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:The functional principal of a working Anarchy

[squaretorus]

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.

This is fine for the 'say sorry to the lady who you knocked over with your skateboard little jimmy - you wont do it again now will you!'

Much better than calling the police and sending to a juvenile offender centre.

But when you get into the realms of 'should the UK enter the Euro zone - 99.9% of us don't have enough of an understanding of economics to even START thinking about it.

You can't vote on everything - most of us don't know enough to decide on most of the really important stuff.