Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site gargoyle.UUCP Path: utzoo!lsuc!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) Newsgroups: net.politics.theory Subject: Re: Hockey Message-ID: <242@gargoyle.UUCP> Date: Mon, 11-Nov-85 12:34:05 EST Article-I.D.: gargoyle.242 Posted: Mon Nov 11 12:34:05 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 12-Nov-85 21:01:24 EST References: <237@gargoyle.UUCP> <252@l5.uucp> Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) Organization: U. of Chicago, Computer Science Dept. Lines: 61 Laura Creighton writes: >The fact is that unhelmeted professional hockey players have chosen to live >this way. They are not minors. Why are you in such a hurry to take this >choice away from them? But what if both of the following statements are true: 1. Each player prefers to play without a helmet, regardless of whether anyone else is wearing a helmet or not; AND 2. Given a choice between A. everyone NOT wearing a helmet, including himself; and B. everyone wearing a helmet, including himself; everyone would prefer B to A. Then what do you do? If these statements are true, there arises a multi-person Prisoner's Dilemma, a.k.a. a free-rider problem. If somehow everyone was wearing a helmet at the beginning of the match, players would simply remove them, and they would end up at A instead of the preferred alternative B. The same problem arises even when everyone prefers C, "N players wearing a helmet, including himself," to A, where N is some number > 1. In real life, free-rider problems are sometimes overcome, in different ways. One way is through making the individually unpreferred option mandatory, the dreaded coercive solution. Another is through "solidarity" or "class consciousness," which is just a name for the empirically observed phenomenon that people sometimes make the collectively rather than individually rational choice, as often in strikes and revolutions. Another way is through irrationality: the individual thinks "if I choose my unpreferred option, everyone else will too" (magical thinking). Another explanation might be moral inculcation or indoctrination: e.g., people could be strict Kantians and always act so that they could will their maxim to be a universal law. The point is that it is a problem, both normative and explanatory. The normative (practical) problem is often a very serious one, e.g., how do we overthrow a dictatorship if each individual would risk his neck by becoming a revolutionary? How do we reduce the risk of nuclear war, or reduce violent crime, or reduce death and injuries on the streets owing to nonuse of seatbelts? The explanatory problem is how to explain why free-riding is sometimes overcome and sometimes is not. For example, no one really has a good explanation of how and why revolutions occur. The libertarian solution to everything seems to be "let the free market solve the problem." But the free market "works" only in cases where the costs and benefits of actions are accepted *voluntarily* by everyone, so libertarians advocate private ownership of everything to internalize costs and benefits. But this solution is utopian, i.e., totally unrealistic. In the real world, a person's actions unavoidably impose costs and benefits on other people, whether anyone wants them to or not. It is an inescapable fact of social life, and cannot be eliminated by imposing a regime of private control of objects, land, air, etc. -- Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes