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.

Comments

Re:Damn

[Restil]

I know its funny, but this actually applies.

Think about it. If you have one large server that everyone tries to download from without others participating, several problems emerge. First of all, you saturate the bandwidth on that connection. Secondly, with limited resources, it takes much longer for everyone to obtain what they're wanting. And when the server is located by authorities and shut down, a major resource is lost.

Now, have everyone serve. Anyone looking for something can always find it, because its everywhere. They can always get it, because no one server is oversaturated, as the load is spread out. If one or even several servers get shut down, the effect is minimal. Everyone benefits when everyone cooperates and nobody is hit too harshly.

Now we have another form of potential punishment in this case, not from those that participate, but from law enforcement. Law enforcement, unlike the traders, is more likely to go after those who DO participate, and the freeloaders will get off scott free.

-Restil

P2P and freeloaders...

[dreamquick]

I seem to remember a statistic back in the old napster days that the majority of the people were freeloaders e.g. they just downloaded without offering anything themselves.

Now if we apply this swiss theory to p2p applications you know what will happen?

1) if the majority of the users are freeloaders then there is little chance that they are going to kick other freeloading users off the service

2) assuming that only contributors to the community get a vote then they will be faced with a massive task of getting rid of the freeloaders

3) once you lose all the freeloaders you are left with the people who adopted early and helped the service become massive, but you will have lost the majority of the userbase

4) once a service gets a bad reputation it sticks, and since these services gain popularity through word of mouth rather than regular channels you lose a lot of the potential users

5) lastly a particular p2p service may be good but there are a large number of services which are just as good and which wouldn't support this concept of co-operation.

Just my 2c

The functional principal of a working Anarchy

[ArcSecond]

The research may hold lessons for policymakers attempting to build social cohesion, he believes. Decisions may be more acceptable if they come from within the community and not from a remote central government. "There could be more community-based policing, and more emphasis on shaming [criminals] and rehabilitation within the community," Gintis says.

This is an example of what most elites have nightmares about... the "masses" deciding for themselves what to do, through concensus and free exchange of information. This is the horrible, to-be-avoided-at-all-costs thing that many refer to as "too much democracy". The key is this: it only works if those with an interest/stake both get a place at the table and the ability to punish people who waste their time with lies and greed.

I'm convinced this kind of democratic, community-oriented "anarchy" could work at any scale. As long as everyone feels they are part of something meaningful, and that everyone else is taking it seriously, then you can actually get "competitors" to agree on strategies to maximize the Common Good.

A major stumbling block has been the desire to "punish" criminals by sending them into isolation (or rather, creating isolated COMMUNITIES of criminals), instead of focusing on a more "healing" punishment which would require the community to confront, shame, and supervise the trangressors's rehabilitation.

For example, look at the pyros in Australia. Doesn't it just sound right that they should walk through the destruction, meet their victims, and generally confronted the effects of their crimes? Is it really better to lock them away where they can learn how to hate society even more? How can they be accepted into society again if they aren't genuinely seeking to make reparations?

Just like laughter--a social sanction against rigid codes of behaviour--punishment should bring people together. As weird as that sounds, everyone has to share in the duties of rewarding and punishing members of society: the only way to find a common good is to have everyone agree on it. Don't let anyone tell you that you should leave it to the "smarter/better" people to make this decision for everone else. What is best for those with privilege and power is not necessarily best for all.

Re:Funny they should say that

[SerpentMage]

I would be a bit careful with comments like that. Switzerland is not a country that harbors criminals nor do they "just take money". Also Lichtenstein is not part of Switzerland. It is an independent country. Lichtenstein and Switzerland are associated together because Lichtenstein does not want to create its own infrastructure for everything. Exactly same scenario like Monaco and France.

Back to Switzerland. Let me put into terms that maybe you can understand (assuming you live in the US). In the US there is freedom of speech. That means I can say things like ni...r and be part of the KKK. Many countries do not accept this behavior, but the US defends it. And I agree with it as well. But freedom of speech is a double edge sword as showin in the KKK example since it is racist.

In Switzerland privacy is very much like the US freedom of speech. This means everything is private and all personal information is strictly guarded. I like that as well because I do not want everyone to know what I do. However, the Swiss do not harbor criminals. Lets say if a drug lord did put his money in Switzerland. If another country can prove that the drug lord is a criminal then the Swiss will lock the accounts. But the Swiss will not simply lock the accounts on a "hunch" that the person is a criminal. Nor will they give out information "on a hunch". Privacy is treated like freedom of speech and like freedom of speech it is a double edged sword.