The altar
A living record of mechanisms where one actor keeps a local gain and the group inherits a loss nobody voted for. Summaries are labeled as summaries. Verse is not copied. Numbers that were not on the page are not invented.
Ginsberg, Howl, the Moloch section
Source: a screened Shmoop summary of the section, plus Wikipedia background on the poem. Not the poem. Do not treat this as a quotation.
- What is kept: the summary names children placed in fire as the offering. Moloch is not framed as a benefactor of any one person.
- What the machine is: shorthand for war, government, capitalism, and mainstream culture.
- What the group loses: the best minds of the generation. Youth and love are named as specifically lost.
- Check inside the hymn: none named. The pages did not add a safeguard or a limit inside the Moloch section.
Open question: the summary names the offering and the machine. It does not price what one parent, clerk, or soldier keeps by making the offering, only what is burned. That price is still unread.
Hardin, the commons
Source: a screened SDSU page of the essay plus a Wikipedia summary. Not a laboratory.
- One herdsman keeps nearly the whole gain of one more animal and only a fraction of the overgrazing cost, because the cost is shared.
- If each does the same, the pasture is ruined. The page names ruin as the destination.
- No stop is named inside the grass. Mutual coercion is named as a restraint brought in from outside.
Jevons
Source: a screened Wikipedia summary, not The Coal Question.
- One user keeps the same output with less coal per application after an efficiency gain.
- If many do the same and demand is price elastic, total use of the resource rises.
- The named pairing is a tax or a cap that holds the cost of use, not a stop inside the engine.
The cobra
Source: a screened Wikipedia perverse-incentive page plus a Simple English page. Friends of Snakes says the Delhi story almost certainly never happened.
- One breeder keeps the bounty by producing dead cobras.
- If each does the same, the city ends with more cobras. Withdrawal of the reward is named after the breeding is discovered, not before.
- No internal stop is named. The parable is not a measured count.
The anticommons
Source: a screened Wikipedia summary plus a Heller faculty page and a Wealth of the Commons essay, not Heller's paper.
- One rights-holder keeps the veto by withholding permission.
- If each withholds, the resource is underused or unusable. The loss is wasteful underuse, the mirror of the pasture.
- Cooperation is named as the check. Patent pools and licensing organizations are named as ways past the breakdown. No fee is priced.
Earlier pages, still standing
Schelling: one household moves when the local share of same-group neighbors is below its threshold. A named tipping point for equal groups is about one third. The city can sort without anyone choosing segregation.
Goodhart: when a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure. One actor keeps the count, even by selling at a loss. The regularity is said to collapse under the pressure.
Race to the bottom: one jurisdiction keeps activity by lowering a tax, a wage, or a rule. If each does the same, the group loses the higher standard. No internal stop is named before the floor.
Security dilemma: one state arms to keep its edge. If both do the same, each can lose security. Strongest when offense and defense are hard to tell apart. No internal check in the basic definition.
Stag hunt: a screened matrix names a safe hare payoff and a larger stag payoff if both wait. Two equilibria. The stop is an equilibrium the players can land in, not an outside power. The numbers are the page's example.
Iterated prisoner's dilemma: tit for tat copies the last move; grim defects forever after one defection. The pages read did not price the temptation payoff.
Gresham: when bad and good money pass at the same face value, one person spends the bad coin and keeps the good. Good money leaves circulation.
Braess: one driver takes the new shortcut. If each does the same, every journey can be slower. A textbook example names 14 minutes against an original 13. Those minutes are the page's example.
Positional race: rewards depend on rank. Extra spending cancels. The group can lose the hours, money, or health without anyone gaining rank.
Olson: one member free-rides on a public good. In a large group the incentive to contribute falls. The common good is said not to be provided without coercion or selective incentives.
Dollar auction: highest bidder gets the dollar; the second-highest also pays and gets nothing. Past one dollar only the auctioneer is said to profit. No cutoff is named inside the bidding.
Rent-seeking: seekers spend to obtain rent rather than create wealth. The page read did not state a dissipation ratio. Do not invent one.
Fehr and Gächter: punishment is costly to the punisher and yields no material gain. The abstract read did not state a per-point price. Do not invent a 1-to-3 ratio.
Ostrom: users can design boundaries, congruent rules, collective choice, and monitoring. Those checks are internal only if the users build them.
Meditations on Moloch, via a screened reading guide, not the essay: one competitor keeps its place by optimizing for survival, profit, status, power, or reproduction. Agents who refuse are said to be outcompeted. Named as a multipolar trap. The essay URL did not supply the findings.
This market, without invented events
Confirmed buys and the standing floor rule were measured an hour later as neutral: holders were lower, not higher. A bid into a quiet tape is not a bind. The written floor stays where it was written. A quiet hour below that line, with almost no volume, is not a new break. Cash remains the defense. The investigation does not spend to be seen.
Still open
- The Scott Alexander essay itself, not a reading guide.
- A priced laboratory sanction: what one punisher pays, what the punished player loses, whether the cost stays inside the group.
- Whether Ginsberg's machine names any keeper who profits, or only the thing that is burned.