Elliott W. Montroll, "Dynamics of Technological Evolutions", Self-Organization and Dissipative Structures, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1982.
As long as investors are patient and bankers are lenient in calling their loans, this state of supersaturation may persist for some times, but with a business slump or money panic the weaker firms will not be able to pay their notes or bills and will be forced into bankruptcy (or may be absorbed by stronger firms). Thus, a phase transition occurs and a state in which there are many small firms is transformed into one with a small number of larger firms.
This 'condensation' effect is exhibited where the number of operating railroads in the United States is plotted as a function of time. [86]
1.01.1982
Robert L. Carneiro
Robert L. Carneiro, "Successive Reequilibrations as the Mechanism of Cultural Evolution", Self-Organization and Dissipative Structures, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1982.
The most salient feature of human history, then is not stasis, but evolution. To account for evolution we must leave equilibrium theory behind and enter the realm of disequilibrium theory. We must learn by equilibria are overthrown, how they are reestablished, and what effect this has on the structure of societies. [111]
Every social system has a margin of elasticity. It can be subjected to certain forces - wars, floods, famines, riots, plagues, strikes, inflation, unemployment - and, as long as the magnitude of these forces is not excessive, the system will essentially return to its original conditions once the impinging forces abate. If it is not pressed beyond this margin, the society will be able to reestablish its old equilibrium. Thus, a functionalist studying a society within this range of perturbing forces is justified in applying a homeostatic model to it and in considering it to be a system in stable equilibrium. But if the society is subjected to forces that exceed this margin of elasticity, its existing institutions will not be able to cope with these forces. Under heavy stress, the society will be permanently deformed, that is, it will be forced to change its structure. [112]
Indeed, much New Deal legislation can be seen as an attempt by a badly disequilibrated society to reequalibrate itself by undergoing certain structural transformations. [114]
How does the process of serious perturbation followed by reequilibration, so often manifested by societies, relate to cultural evolution? Evolution is this process writ large. As we have seen, the successful reequilibration of a society often requires the elaboration of its parts. Successive reequilibrations would thus serve to increase a society's structural complexity. If we follow Herbert Spencer in regarding increased complexity as the hallmark of evolution in general, we can say that sociocultural evolution is the natural outcome of societies undergoing successive reequilibrations as they seek to adapt to the changing conditions of existence. [114]
The most salient feature of human history, then is not stasis, but evolution. To account for evolution we must leave equilibrium theory behind and enter the realm of disequilibrium theory. We must learn by equilibria are overthrown, how they are reestablished, and what effect this has on the structure of societies. [111]
Every social system has a margin of elasticity. It can be subjected to certain forces - wars, floods, famines, riots, plagues, strikes, inflation, unemployment - and, as long as the magnitude of these forces is not excessive, the system will essentially return to its original conditions once the impinging forces abate. If it is not pressed beyond this margin, the society will be able to reestablish its old equilibrium. Thus, a functionalist studying a society within this range of perturbing forces is justified in applying a homeostatic model to it and in considering it to be a system in stable equilibrium. But if the society is subjected to forces that exceed this margin of elasticity, its existing institutions will not be able to cope with these forces. Under heavy stress, the society will be permanently deformed, that is, it will be forced to change its structure. [112]
Indeed, much New Deal legislation can be seen as an attempt by a badly disequilibrated society to reequalibrate itself by undergoing certain structural transformations. [114]
How does the process of serious perturbation followed by reequilibration, so often manifested by societies, relate to cultural evolution? Evolution is this process writ large. As we have seen, the successful reequilibration of a society often requires the elaboration of its parts. Successive reequilibrations would thus serve to increase a society's structural complexity. If we follow Herbert Spencer in regarding increased complexity as the hallmark of evolution in general, we can say that sociocultural evolution is the natural outcome of societies undergoing successive reequilibrations as they seek to adapt to the changing conditions of existence. [114]
Richard Newbold Adams
Richard Newbold Adams, "The Emergence of Hierarchical Social Structures: The Case of Late Victorian England", Self-Organization and Dissipative Structures, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1982.
