
Minimizing Defection Might Be the Solution to the Tragedy of the Commons - burtonator
https://getpolarized.io/2019/07/26/Minimizing-Defection-Might-be-the-Solution-to-the-Tragedy-of-the-Commons.html
======
rossdavidh
1) I find it amusing that an article regarding the supposed "Tragedy of the
Commons" uses several Wikipedia quotes 2) The Tragedy of the Commons was
thoroughly analyzed, with a great deal of empirical, historical data, by
Elinor Ostrom.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom)
Yes, one component of successful, long-lived common resources is related to
group size. But you don't have to take my word for it, read her book,
"Governing the Commons".

~~~
Matticus_Rex
There's a huge tendency for smart people like computer scientists to think
that, because they're smart, they can come up with "the solution" to systemic
problem X without reading into the deep academic literature around it. I knew
when I saw the title of the article on the front page that I (or someone) was
going to need to preach the gospel of Ostrom in the comments.

~~~
tchaffee
That's an unfair sweeping generalization about "smart people like computer
scientists". Far more fair to say they enjoy thinking about, discussing, and
attempting to solve problems. Trying to solve problems is a _passion_ for all
the good programmers I know.

And predicting / guessing at solutions without having done the "deep academic
literature" reading is actually an excellent learning technique that connects
you more deeply to the reading if you decide to go down that path. Or do the
predicting in a blog post and get free answers from the experts correcting
you.

I've "invented" a few things in my life only to later find the existing
patents. I had so much fun doing it and learned so much, I'm glad I didn't
know about the patents ahead of time.

~~~
Matticus_Rex
I mean, great that you had that experience, and thankfully you didn't make a
blog post talking about how you solved ______. It's fine to come up with ideas
on your own, but if you don't know enough about the field to know whether
you're on the right track, don't announce to the internet that you've found
the solution.

~~~
tchaffee
That's a strawman. Author's own words, right in the intro:

"I might be wrong but would love some feedback. It’s an exceedingly
complicated topic which has been researched for hundreds of years so it might
be that this observation has been made before."

And that very important word "might", right in the headline too.

------
yholio
> What if we could solve this problem through core changes in our society?

Yes, we call the necessary changes 'the state'. It's exactly to solve a
collective action problem that the state first appears: military defense and
preventing actual defection in war. Strong states prevent defection but then
suffer from bad principal-agent problems, since rulers tend to advance their
own goals - like waging war.

------
ratel
I have to agree with some of the commenters that your write-up is pretty bad,
because far too general for such a well studied problem.

Let me try to help you along in your thinking: The tragedy of the commons is
not a generalized version of the prisoner dilemma. I guess you meant to say a
prisoners dilemma is a more generalized version of the tragedy of the commons.
This is however also not true. Logically because there is no sensible pay-off
where everybody defects, but the other player. The commons would be largely
destroyed way before everyone gets their pay-off so all the players would
never collectively decide to do that (and decision is a integral part of the
prisoners dilemma). You could make it into a NxN dimensional prisoners
dilemma, but that is not useful for another reason. The tragedy of the commons
is about future benefit (keeping the commons so everyone can extract more than
they could individually at a single instance) a prisoners dilemma is an
instant game. You could model the tragedy of the commons as a repeated
prisoner dilemma. The problem is that free riding is not a rational option if
you repeat it often enough. In the real world free-riding works, because we
expect to play a limited number of rounds and in the long term we are all
dead. The number of repetitions one expects to play is however not the same
for all players.

Limiting defection is in this case not external to the tragedy of the commons,
as any way to resolve the prisoners dilemma is, because it reduces the pay-
offs the participants get. Preventing defection costs and there is a balance
to be struck to the costs to preventing an additional free-rider and letting
him free-ride. There is also a moral component to this. Limiting defection
means also being able to limit entry. The commons has de-facto become 'our
commons'. There is the description of a 'mutual protective agency and one of
the most common is the state.

------
jabl
Anybody interested in "the commons" should familiarize herself with the work
of Elinor Ostrom.

------
CryptoPunk
Unionization is a bad example. If all union members were unable to defect, the
employer would still reject their demands for above market wages, because he
could replace them wholesale with workers from the larger labor pool, at
market rates.

If all workers in the world were forcibly enrolled in a global union and
prevented from defecting, and this union demanded a doubling of wages, this
would just lead to 1. some companies shutting down, and 2. other companies
seeing profit margins decline to below the rate that the supply of labor
versus the supply of capital determines as optimal for economic development,
resulting in more unemployed workers, and a one time boost in wages for
employed workers, as labor's share of income increases, at the expense of
lower recurring increases in wages, as the rate of economic growth declines.

Anyway, smart contracts could indeed be a solution to defection. They are a
potentially massively scalable coordination tool, allowing huge numbers of
people to enter any given agreement at minimal cost.

------
coldtea
> _Interestingly enough, the optimum solution is always present when N=1. If
> there’s just one actor (you) then you’re not likely to destroy your own
> property._

Two objections:

1) Who said one person would necessarily understand it as "[his] own
property"? Unless it is truly their property (e.g. their own house), it's
conceivable that a single person could still consider the place they are in
expendable (because e.g. they could move elsewhere, or they care more for
short term profit for it and don't consider long term issues from their
behavior).

2) Even worse, who said people respect their own property that much? People
can't respect their own bodies (sedentary lifestyles, obesity, junk food,
etc), their own families (domestic abuse, cheating, etc.), their own houses
(tons of neglected, broken down houses), or even their personal lives (from
alcoholism and drugs, to all kinds of subtler self-sabotage)...

------
richk449
Solving the tragedy of the commons. I wish you luck.

