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Cooperation Works if Majority Can Punish Freeloaders
plasmid writes: "Some Swiss economists ran an investment game... they found that if the majority could punish freeloaders, cooperation flourished. I think this has implications for cooperative peer-to-peer systems and, to a lesser extent, for open source development. I'm so inspired I plan to go out an punish someone right now, as a matter of fact." I had just read this article the other day (go memepool), so this Nature piece seems oddly apropos.
How the HELL is this News? This is such an elementary part of human nature that I can't believe that anyone has failed to notice this.
So it takes a high bunch of high flying Swedish economics to realize that if a community contributes to create something and others can derive benefits from this creation without helping to build it then OBVIOUSLY the people who contribute will be less motivated to contribute or stop entirely. On the other hand if a mechanism exists to punish free loaders then more people will be motivated to contribute?
WTF??? Who didn't know this?
I learned this by the time I was age 10 and we used to have a neighborhood watch. I slowly realized that the people who didn't participate in the watch still got the benefits of people looking after their belongings. So few people actually participated counting on the fact that others would watch their cars and apartments but even at that age I realized that if we decided to only watch cars and belongings of those that participated in the watch and allow the property of the non-participants to be vandalized and stolen [thus punishing them] then this would give them incentive to join the watch.
Economics is not a real science, it is a joke to call it such. I'm not saying economics is not a study, not something real.. but it's not science.
and the Nobel prize in Economics is not really a Nobel prize.
The Nobel prizes are handed out by the Nobel foundation, for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace.
As Economists felt left out, in 1968, the Bank of Sweden instituted a "Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize". Why? So they could hand out a "Nobel prize" in economics. It's still not a REAL Nobel.
Feh.