Political: Collective Action Problems발음듣기
Political: Collective Action Problems
(intro music) Hi! My name is Jonny Anomaly, and I teach at Duke University and UNC Chapel Hill.발음듣기
Suppose you're in the market for a new car , and you have a choice between buying a fuel-efficient compact car and a gas-guzzling truck to drive around Los Angeles.발음듣기
The car will save you money and emit less pollution, but the truck will be safer if you get in an accident.발음듣기
Your contribution to the amount of air pollution in Los Angeles, or to global climate change, is insignificant, even if it's true that if everyone chooses the truck, we get more pollution and less safety.발음듣기
The example is a typical collective action problem, which arises when people acting independently produce a worse outcome than they would if they could find a way to coordinate.발음듣기
Collective action problems are diverse, but one of the most common occurs when everyone in a group shares a goal, but achieving the goal requires only some members of the group to contribute.발음듣기
Examples of this are preserving a clean atmosphere by reducing air pollution, organizing a beach cleanup to remove trash from the sand, and saving an endangered species from extinction.발음듣기
While collective action problems are ubiquitous, not all of them are as serious as decisions that produce toxic air pollution or risks of fatal accidents.발음듣기
In some cultures, women are expected to buy expensive high-heeled shoes, which can be painful to wear, costly to buy,발음듣기
The main advantage to high heels is that they supposedly give women's legs a more attractive shape.발음듣기
the outcome is that no woman in the group has any particular advantage, but all of them bear a higher financial and physical burden from wearing high heels.발음듣기
If I wear heels and others don't, I'll be a bit more attractive than those around me, given the prevailing standards of attractiveness.발음듣기
So, no matter what other women do, I should wear heels, even if all of us would be better off if heels had never been invented.발음듣기
It's important to recognize that not all collective action problems can be solved, and not all of them are worth solving, since the cost of collective action can exceed whatever benefits it might bring.발음듣기
The same point applies to prisoner's dilemmas, public goods, and commons tragedies, which often have a similar underlying structure.발음듣기
Still, there common ways of addressing collective action problems, including social norms, legal sanctions, and tax incentives.발음듣기
In the case of local air pollution, fuel taxes can reduce consumption, lead people to purchase more fuel-efficient cars,발음듣기
a carbon tax would likely lead consumers to reduce their use of carbon-intensive energy, and lead producers to search for and develop less carbon-intensive substitutes.발음듣기
For example, in some communities, people use bumper stickers to signal to other people that they drive a low-emission vehicle.발음듣기
They presumably do this to promote a norm in which people take pride in reducing pollution and feel ashamed of buying vehicles that pollute the environment.발음듣기
But when a population is large and diverse, so that interactions with the same people are less common,발음듣기
social norms usually can't get people to make large sacrifices to achieve a collectively beneficial goal.발음듣기
For example, some feminists might refrain from wearing heels because they believe high heels and cosmetics are part of a system of unfair expectations that men have of women.발음듣기
Agreements to reject high heels can be enforced through social sanctions, like public shaming, and through private feelings like guilt over violating a social norm.발음듣기
We could also impose a tax on high heels, and if that didn't work, state legislators might make buying, selling, or wearing heels a capital crime, punishable by death.발음듣기
First, some people enjoy wearing high heels, regardless of any social pressure to do so, and they would lose the liberty to dress as they please.발음듣기
Second, all taxpayers would have to finance the prosecution of people who are caught wearing high heels.발음듣기
The upshot is that even if we can imagine a social welfare improvement from banning high heels, it is not obvious that states should attempt to do so.발음듣기
While norms, laws, and incentives can solve some collective action problems quite well, pollution for example, not all collective action problems are worth solving.발음듣기
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