success I would deem them.
As for the original arguement I think he demostrates perfectly the point of communism ^^ individualism to the extremes he describes it is stupid and short-sighted yet if instead of working on a individual level the people he describes worked on a community level working for overall mutual gain by equal compromise , the disasters are avoided and overall the benefit to each individual is increased(in general).
_________________
"I wanted to know the world that was outside of the well.
So I tried hard to get out from the bottom of the well.
I wanted to know the world that was outside of the well.
So I climbed up numerous of times despite falling down over and over again.
But then I realized it.
The higher and higher I climb, the pain increases when I fall down again.
When my interest in the world outside of the well began to equal the amount of pain,
That was when I finally realized the meaning of the story to Der Froschkönig."
-Frederica Bernkastel |
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zombywuf
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Posted: Sat 2004-09-25 14:49
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| Politics: Complete Idiot |
Country: Scotland |
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| JD-sama wrote: |
| As for the original arguement I think he demostrates perfectly the point of communism ^^ individualism to the extremes he describes it is stupid and short-sighted yet if instead of working on a individual level the people he describes worked on a community level working for overall mutual gain by equal compromise , the disasters are avoided and overall the benefit to each individual is increased(in general). |
The question is, "What incentive does a person have to do this?" If you can become fantastically wealthy be treading on people or poor by helping out and doing your bit for the community why choose the latter over the former? In Hindu society there is the well established concept of Karma. Which is a kind of bookkeeping system for how much you have helped or harmed society and hence how much society will help or harm you back. Whether or not this actually causes a major difference in attitudes I don't know.
A possible solution could be a trust based society, whereby instead of assuming everyone is untrustworthy from the outset and requiring proof of worth (money) before agreeing to provide any kind of service or goods, we simply provide unless we have good reason not too. This prevents anyone from becoming rich, as being rich would be a meaningless concept. However we can become poor, but only due to actually having done bad things. This is of course very pie in the sky, the questions of how exactly this would be implemented (stapling anti-money to people who piss you off perhaps) or how a transition between the current system to this one could occur remain open.
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JD-sama
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Posted: Sat 2004-09-25 18:56
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| Politics: Communist |
Country: United Kingdom |
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| zombywuf wrote: |
The question is, "What incentive does a person have to do this?" If you can become fantastically wealthy be treading on people or poor by helping out and doing your bit for the community why choose the latter over the former? In Hindu society there is the well established concept of Karma. Which is a kind of bookkeeping system for how much you have helped or harmed society and hence how much society will help or harm you back. Whether or not this actually causes a major difference in attitudes I don't know.
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for an individual there is no incentive not to do this , yet for a community there are many , for every person who acheives success how many are downtrodden?I believe it is this reasoning which will eventually allow communism to exist, for a man to reach sucess he needs to build a pyramid of people under him who must support him. Those who suffer in my opinion will always outnumber those who benefit and once they have learnt the unavoidable nature of such systems the insecurity and suffering they bear for the majority the majority as a community will stand against any individual who wishes to place himself atop one , of course this is not a realisation the people of today can claim en masse.
So for tommorow Id say the way to avoid individualism over community is to support the community and take large scale power from the individual(Im not saying take away their freedoms Im saying stop them having unnacountable power beyond attainable equality something which no person should have) using the state apparatus which is a necessary evil of socialism.
_________________
"I wanted to know the world that was outside of the well.
So I tried hard to get out from the bottom of the well.
I wanted to know the world that was outside of the well.
So I climbed up numerous of times despite falling down over and over again.
But then I realized it.
The higher and higher I climb, the pain increases when I fall down again.
When my interest in the world outside of the well began to equal the amount of pain,
That was when I finally realized the meaning of the story to Der Froschkönig."
-Frederica Bernkastel |
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RoyBoy
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Posted: Thu 2004-09-30 06:03
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| Politics: Very Interested |
Country: Canada |
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I forget where this was, Bolivia or something like that... communities will come out at the seasonal time and will create firebreaks together. Not only protecting their communites and crops, but helping irrigation.
It's these forms of collective action that secure the future of these communities and their economies without the self-indulgent hand of capitalism.
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"Money obfuscates truth for aggravating periods of time." |
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