Has anyone posted this fascinating article yet?
Elinor Ostram was a political scientist, who was also the
first woman to win the Nobel Prize in economics back in 2009. She won for her brilliant research that can help explain why some folks today simply don't want to comply with COVID-19 rules and why we have to make them. Ostrom's
research to COVID-19.
Economists used to think that, given a chance, everyone would always act in their own best interests, which could entail breaking rules to gain personal advantage. Ostrom showed that most people are willing to sacrifice for the collective good.
These people are called "
Willing Participants."
These folks will do what's asked of them by public health officials. They might grumble, but they understand there is a collective good. This is the majority of us; we estimate them as just shy of 65 per cent of people.
Then there are the "
Rational Egoists." This is a considerable minority of people — about 20 per cent. Egoists are only interested in what's best for themselves.
Ostrom showed us that these egoists will only change their behaviour (say, in response to COVID-19) to avoid punishment. [...]
When egoists don't follow the rules, not only can their actions cause others to fall ill, but they can ruin the hard work of public health officials by, quite literally, showing willing participants the wrong way to behave.
Some willing participants, when asked if they would do something foolish just because they saw someone else doing it, will actually say yes.
They're still "willing," but instead of following the rules, they're also now "willing" to break them.
If some rule breakers (egoists) turn into lots of rule breakers (egoists and willing participants), that's when it gets dangerous.
These two groups add up, by our estimates, to about 85 per cent of the population.
Now, let's look at everybody else. Because they're divided pretty equally into two fascinating groups.
First, a small number are
Altruists, who always do the right thing even though we can't explain why. Altruists are few and far between; nearly everyone else needs some kind of motivation to do the right thing.
The last group has, in our view, the most interesting motivation — the
Punishers. Punishers are willing to suffer themselves just to stick it to the egoists.
[...]more at link
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calg...mOEhZTlJ0a21WZU1JXC9IUzZGVExcL2dRY3lkMlJTUSJ9
Ostrom's
research to COVID-19.