One individual's contribution to a large collective project--such
as voting in a national election or contributing to a public
television fund-raising campaign--often seems negligible. A
striking proposition of contemporary economics and political
science is that it would be an exercise of reason, not a failure of
it, not to contribute to a collective project if the contribution
is negligible, but to benefit from it nonetheless.
But Richard Tuck wonders whether this phenomenon of free riding
is a timeless aspect of human nature or a recent, historically
contingent one. He argues for the latter, showing that the notion
would have seemed strange to people in the nineteenth century and
earlier and that the concept only became accepted when the idea of
perfect competition took hold in economics in the early twentieth
century.
Tuck makes careful distinctions between the prisoner's dilemma
problem, threshold phenomena such as voting, and free riding. He
analyzes the notion of negligibility, and shows some of the logical
difficulties in the idea--and how the ancient paradox of the
sorites illustrates the difficulties.
Tuck presents a bold challenge to the skeptical account of
social cooperation so widely held today. If accepted, his argument
may over time encourage more public-spirited behavior.
General
| Imprint: |
Harvard University Press
|
| Country of origin: |
United States |
| Release date: |
May 2008 |
| First published: |
June 2008 |
| Authors: |
Richard Tuck
|
| Dimensions: |
235 x 156 x 22mm (L x W x T) |
| Format: |
Hardcover - Cloth over boards / With printed dust jacket
|
| Pages: |
232 |
| ISBN-13: |
978-0-674-02834-0 |
| Categories: |
Books >
Business & Economics >
Economics >
General
|
| LSN: |
0-674-02834-1 |
| Barcode: |
9780674028340 |
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