The World Is Not Enough. Georgeism And Global Poverty.

Arminius · March 21, 2016, 11:40pm

What if we have no chance anymore to get out of the rationality trap in which collective rationality and individual rationality are in conflict?

Arminius:

At last the tragedy of the commons leads to the extinction of those who work or contribute otherwise and support those who do not work or do not contribute otherwise and do not supprt anybody, although the latter have own children and the former not. So those who have offspring survive as long as they can have offspring, and the others who have no offspring die out. So it is worthwhile in a commons to be lazy, if a certain number of members is not lazy. But it is to be expected that more and more members of the group will behave lazy and group earnings will fall further, since - morally spoken - a typical human maxim is not the maximization of the own advantage but the avoidance of the own disadvantage. So the tragedy of the commons escalates and escalates, and the whole group gets into a rationality trap in which collective rationality and individual rationality are in conflict. In addition to the rationality trap that I just described, there is also the opposite case in which common resources are increasingly exhausted. In this way, not only many environmental problems, but, interestingly, the population explosion in many countries can be explained. The Neomalthusianist Garret Hardin believed that a liberal access to public goods will at last be the ruin of all. Therefore he called for corresponding restrictions.