[FRIAM] Tragedy of the Commons & Free Riders

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But the exploitation that results from profit is not the problem. Such exploitation is a good thing within some scope. Part of how one might define "tragic" is unscoped, unbounded exploitation. But this highlights the structure of my response to EricC's, now more clear, tack.

My OE *mis*interpretation of Eric's argument was my steel man. I'm disheartened to learn his actual argument is one I would dismiss out of hand. What Eric's done, here, is pass the buck. He's passed requirement for a strict, pre-DEFINITION of 'better individuals' on to the equally opaque 'tragic'.

E.g. graffiti - My ex brother in law thought graffiti a tragic abuse. I think it's a creative, stigmergic act. Where I scope/bound it is what's different between us. Me and my exBiL agree that a (expensive) commissioned mural is great! But "low lifes" tagging a neighbor's fence is bad. But we disagree somewhere in between. Those very artistic paintings on train cars are a great example. I even enjoy well-done tags marking a gang's territory. This scoping is aesthetic.

Eric's idea of engineering individuals to fit some prior conception of 'tragic', defeats the individual liberty purpose. The purpose of liberty is to explore the state space, including all the tiny cracks, including cracks that violate *any* particular local contract, including the cracks that can only be reached with *immense* accumulated wealth (e.g. NIH budgets, or landing rovers on Mars).

In contrast to Eric's pre-indoctrinated individuals, with government [⛧], we mix both the liberty to violate with the option to conform. Government facilitates such libertine violations, whereas Eric's focus on prior definition and indoctrination of the individuals would debilitate healthy disruption.


[⛧] Not merely any government, but one based on jury trials and the essentials of our Constitution.

On 4/1/21 6:34 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime; explain "profit" and you have no fish
> 
> -- rec --
> 
> On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 11:12 PM Eric Charles <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com <mailto:eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     Hey there bub! You don't get to pawn your hard problems off on me! I mean whatever you would mean :- )
> 
>         I want to live in a society that solves the majority of these problems for me, on a regular basis, in a regular way, with a regular solution.
> 
> 
>     Yeah, agreed, that would be great. And it would be even better (right?) if the problems never arose, because society preempted them, rather than solving them after the fact. 
> 
>         What does "better individuals" mean? 
> 
> 
>     People who don't create the problems you are concerned with solving... whatever those problems might be. In this particular case, we started out talking about tragedy-of-the-commons problems and the false free-rider problem. We could have people who encounter exactly those situations, with default algorithms that avoid the "problem" part.  If there are other things that you think would make the world better, we can tack those on too. 
> 
>         I'm arguing for a middle-out approach.
> 
> 
>     I'm once again not sure that what you're describing is much different than what I'm arguing for. You list pitfalls of being too invested in a purely bottom-up approach or a purely top-down approach, and I agree those are problems to be avoided. 
> 
>          it's reasonable to suggest that all the ranchers get together on a dynamically allocated schedule to [dis]agree politely about who's (not) doing what. Such on-demand problem solving is certainly possible. And the more open-ended the participants' toolbox solutions are, the more likely that will happen
> 
> 
>     That sounds nice, but definitely isn't what I'm suggesting. Let's say you have 3 people grazing on the commons, and that the land could provide ideal conditions for 12 cattle, with a standard tragedy of the commons set up (where 13 cows produces less meat, but whoever has an extra cow has more meat than that individual would have without the extra cow). You could build people for whom the 0-int, algorithmic response to such a situation was simply to bring 4 cows each. If you had those people to start with, it would take effort to explain to them why they might want to be open-ended in considering bringing an extra cow. Everything about trying to make an extra buck by undermining the collective would be unintuitive to them. They wouldn't have to talk through solving the problem, their default approach the situation would simply not lead to "tragedy". 
> 
>     This is a means by which society can "solve the problem for you". One way or another the solution is: People who don't do "tragedy" when presented with a commons. The question is how we get such people. Maybe we get such people because we fine or arrest anyone who starts down the tragic path. Maybe let people head that direction, but we have a tax system that continuously removes extra funds from their pockets and funnels that extra monies into the maintenance of the commons, thereby creating people who indirectly pay to clean up the the almost-tragedies they would otherwise create. Presumably many other solutions are available. However, the ideal solution, I assert, /if we could achieve it,/ would simply be to have people who don't want to /_do_/ "tragedy", despite having the opportunity. If no one wants to bring an extra cow, then we're good from the get go. 
> 
>     P.S. I take my whiskey neat because that's the best way to have it. When I drink coffee, it gets a lot of milk and sugar. If I'm not in a mood to specify, then there are plenty of things to drink that tastes good without modification ;- )  

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