trc@houca.UUCP (10/07/83)
Response to Paul on Bud Wiser: If the victims dont know they are being damaged, and Bud doesnt suspect that he is hurting them, how can you expect Bud to do anything about it? If he later finds out, yes, he should do something about it - but there is a limit to what he can be expected to do to check for injuries. Bud might have to buy "pollution rights" from the surrounding people, if he starts a new factory - but it is more likely that he would buy it from some other factory with excess pollution rights. So it can be practical to start new factories. The idea that Bud is restricting the potential liberty of others by starting to pollute is not sufficient to justify "the world" having control over his pollution. Otherwise, you could argue that everyone has a right to control *everything* that anyone does, since any action, including inaction, affects others' abilities to do things. In effect you are saying that the need for the preservation of liberty justifies its extinction. The flaw lies in your implicit definition of liberty. Liberty is lack of restraints upon one's exercise of one's human rights. It is not the same as "ability to do things". Since no one had property rights where Bud set up at, no one can claim that their rights have been restricted or harmed. Most people take the Prisoners' Dilemma to imply that they should, under some circumstances, act in an altruistic manner. However, one assumption of the PD problem is that neither prisoner knows enough about the other to guess how the other will act. While it is true that if both happen to be altruists, they will get the maximum benefit, it is also true that the penalties on the altruist will be maximized if only one is an altruist. This fact is usually ignored in the analysis that says people should be altruistic. Any assumption that the other prisoner is also an altruist is invalid, by the conditions of the PD problem. In fact, a proper analysis would state that, under the imposed condition of ignorance, only game-theory should be used, in order to maximize one's benefits - which in this case means that one should not be altruistic. (And of course, this is a rather contrived example, and is right up there with lifeboats.) Tom Craver houca!trc