Human organisms clearly display a long adulthood which is a steady state. The human species, in contrast, has never, so far as we know, manifested a steady state but rather has been in a state of constant expansion. Between the two are societies which may or may not manifest a steady state. Human societies particularly manifest cases of control by internal mechanisms that give evidence of having developed in response to the consequences of outside constrictions. While individual human societies vary in this, they have shown progressively less inclination to exercise such controls as they have become more complex.
Recently a good deal of evidence has been adduced to show that not only have many human societies achieved a steady state but also human history has consisted of an irregular oscillation from a condition of ecological equilibrium to one of intensification of exploitation and depletion of resources. [122]
One way to identify when a new structure has come into being is to observe when the existing components - in this case we can look at Britain - give evidence of subordinating themselves to the larger whole. In doing this, they are giving up decision making to decisions made beyond their area of control. These new decisions are being made in the larger structure, and in that way we can see that a new level of self-organization and self-maintenance is coming into being.
At first these outside decisions will be uncoordinated among themselves; that is, they will be responding separately to different set of actors. As the various participating structures expand, as the amount of energy being used by the systems increases, as interactions among them intensifies, they will tend to centralize in a few places that will be more highly coordinated among themselves. The gradual centralization of this new level of decision making is what allows us to differentiate the emergence of a new structure.
What Britain was building was a worldwide social structure that, on the one hand, necessarily led to her own slowdown but, on the other, was unquestionably essential for her own survival. She was building survival devices or mechanisms, which, if we see them as parts of an emerging whole, we can regard as a kind of survival vehicle; an extensive social, political, and economic complex that would both sustain and supply her. At the same time it required that she make important internal readjustments - among which were those resulting in a deceleration in the growth energy consumption per capita. [126]
A survival vehicle is, then, in the first instance a social assemblage that is brought into being by individuals to better the conditions of their own survival. It is a larger dissipative structure, within which the individuals may hope to be buffered against harsher elements of the environment and to receive specific things that they need.
Vehicles will, however, follow their own evolution. Some expire rapidly; others may become of special interest to a few of the members. The leaders all have a particular interest in the survival of the vehicles. Thus the survival vehicles often incorporate mechanisms leading to their own perpetuation. [127]
This development, of course, means that the very survival vehicles that individuals have helped to construct may be taken from their control (if they were ever in their control) and may follow a path that is in fact against the best interests of individual members. Thus survival vehicles, once in being, become autonomous and independent of the interests of the individual members. [127]
Not only can the amount and kinds of energy that are expended and channeled by survival vehicles be calculated, but we should also initially assume that the laws of thermodynamics are as applicable to these processes as to those observed in nonhuman biological activities. Thus we should expect, following Fred Cottrell, that where vehicles are using increasing amounts of energy, the amount required for the maintenance of a survival vehicle will increase more rapidly than the increase in the total energy flow of the vehicle. We should also expect, following Ramon Margalaf, that as vehicles of greater scope come into being they will do so by the systematic exploitation of lesser vehicles, including especially those that compose them. They will take more energy away from the lesser vehicles, especially in the form of controls. They will compete with other units, other vehicles - often of quite different kinds - for resources. [128]
Expanding social systems are entirely a part of nature and their ultimate elements are no different from those composing the more easily visible physical world. Their inevitable expansion carries the emergence of higher levels of hierarchy, and these must be recognized as real dissipative structures that will take on their own behavior. In the present case, the lesser components lose their autonomy of action; they lose their ability to respond individualistically to an unstructured environment because they now confront one that is structured. In the nature of social structure, they become subordinated to the larger expanding dissipative structure that encompasses them. [129]
The emergence ofteh larger industrial, capitalist world structure, to which Britain made such an important contribution in the late nineteenth century, is still an uncentralized, coordinated arrangement. As such, it would have to be regarded as essentially amoral, incapable for the moment of making decisions as to what was best for itself. However, the direction was towards higher-level centralization within that structure that would result in its own morality, displacing that of the separate nations and firms operating within it. [130]
The application of dissipative structure analysis to social organizations requires the development of a sociology appropriate to it. [130]
Human organisms clearly display a long adulthood which is a steady state. The human species, in contrast, has never, so far as we know, manifested a steady state but rather has been in a state of constant expansion. Between the two are societies which may or may not manifest a steady state. Human societies particularly manifest cases of control by internal mechanisms that give evidence of having developed in response to the consequences of outside constrictions. While individual human societies vary in this, they have shown progressively less inclination to exercise such controls as they have become more complex.
Recently a good deal of evidence has been adduced to show that not only have many human societies achieved a steady state but also human history has consisted of an irregular oscillation from a condition of ecological equilibrium to one of intensification of exploitation and depletion of resources. [122]
One way to identify when a new structure has come into being is to observe when the existing components - in this case we can look at Britain - give evidence of subordinating themselves to the larger whole. In doing this, they are giving up decision making to decisions made beyond their area of control. These new decisions are being made in the larger structure, and in that way we can see that a new level of self-organization and self-maintenance is coming into being.
At first these outside decisions will be uncoordinated among themselves; that is, they will be responding separately to different set of actors. As the various participating structures expand, as the amount of energy being used by the systems increases, as interactions among them intensifies, they will tend to centralize in a few places that will be more highly coordinated among themselves. The gradual centralization of this new level of decision making is what allows us to differentiate the emergence of a new structure.
What Britain was building was a worldwide social structure that, on the one hand, necessarily led to her own slowdown but, on the other, was unquestionably essential for her own survival. She was building survival devices or mechanisms, which, if we see them as parts of an emerging whole, we can regard as a kind of survival vehicle; an extensive social, political, and economic complex that would both sustain and supply her. At the same time it required that she make important internal readjustments - among which were those resulting in a deceleration in the growth energy consumption per capita. [126]
A survival vehicle is, then, in the first instance a social assemblage that is brought into being by individuals to better the conditions of their own survival. It is a larger dissipative structure, within which the individuals may hope to be buffered against harsher elements of the environment and to receive specific things that they need.
Vehicles will, however, follow their own evolution. Some expire rapidly; others may become of special interest to a few of the members. The leaders all have a particular interest in the survival of the vehicles. Thus the survival vehicles often incorporate mechanisms leading to their own perpetuation. [127]
This development, of course, means that the very survival vehicles that individuals have helped to construct may be taken from their control (if they were ever in their control) and may follow a path that is in fact against the best interests of individual members. Thus survival vehicles, once in being, become autonomous and independent of the interests of the individual members. [127]
Not only can the amount and kinds of energy that are expended and channeled by survival vehicles be calculated, but we should also initially assume that the laws of thermodynamics are as applicable to these processes as to those observed in nonhuman biological activities. Thus we should expect, following Fred Cottrell, that where vehicles are using increasing amounts of energy, the amount required for the maintenance of a survival vehicle will increase more rapidly than the increase in the total energy flow of the vehicle. We should also expect, following Ramon Margalaf, that as vehicles of greater scope come into being they will do so by the systematic exploitation of lesser vehicles, including especially those that compose them. They will take more energy away from the lesser vehicles, especially in the form of controls. They will compete with other units, other vehicles - often of quite different kinds - for resources. [128]
Expanding social systems are entirely a part of nature and their ultimate elements are no different from those composing the more easily visible physical world. Their inevitable expansion carries the emergence of higher levels of hierarchy, and these must be recognized as real dissipative structures that will take on their own behavior. In the present case, the lesser components lose their autonomy of action; they lose their ability to respond individualistically to an unstructured environment because they now confront one that is structured. In the nature of social structure, they become subordinated to the larger expanding dissipative structure that encompasses them. [129]
The emergence ofteh larger industrial, capitalist world structure, to which Britain made such an important contribution in the late nineteenth century, is still an uncentralized, coordinated arrangement. As such, it would have to be regarded as essentially amoral, incapable for the moment of making decisions as to what was best for itself. However, the direction was towards higher-level centralization within that structure that would result in its own morality, displacing that of the separate nations and firms operating within it. [130]
The application of dissipative structure analysis to social organizations requires the development of a sociology appropriate to it. [130]
Erich Jantsch
Erich Jantsch, "From Self-Reference to Self-Transcendence: The Evolution of Self-Organization Dynamics," Self-Organization and Dissipative Structures, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1982.
