I don’t believe it’s so either. I think that even assuming they believed global warming was a real threat, much or most of the population would not choose to carry their share of the communal burden. This is the sort of situation where you want an enforced policy ensuring cooperation.
In places where rule of law breaks down, a lot of people engage in actions such as looting, but they still generally prefer to live in societies where rules against that sort of thing are enforced.
In places where people are not much like you, where people don’t know you well (or there are other factors making hypocrisy relatively easy to get away with) you shouldn’t bother promoting costly norms by actually following them.
You probably get more expected utility if you are a hypocrite in such circumstances.
That’s true. But it’s still to your advantage to be in a society where rules promoting the norm are enforced. If you’re in a society which doesn’t have that degree of cohesiveness and is to averse to enforcing cooperation, then you don’t want to fight the barbarians, you want to stay at home and get killed later. This is a society you really don’t want to be in though; things have to be pretty hopeless before it’s no longer in your interest to promote a policy of cooperation.
This is a society you really don’t want to be in though; things have to be pretty hopeless before it’s no longer in your interest to promote a policy of cooperation.
This actually makes more sense if you reverse it! Promoting costly norms by following them yourself regardless of the behavior of others only becomes the best policy when the consequences of that norm not being followed is dire!
When I say “things have to be pretty hopeless,” I mean that the prospects for amelioration are low, not that the consequences are dire. Assuming the consequences are severe, taking costly norms on oneself to prevent it makes sense unless the chances of it working are very low.
To avoid slipping into “arguments as soldiers” mode, I just wanted to state that I do think environmental related tragedy of the commons are a big problem for us (come on the trope namer is basically one!) and we should devote resources to attempt to solve or ameliorate them.
I, on the other hand, find myself among environmentalists thinking that the collective actions they’re promoting mostly have negative individual marginal utility. But I think that acquiring the basic information has positive individual marginal utility (I personally suspect that the most effective solutions to climate change are not ones that hinge on grassroots conservation efforts, but effective solutions will require people to be aware of the problem and take it seriously.)
I don’t believe it’s so either. I think that even assuming they believed global warming was a real threat, much or most of the population would not choose to carry their share of the communal burden. This is the sort of situation where you want an enforced policy ensuring cooperation.
In places where rule of law breaks down, a lot of people engage in actions such as looting, but they still generally prefer to live in societies where rules against that sort of thing are enforced.
In places where people are not much like you, where people don’t know you well (or there are other factors making hypocrisy relatively easy to get away with) you shouldn’t bother promoting costly norms by actually following them.
You probably get more expected utility if you are a hypocrite in such circumstances.
That’s true. But it’s still to your advantage to be in a society where rules promoting the norm are enforced. If you’re in a society which doesn’t have that degree of cohesiveness and is to averse to enforcing cooperation, then you don’t want to fight the barbarians, you want to stay at home and get killed later. This is a society you really don’t want to be in though; things have to be pretty hopeless before it’s no longer in your interest to promote a policy of cooperation.
This actually makes more sense if you reverse it! Promoting costly norms by following them yourself regardless of the behavior of others only becomes the best policy when the consequences of that norm not being followed is dire!
When I say “things have to be pretty hopeless,” I mean that the prospects for amelioration are low, not that the consequences are dire. Assuming the consequences are severe, taking costly norms on oneself to prevent it makes sense unless the chances of it working are very low.
To avoid slipping into “arguments as soldiers” mode, I just wanted to state that I do think environmental related tragedy of the commons are a big problem for us (come on the trope namer is basically one!) and we should devote resources to attempt to solve or ameliorate them.
I, on the other hand, find myself among environmentalists thinking that the collective actions they’re promoting mostly have negative individual marginal utility. But I think that acquiring the basic information has positive individual marginal utility (I personally suspect that the most effective solutions to climate change are not ones that hinge on grassroots conservation efforts, but effective solutions will require people to be aware of the problem and take it seriously.)