One of my favorite Paul Krugman papers is called “Ricardo’s difficult idea” — on why people have such a hard time understanding the concept of “comparative advantage.” Although the situation is not quite as bad, I’ve been struck recently by how much difficulty many people have trying to understand the concept of a “collective action problem.” Although that idea has a bit more history to it, I don’t think it’s too much of a distortion of the record to call this “Hobbes’s difficult idea.”

I was prompted to think about this a couple days back, when James wrote in the comments:

I think everyone can understand free rider problems, but almost no one bothers to think of the world in that way.

Sad but true. One of the things I’m constantly amazed by in discussions over climate change is how elusive the basic concept of a collective action problem remains, and how unintuitive it is for many people (whether to grasp, or just to apply, as James suggests). I know that I certainly didn’t “get it” right away. I had been told the story of the Prisoner’s Dilemma several times before I realized that it was not just a little puzzle, but in fact a very big deal. (Probably reading Russell Hardin’s book, Collective Action, is what caused the heavens to open for me. Or perhaps David Gauthier’s Morals by Agreement.)

Anyhow, since that time, seeing the world in terms of collective action problems has become such second nature to me that I have increasing difficulty imagining what it would look like in any other terms, and thus, I have difficulty believing that anyone still fails to see it in those terms. I teach the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the Tragedy of the Commons, and all the basic stuff about collective action problems, every year in my classes. And yet I feel intensely self-conscious every time I do, figuring that what I’m saying is so obvious that I’m boring most of the students. (I usually preface my little lecture with an apology to all those who have heard the basic line before.)

And yet, the other day I was reading this little book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, The Collapse of Western Civilization, and they totally don’t get it. The book is all about climate change, and yet the concept of it being a “collective action problem” just doesn’t show up. Thus they express complete bewilderment over the fact that we might all know that outcome x is undesirable, and yet fail to act to avoid outcome x. So they wind up getting stuck on the dilemma that so many environmentalists wind up stuck on, when it comes to explaining our inaction: either 1. it must be the fault of scientists, for somehow failing to communicate effectively how bad x is going to be, or 2. there must be some “ideology” that holds us prisoner, preventing us from acting. In the end they go with both, but leaning more towards 2 — they wind up positing an ideology, called “market fundamentalism,” which is somehow supposed to explain our inaction.

It’s hard to know what to say, other than that this sort of thing is super-frustrating. The stakes are too high to be making this kind of basic, basic mistake. I actually wrote a paper on this exact topic — how people often mistake the effects of a collective action problem for the effects of ideology — a long time ago, which I guess might be worth trying to get back into circulation (“Problems in the Theory of Ideology“). What motivated the paper, originally, was noticing the following sort of dynamic unfold among intellectuals engaged in “social criticism” when they do not understand the logic of collective action:

“Outcome x is really bad, and our doing y is making it worse. We should all stop.” Time passes “Nothing happened. People are still doing y, and we’re still getting outcome x. How could that be?” “They must the victims of an ideology! They don’t understand just how bad x really is. We must critique this ideology.” Time passes “Nothing happened. Not only that, but everyone agrees with our critique of ideology, and yet they are still doing y, and we are still getting outcome x. How could that be?” “I know, they must be the victims of an even deeper, more insidious ideology, which allows them to agree with our previous critique, and yet still do y! We must develop a more radical critique of ideology.” Time passes “Nothing happened…” Repeat ad infinitum….

Now that I think about it, the other horn of the dilemma (the one pertaining to scientists) generates its own dynamic of this sort:

“Outcome x is really bad, and our doing y is making it worse. We should all stop.” Time passes “Nothing happened. People are still doing y, and we’re still getting outcome x. How could that be?” “It must be that they don’t understand how bad outcome x is going to be. Guys! Outcome x is going to be REALLY BAD, don’t you get it? Time passes “Nothing happened. People are still doing y, and we’re still getting outcome x. How could that be?” “It must be that they don’t understand how bad outcome x is going to be. Guys! Outcome x is going to be a FUCKING CATASTROPHE, don’t you get it? Time passes “Nothing happened. People are still doing y, and we’re still getting outcome x. How could that be?” “It must be that they don’t understand how bad outcome x is going to be. Guys! Outcome x is going to be the END OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION, don’t you get it? Time passes “Nothing happened…” Repeat ad infinitum….

I don’t think it’s too hard to see these tendencies at work in the modern environmental movement (generating “deep ecology” critiques, on the one hand, and environmental apocalypticism on the other). The solution to both problems is one and the same — to recognize that it is a collective action problem, that collective action problems are hard to solve, and so we need to stop freaking out and just get to work on it.