Symbiosis is usually defined in structural terms, that is to say, by the relations between two or more entities such as organisms. If, however, we look at a symbiosis of processes instead, we arrive at the notion of coevolution. In a predator-prey relation, the entities of the prey species are destroyed, but not its evolutionary process. On the contrary, both predator and prey species benefit in a dynamic view and expand their niches.
Coevolution also means that even cooperating entities never totally adapt to each other. Evolution always involves destabilization, the reaching out, the self-presentation which offers new symbiotic relations, the risk accompanying all innovation. Evolution at all levels involves the freedom of action as well as the recognition of a ubiquitous systemic interconnectedness - in short, the joy as well as the meaning of life. Total adaptation implies equilibrium, the principle of death. The basic principle of life, nonequilibrium, which the theory of dissipative structures recognizes as an intrasystemic condition for self-organization and evolution, reappears as an intersystemic condition for symbiosis and coevolution. [347]
If the output of a system's self-organization dynamics enters again a self-organization configuration (basically, hypercycle), higher-level self-organization structures may result. The level of the original dynamic system is thereby transcended. In this way, dissipative processes at different levels may be linked together and form a hierarchy involving several levels. [348]
It seems that we frequently confuse indeterminacy and chance. Indeterminacy is the freedom available at each level which, however, cannot jump over the shadow of its own history. Evolution is the open history of an unfolding complexity, not the history of random processes. What emerges are the contours of a world in which life (if anything) is purely random, but much is indetermined and shaped by a creativity that transcends the systems which are its vehicles. [352]
Symbiosis is usually defined in structural terms, that is to say, by the relations between two or more entities such as organisms. If, however, we look at a symbiosis of processes instead, we arrive at the notion of coevolution. In a predator-prey relation, the entities of the prey species are destroyed, but not its evolutionary process. On the contrary, both predator and prey species benefit in a dynamic view and expand their niches.
Coevolution also means that even cooperating entities never totally adapt to each other. Evolution always involves destabilization, the reaching out, the self-presentation which offers new symbiotic relations, the risk accompanying all innovation. Evolution at all levels involves the freedom of action as well as the recognition of a ubiquitous systemic interconnectedness - in short, the joy as well as the meaning of life. Total adaptation implies equilibrium, the principle of death. The basic principle of life, nonequilibrium, which the theory of dissipative structures recognizes as an intrasystemic condition for self-organization and evolution, reappears as an intersystemic condition for symbiosis and coevolution. [347]
If the output of a system's self-organization dynamics enters again a self-organization configuration (basically, hypercycle), higher-level self-organization structures may result. The level of the original dynamic system is thereby transcended. In this way, dissipative processes at different levels may be linked together and form a hierarchy involving several levels. [348]
It seems that we frequently confuse indeterminacy and chance. Indeterminacy is the freedom available at each level which, however, cannot jump over the shadow of its own history. Evolution is the open history of an unfolding complexity, not the history of random processes. What emerges are the contours of a world in which life (if anything) is purely random, but much is indetermined and shaped by a creativity that transcends the systems which are its vehicles. [352]
1.01.1978
Thomas C. Schelling
Thomas C. Schelling, Micromotives and Macrobehavior, New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 1978.
When we analyze how people behave in trying to escape from a burning building we mean that they really are trying to escape. They are not simply acting, 'as if' they dislike being burnt. [18]
How well each does for himself in adapting to his social environment is not the same thing as how satisfactory a social environment they collectively create for themselves. [19]
The body of a hanged man is in equilibrium when it finally stops swinging, but nobody is going to insist that the man is all right.
...