Interestingly, you hint at, but don’t really acknowledge one of the classic
solutions (typically pushed by the libertarians): privatize the commons. This
is equivalent to your intuition of trying to set N=1.

Of course, the other classic solution is regulation, which is not too far from
your union example.

Of course, both the classic solutions have downsides. Privatization makes it
harder for everyone to share the good, and also leads over time to
stratification and unequal society. Regulation means bureaucracy, which easily
becomes captive to politics and money.

~~~
xwvvvvwx
There are a wealth of real world examples of communities working together to
collectively manage the commons without either privatisation or state
regulation.

If you want to know more you should familiarise yourself with the work of
Elinor Ostrom.

~~~
richk449
That's great. If a group of people comes together to collectively manage a
commons, that sounds like regulation to me. It's all semantics though.

~~~
matt9j
There is a subtle technical difference in the literature, where regulation is
externally imposed and codified, while communal management is devised,
enforced, and most importantly, flexibly changed by those actually involved
with the appropriation and management of the resource.

~~~
richk449
Thanks. That makes sense.

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TomMckenny
No doubt many specific problems could be addressed by work on the tragedy of
the commons.

But at the same time, theories around a healthy market _require_ defection in
order to "guarantee" competition. So in its rawest form, we have an economic
system that requires a system that is known to produce some bad outcomes
(climate change) in order to avoid other bad outcomes (collusion). This poses
large systemic challenge indeed.

~~~
burtonator
I think the dichotomy between collusion and cooperation is a good one.

I've been thinking about the Hong Kong protests a lot lately which is I think
what spurred this post.

I've been trying to rationalize defection as something inevitable and not just
collusion. If it can be mathematically modeled then it's easier to think about
rationally.

~~~
TomMckenny
I had always though the difference was an assertion of the speaker's values:
HK protesters are cooperating to stand up for their rights vs The Phoebus
cartel is colluding to the disadvantage of consumers.

But maybe there is an objective detectable difference, perhaps related to
defection reluctance. It would be great if there is some additional force at
play that differentiates between them.

------
apo
Toward minimizing defection, the article offers these example solutions:

> What if unions gave perks to employees including job references, health
> benefits, etc BUT to participate in the union you had to put forth a $5k
> bond. This could be deducted slowly over time from your paycheck.

> ...

> Consumers could do something similar for corporations as well. Have reserved
> payments given out over time but only if the companies don’t create any
> externalities for which the consumer doesn’t approve.

There are multiple practical problems with these approaches, which might be
grouped into two broad categories:

1\. How do you prevent collusion? I defect and pay you to keep quiet. Or I pay
you to falsely accuse another member of having defected.

2\. What due process determines whether defection has occurred?

In the constrained world of a system like Bitcoin, this can be easy, but only
if the outside world doesn't enter. The minute we start invoking oracles to
inject external state, then the entire system begins to revolve around how to
prevent the same kinds of collusion/misrepresentation behaviors in the
oracles.

------
dvt
There's been a trend lately of low-quality academic-lite blogposts being
upvoted on HN. This, unfortunately, continues the pattern. I blame Wikipedia
(and reddit-style intellectual superficiality); it's a double-edged sword that
makes everyone think they're an expert. The Tragedy of the Commons is
_extensively_ studied in Game Theory (we spent half a semester on these types
of problems) and has been at the heart of many social experiments over the
past century (Ostrom was already cited a few times in the thread). Anyone
that's done more than skim the Wikpedia article knows that group size is a
primary element, but it's not the whole story.

To say that the blog post brings nothing new to the table is an
understatement. I really wish OP just gave a newbie-friendly introduction to
the problem (which would seem more appropriate given their exposure), as
opposed to proposing a "solution" \-- the hubris is palpable.

I mean, take a look at this quote: "Interestingly enough, the optimum solution
is always present when N=1" \-- it's wrong on just about every level. First,
that's not a solution (and saying _optimum_ is incredibly telling; the term of
art is _equilibrium_ , anyway), and second, common property (even if you're
the only actor) is still not _your_ property (think about a park in a city of
population 1; there's a difference between that park and your back-yard).
That's the whole _point_ of the thought experiment.

~~~
cj
I think your characterization is unfair.

> it's a double-edged sword that makes everyone think they're an expert

I did not get the impression that the author thought he was an expert. By
reading, I think it’s clear the author is aware that he’s not an expert.

More generally, I don’t mind articles written by people who aren’t subject
matter experts. Mainly because I think most new ideas come from outsiders.

~~~
dvt
I guess I'll have to disagree. In my book, proposing a solution to X implies
being an expert on X.

~~~
tchaffee
Why gatekeep on who can brainstorm about solutions? If a non-expert stumbles
on a great solution, you would throw it out? I don't like ANY of the author's
solutions. The article still got me thinking about negative externalities in a
new way.

~~~
dvt
Let me put it this way: I can't take someone "solving" the Tragedy of the
Commons without mentioning Nash equilibria, Pareto efficiency, or Ostrom's
empirical studies seriously any more than I can take someone "solving" the
Riemann hypothesis without mentioning prime numbers seriously.

~~~
coldtea
So, if someone does formulate a working solution in a novel way, but they
doesn't mention Nash equilibria, Pareto efficiency, or Ostrom's empirical
studies (either because they're not a necessary part of a solution, or because
they've came at it on their own, without having prior knowledge of these, and
thus formulated was was needed of them on their own terms), you'd don't want
to hear about it, because dogma.

------
rasengan0
>If your company cares about the environment but all your customers care about
is price then the companies that have a higher priced product will go out of
business.

I can picture Yvon Chouinard's middle finger slowly sticking up

[https://bcorporation.net/directory/patagonia-
inc](https://bcorporation.net/directory/patagonia-inc)

------
advanceduser
Oh look, a justification for the Berlin Wall.

