From the EA Vaults
OK, I admit it: I'm blog-blocked. However, I noticed that someone googled me and turned up an old piece from the Fall of 2002. I'd venture that not many current-day readers have seen it, and it's a better example of what I started out trying to do - find a middle ground by reasoned discussion - than some of the stuff I've been posting lately. So, for those of you with long attention spans for topics of marginal interest, I give you...
Collective Action in a Me-First World
Seattle has a really bad traffic problem: inadequate roads, geographically-dispersed settlement patterns, too many single-driver cars, and no decent public transit apart from a network of big, slow, crowded busses. Consequently, it takes everyone around here a long time to get almost anywhere. Because Seattle is a pretty liberal-leaning place, much of the discussion about how to solve this problem revolves around efforts to get people out of their cars and into various public transit schemes, some of which are not even off the drawing board. The public transit solution tantalizes with many appealing benefits – faster commutes for both car and transit-bound travelers, less traffic and therefore somewhat safer roads, less reliance on imported energy sources, and of course cleaner air.
Critics have no problem with the benefits and usually frame their opposition in terms of cost – which is practical enough. But their real objection is deeper and fundamentally trickier to overcome in the political debate. That’s because public transit represents a classic case of the so-called “dilemma of collective action,” a sticky point of political theory that is at the heart of why the old left in this country is having such a hard time getting through to average Americans, and one reason why right-wing anti-government propaganda gets so much traction.
In the case of transportation, the public benefits are obvious, but consider the options from the perspective of the average commuter.
Now:
- Drive on crowded roads: Slow, frustrating, expensive, bad for the environment, but in many ways more convenient and preferable to…
- Take the bus: just as slow and frustrating, but also inconvenient, unpredictable and uncomfortable, at only a marginal savings in cost. Comes with a vague feeling of virtue at not contributing to the traffic and environment problem.
Even if everyone who could take a bus right now did so, it’s simply not a practical option for enough of the population to make a difference. Consequently, option 1 is not only preferred but is seen as unavoidable by most people, leading to the traffic problem.
Now let’s look at the picture with improved transit. The options are:
- Take the train, bus or monorail, assuming it goes where you’re going: faster, more comfortable, slightly less expensive than driving, environmentally sound, but still forfeits control of one’s own schedule; or…
- Drive anyway: much faster and more convenient now that public transit has reduced traffic congestion. Allows the driver to enjoy the communal benefits of the public transit solution (good environment, less foreign oil consumption overall) without having to bear the costs in personal freedom and loss of control.
Option 3 validates the policy of investing in mass transit by making it an attractive option, but it also has the unintended effect of making driving an even more compelling for the individual commuter if the transit system is successful in reducing traffic and the related social costs. Most people who take public transit out of principle or necessity are already doing so. The number who would be better-served at the margins by an improved system are fairly few in proportion to the number of supporters of the current plans. For most people, even vast improvements in the public system would be a poor substitute for the freedom and flexibility afforded by using their own vehicles, all other things (such as cost) being equal. So my theory is that quite a substantial number of area public transit supporters would never use the system themselves: they love the idea as an excellent way for their neighbors to get to work so they will have an easier drive.
The problem is, if everyone looks at the situation from the perspective of their own convenience, you come out with the worst-case scenario:
- Spend a huge amount of money on a public transit system that no one uses, and still be stuck with the same traffic problems.
This, in a nutshell, is the dilemma. The more successful (or potentially successful) a social policy appears, the more it creates incentives for individual members of society to freeload on the public benefits while continuing to pursue their private interests. The best outcome is there for all to see, but the sum of individual decisions to put their own interests above the collective interest brings about a situation that’s even worse than what was there in the first place.
The liberal sees the problem of individual interests as an obstacle to progress. The conservative sees the logic of the dilemma as an airtight validation of the status quo – especially to the extent that conservative ideology valorizes the pursuit of self-interest as a social good. Among other things, this demonstrates how the sometimes counter-intuitive convergence of libertarianism and right-wing politics makes perfect sense on a certain level.
The dilemma of collective action is a much tougher problem for liberals than conservatives, because it seems to me that the facts on the ground favor the conservative view of human nature as inherently selfish (or at best clannish) rather than communitarian. There simply isn’t much instinct in the species to sacrifice for the common good, especially if one’s own sacrifice creates a better situation for those who continue to pursue their own interests.
Left-liberalism (e.g., socialism and the various flavors of communism) and some authoritarian forms of right-wing government have one approach to solving the dilemma: once the common good has been defined, make sacrifice mandatory. In the case of the traffic problem, for example, the extreme case would be to outlaw cars altogether and force everyone into busses. The simplicity of that solution is perhaps seductive, but the problems are too numerous to mention, as a century’s worth of history has amply demonstrated. If you don’t agree, stop reading now because you probably won’t like anything else I have to say.
Absent the political ability to mandate collective action by law, many powerless ideologues default to a similar position, which is to categorically demonize the motives behind any decision other than the one that promotes the common good as they see it. Even on the occasions when they succeed in accurately defining the common good rather than just re-framing their own self-interest in nobler terms, they simply fail to acknowledge that anyone could have a legitimate interest contrary to their position. For example, they heap scorn on suburban commuters who make perfectly rational and legitimate self-interested decisions to drive, as if the only motivation for such a decision could be hostility to the common good. It is to be hoped that anyone who indulges in this sort of summary judgment of their fellow citizens at least has the decency to provide a consistent example of the sacrifice they expect of others in their own behavior. But of course most people can’t – it’s just not in our nature. And so preachy, holier-than-thou liberals become easy targets for Rush Limbaugh and the other idiots who delight in exposing the “hypocrisy” of the left.
OK, so conservatives win the argument, but they lose the larger battle because sooner or later, society must face the consequences of its collective actions through collective responsibility. In the case of Seattle, inaction will not make the traffic problem any better. In fact, it will get worse and worse until any effective solution will be exorbitantly more expensive than the current proposal. I favor the transportation measures being proposed not because I think they will end the traffic problems, but because they are the beginning of a larger, more comprehensive solution that seeks to change the incentive structure at an individual level and move toward a more sustainable equilibrium.
Today’s politics is all about being right rather than finding solutions. The problem is that both sides are right, and so we’re trapped in a death-spiral of stagnation and endless recriminations. Liberals can’t simply look past the problems of the collective action dilemma, as they’ve taken to doing. The preferences of individuals for policies that serve their own interests must be recognized as legitimate and be accounted for in the formulation of policies, not simply condemned as evil and selfish. Likewise, at some point conservatives have to stop pointing to the inherent difficulties of social engineering as a way to oppose all efforts to address issues like transportation and recognize that the pure pursuit of individual interests does harm in the long run, even if it can be justified on a case-by-case basis. Collective action is indeed a dilemma, but collective inaction is a one-way ticket to tragedy.
6:06:34 PM 
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