Calling it an equilibrium does not imply that everybody - or even anybody - likes the seating arrangement, only that nobody alone can do better by changing to any available seat. Nor does it imply that there are not alternative seating patterns, very different ones, that could also be equilibria. [27]
Now for what is special about economics. Economics is mainly concerned with transactions in which everybody affected is a voluntary participant. [28]
If you buy somebody else's book, I may feel 'affected' by the transaction because the alternative I had in mind was selling you my book instead. I can wish that people wanted, and would pay for, the things I have to offer, and would offer me, at attractive prices, the things I would like to buy; but this is more like wishing for transactions that didn't occur than objecting to some that did. [31]
[marketplace's voluntary dynamic is highly efficient for production of conscientiousness and material innovation]
The free market, when it works, is that special case of knowledgeable voluntary exchange of alienable commodities. [33]
It may or may not occur to me that I am part of your problem as you are part of mine, that my reaction to the environment is part of the environment, or that the quantity or number I am responding to is the sum of the reactions of other people reacting like me. [78]
George Akerlof argued that the seller of a used car konws whether or not it is a lemon; the buyer has to play the averages, knowing only that some cars are lemons but not whether the particular car he's buying is. Buyers will pay only a price that reflects the average frequency of lemons in the used-car crop. That average is a high price for a lemon but understates the worth of the better cars offered on the market. The owners of the better cars are reluctant to sell at a price that makes allowance for the lemons that other people are selling; so the better cars appear less frequently on the market and the average frequency of lemons increases. As customers learn this, they make a greater allowance for lemons in the price they're willing to pay. The cars of average quality in the previous market are non undervalued and their owners less willing to sell them. The percentage frequency of lemons continues to rise. In the end, the market may disappear, although institutional arrangements like guarantees, or the certification of cars by dealers who exploit a reputation for good cars, may keep the used-car market alive.
Akerlof generalized this model to a number of markets in which there is unequal information on the two sides. [100]
[critical mass dilemma: market disappearance]
If it is proportions that matter - smoking cigarettes or wearing turtlenecks or speaking with a particular accent depending on the fraction of the relevant population that does so - there is the possibility of dividing or separating populations. If people are influenced by local populations - the people they live with or work with or play with or eat with or go to school with or ride the bus with, or with whom they share a hospital ward or a prison cell block, any local concentration of the people most likely to display the behavior will enhance the likelihood that at least in that locality, the activity will reach critical mass. [109]
[reorganization of network localities can induce critical mass mechanics]
Once travelers got used to Garrett Morgan's traffic lights, they learned that it was dangerous to cross against a flow of traffic that was proceeding with confidence. The lights created the kind of order in which non-compliance carried its own penalty. And there was impartial justice in the way the lights worked: unable to recognize individual travelers, the lights could hurt no one's feelings by not granting favoritism. [121]
[self-enforcing conventions require induced penalty for non-compliance and impartiality of coordination mechanism]
People do things, or abstain from doing things, that affect others, beneficially or adversely. Without appropriate organization, the results may be pretty unsatisfactory. 'Human nature' is easily blamed; but, accepting that most people are more concerned with their own affairs than with the affairs of others, and more aware of their own concerns than of the concerns of others, we may find human nature less pertinent than social organization. These problems often do have solutions. The solutions depend on some kind of social organization, whether that organization is contrived or spontaneous, permanent or ad hoc, voluntary or disciplined. [126]
A good part of social organization - of what we call society - consists of institutional arrangements to overcome these divergences between perceived individual interest and some larger collective bargain. [127]
Within the family we can save hot water on Friday night by taking brief showers, rather than racing to be first in the shower and use it all up. But that may be because within the family we care about each other, or have to pretend we do, or can watch each other and have to account for the time we stand enjoying the hot water. It is harder to care about, or to be brought to account by, the people who can wash their cars more effectively if I let my lawn burn, or who can keep their lawns greener if I leave my car dirty.
What we need in these circumstances is an enforceable social contract. I'll cooperate if you and everybody else will. I'm better off if we all cooperate than if we go our separate ways. In matter of great virtue and symbolism, especially in emergencies, we can become imbued with a sense of solidarity and abide by a golden rule. We identify with the group, and we act as we hope everybody will act. We enjoy rising to the occasion, rewarded by a sense of virtue and community. And indeed a good deal of social ethics is concerned with rules of behavior that are collectively rewarding if collectively obeyed (even though the individual may not benefit from his own participation). But if there is nothing heroic in the occasion; if what is required is a protracted nuisance; if one feels no particular community with great numbers of people who have nothing in common but connected water pipes; if one must continually decide what air-conditioned temperature to allow himself in his own bedroom, or whether to go outdoors and check the faucet once again; and especially if one suspects that large numbers of people just are not playing the game - most people may cooperate only halfheartedly, and many not at all. [129]
The trouble is often in making the bargain stick. [130]
Whatever the technology of cooperative action - whether every litter bit hurts, or the first few bits just about spoil everything - people who are willing to do their part as long as everybody else does, living by a commonly shared golden rule, enjoying perhaps the sheer participation in a common preference for selflessness, may have a limited tolerance to the evidence or to the mere suspicion that others are cheating on the social contract, bending the golden rule, making fools of those who carefully minimize the detergent they send into the local river or who carry away the leaves they could so easily have burned.
There are the cases, though, in which not everybody gains under the social contract. Some gain more than others, and some not enough to compensate for what they give up. [131]
[emotional reactions maintain the balance between cooperative and individual advantages - charity to spite]
The prisoner's dilemma generates an inefficient equilibrium: There is one way that everyone can act so that everybody is doing what is in his own best interest given what everybody else is doing, yet all could be better off if they all made opposite choices. This calls for some effort at social organization, some way to collectivize the choice or to strike an enforceable bargain or otherwise to restructure incentives so that people will do the opposite of what they naturally would have done. [225]
When we analyze how people behave in trying to escape from a burning building we mean that they really are trying to escape. They are not simply acting, 'as if' they dislike being burnt. [18]
How well each does for himself in adapting to his social environment is not the same thing as how satisfactory a social environment they collectively create for themselves. [19]
The body of a hanged man is in equilibrium when it finally stops swinging, but nobody is going to insist that the man is all right.
...
Calling it an equilibrium does not imply that everybody - or even anybody - likes the seating arrangement, only that nobody alone can do better by changing to any available seat. Nor does it imply that there are not alternative seating patterns, very different ones, that could also be equilibria. [27]
Now for what is special about economics. Economics is mainly concerned with transactions in which everybody affected is a voluntary participant. [28]
If you buy somebody else's book, I may feel 'affected' by the transaction because the alternative I had in mind was selling you my book instead. I can wish that people wanted, and would pay for, the things I have to offer, and would offer me, at attractive prices, the things I would like to buy; but this is more like wishing for transactions that didn't occur than objecting to some that did. [31]
[marketplace's voluntary dynamic is highly efficient for production of conscientiousness and material innovation]
The free market, when it works, is that special case of knowledgeable voluntary exchange of alienable commodities. [33]
It may or may not occur to me that I am part of your problem as you are part of mine, that my reaction to the environment is part of the environment, or that the quantity or number I am responding to is the sum of the reactions of other people reacting like me. [78]
George Akerlof argued that the seller of a used car konws whether or not it is a lemon; the buyer has to play the averages, knowing only that some cars are lemons but not whether the particular car he's buying is. Buyers will pay only a price that reflects the average frequency of lemons in the used-car crop. That average is a high price for a lemon but understates the worth of the better cars offered on the market. The owners of the better cars are reluctant to sell at a price that makes allowance for the lemons that other people are selling; so the better cars appear less frequently on the market and the average frequency of lemons increases. As customers learn this, they make a greater allowance for lemons in the price they're willing to pay. The cars of average quality in the previous market are non undervalued and their owners less willing to sell them. The percentage frequency of lemons continues to rise. In the end, the market may disappear, although institutional arrangements like guarantees, or the certification of cars by dealers who exploit a reputation for good cars, may keep the used-car market alive.
Akerlof generalized this model to a number of markets in which there is unequal information on the two sides. [100]
[critical mass dilemma: market disappearance]
If it is proportions that matter - smoking cigarettes or wearing turtlenecks or speaking with a particular accent depending on the fraction of the relevant population that does so - there is the possibility of dividing or separating populations. If people are influenced by local populations - the people they live with or work with or play with or eat with or go to school with or ride the bus with, or with whom they share a hospital ward or a prison cell block, any local concentration of the people most likely to display the behavior will enhance the likelihood that at least in that locality, the activity will reach critical mass. [109]
[reorganization of network localities can induce critical mass mechanics]
Once travelers got used to Garrett Morgan's traffic lights, they learned that it was dangerous to cross against a flow of traffic that was proceeding with confidence. The lights created the kind of order in which non-compliance carried its own penalty. And there was impartial justice in the way the lights worked: unable to recognize individual travelers, the lights could hurt no one's feelings by not granting favoritism. [121]
[self-enforcing conventions require induced penalty for non-compliance and impartiality of coordination mechanism]
People do things, or abstain from doing things, that affect others, beneficially or adversely. Without appropriate organization, the results may be pretty unsatisfactory. 'Human nature' is easily blamed; but, accepting that most people are more concerned with their own affairs than with the affairs of others, and more aware of their own concerns than of the concerns of others, we may find human nature less pertinent than social organization. These problems often do have solutions. The solutions depend on some kind of social organization, whether that organization is contrived or spontaneous, permanent or ad hoc, voluntary or disciplined. [126]
A good part of social organization - of what we call society - consists of institutional arrangements to overcome these divergences between perceived individual interest and some larger collective bargain. [127]
Within the family we can save hot water on Friday night by taking brief showers, rather than racing to be first in the shower and use it all up. But that may be because within the family we care about each other, or have to pretend we do, or can watch each other and have to account for the time we stand enjoying the hot water. It is harder to care about, or to be brought to account by, the people who can wash their cars more effectively if I let my lawn burn, or who can keep their lawns greener if I leave my car dirty.
What we need in these circumstances is an enforceable social contract. I'll cooperate if you and everybody else will. I'm better off if we all cooperate than if we go our separate ways. In matter of great virtue and symbolism, especially in emergencies, we can become imbued with a sense of solidarity and abide by a golden rule. We identify with the group, and we act as we hope everybody will act. We enjoy rising to the occasion, rewarded by a sense of virtue and community. And indeed a good deal of social ethics is concerned with rules of behavior that are collectively rewarding if collectively obeyed (even though the individual may not benefit from his own participation). But if there is nothing heroic in the occasion; if what is required is a protracted nuisance; if one feels no particular community with great numbers of people who have nothing in common but connected water pipes; if one must continually decide what air-conditioned temperature to allow himself in his own bedroom, or whether to go outdoors and check the faucet once again; and especially if one suspects that large numbers of people just are not playing the game - most people may cooperate only halfheartedly, and many not at all. [129]
The trouble is often in making the bargain stick. [130]
Whatever the technology of cooperative action - whether every litter bit hurts, or the first few bits just about spoil everything - people who are willing to do their part as long as everybody else does, living by a commonly shared golden rule, enjoying perhaps the sheer participation in a common preference for selflessness, may have a limited tolerance to the evidence or to the mere suspicion that others are cheating on the social contract, bending the golden rule, making fools of those who carefully minimize the detergent they send into the local river or who carry away the leaves they could so easily have burned.
There are the cases, though, in which not everybody gains under the social contract. Some gain more than others, and some not enough to compensate for what they give up. [131]
[emotional reactions maintain the balance between cooperative and individual advantages - charity to spite]
The prisoner's dilemma generates an inefficient equilibrium: There is one way that everyone can act so that everybody is doing what is in his own best interest given what everybody else is doing, yet all could be better off if they all made opposite choices. This calls for some effort at social organization, some way to collectivize the choice or to strike an enforceable bargain or otherwise to restructure incentives so that people will do the opposite of what they naturally would have done. [225]
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