Free riders

[Huguenot]

Ignore the cycling issue (if you can) and you get the motivation:

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130212-why-you-really-hate-cyclists/2

It applies to every choice I make (and even to my fury on the forum with people I believe gain advantage from other people's cooperation)!

I happily pay a personal price to recover a social benefit.

[Loz]

That link was to page two, Hugo - page one is here...

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130212-why-you-really-hate-cyclists?selectorSection=health

Really interesting, and make a lot of sense.

[Alec John Moore]

Intriguing. Can you cut and paste perhaps. This international version is not available in the UK. Ta!

[Huguenot]

With thanks to the Beeb.

Something about cyclists seems to provoke fury in other road users. If you doubt this, try a search for the word "cyclist" on Twitter. As I write this one of the latest tweets is this: "Had enough of cyclists today! Just wanna ram them with my car." This kind of sentiment would get people locked up if directed against an ethic minority or religion, but it seems to be fair game, in many people's minds, when directed against cyclists. Why all the rage?

I've got a theory, of course. It's not because cyclists are annoying. It isn't even because we have a selective memory for that one stand-out annoying cyclist over the hundreds of boring, non-annoying ones (although that probably is a factor). No, my theory is that motorists hate cyclists because they think they offend the moral order.

Driving is a very moral activity ? there are rules of the road, both legal and informal, and there are good and bad drivers. The whole intricate dance of the rush-hour junction only works because everybody knows the rules and follows them: keeping in lane; indicating properly; first her turn, now mine, now yours. Then along comes a cyclist, who seems to believe that the rules aren't made for them, especially the ones that hop onto the pavement, run red lights, or go the wrong way down one-way streets.

You could argue that driving is like so much of social life, it?s a game of coordination where we have to rely on each other to do the right thing. And like all games, there's an incentive to cheat. If everyone else is taking their turn, you can jump the queue. If everyone else is paying their taxes you can dodge them, and you'll still get all the benefits of roads and police.

In economics and evolution this is known as the "free rider problem"; if you create a common benefit ? like taxes or orderly roads ? what's to stop some people reaping the benefit without paying their dues? The free rider problem creates a paradox for those who study evolution, because in a world of selfish genes it appears to make cooperation unlikely. Even if a bunch of selfish individuals (or genes) recognise the benefit of coming together to co-operate with each other, once the collective good has been created it is rational, in a sense, for everyone to start trying to freeload off the collective. This makes any cooperation prone to collapse. In small societies you can rely on cooperating with your friends, or kin, but as a society grows the problem of free-riding looms larger and larger.

Social collapse

Humans seem to have evolved one way of enforcing order onto potentially chaotic social arrangements. This is known as "altruistic punishment", a term used by Ernst Fehr and Simon Gachter in a landmark paper published in 2002. An altruistic punishment is a punishment that costs you as an individual, but doesn't bring any direct benefit. As an example, imagine I'm at a football match and I see someone climb in without buying a ticket. I could sit and enjoy the game (at no cost to myself), or I could try to find security to have the guy thrown out (at the cost of missing some of the game). That would be altruistic punishment.

Altruistic punishment, Fehr and Gachter reasoned, might just be the spark that makes groups of unrelated strangers co-operate. To test this they created a co-operation game played by constantly shifting groups of volunteers, who never meet ? they played the game from a computer in a private booth. The volunteers played for real money, which they knew they would take away at the end of the experiment. On each round of the game each player received 20 credits, and could choose to contribute up to this amount to a group project. After everyone had chipped in (or not), everybody (regardless of investment) got 40% of the collective pot.

Under the rules of the game, the best collective outcome would be if everyone put in all their credits, and then each player would get back more than they put in. But the best outcome for each individual was to free ride ? to keep their original 20 credits, and also get the 40% of what everybody else put in. Of course, if everybody did this then that would be 40% of nothing.

In this scenario what happened looked like a textbook case of the kind of social collapse the free rider problem warns of. On each successive turn of the game, the average amount contributed by players went down and down. Everybody realised that they could get the benefit of the collective pot without the cost of contributing. Even those who started out contributing a large proportion of their credits soon found out that not everybody else was doing the same. And once you see this it's easy to stop chipping in yourself ? nobody wants to be the sucker.

Rage against the machine

A simple addition to the rules reversed this collapse of co-operation, and that was the introduction of altruistic punishment. Fehr and Gachter allowed players to fine other players credits, at a cost to themselves. This is true altruistic punishment because the groups change after each round, and the players are anonymous. There may have been no direct benefit to fining other players, but players fined often and they fined hard ? and, as you'd expect, they chose to fine other players who hadn't chipped in on that round. The effect on cooperation was electric. With altruistic punishment, the average amount each player contributed rose and rose, instead of declining. The fine system allowed cooperation between groups of strangers who wouldn't meet again, overcoming the challenge of the free rider problem.

How does this relate to why motorists hate cyclists? The key is in a detail from that classic 2002 paper. Did the players in this game sit there calmly calculating the odds, running game theory scenarios in their heads and reasoning about cost/benefit ratios? No, that wasn't the immediate reason people fined players. They dished out fines because they were mad as hell. Fehr and Gachter, like the good behavioural experimenters they are, made sure to measure exactly how mad that was, by asking players to rate their anger on a scale of one to seven in reaction to various scenarios. When players were confronted with a free-rider, almost everyone put themselves at the upper end of the anger scale. Fehr and Gachter describe these emotions as a ?proximate mechanism?. This means that evolution has built into the human mind a hatred of free-riders and cheaters, which activates anger when we confront people acting like this ? and it is this anger which prompts altruistic punishment. In this way, the emotion is evolution's way of getting us to overcome our short-term self-interest and encourage collective social life.

So now we can see why there is an evolutionary pressure pushing motorists towards hatred of cyclists. Deep within the human psyche, fostered there because it helps us co-ordinate with strangers and so build the global society that is a hallmark of our species, is an anger at people who break the rules, who take the benefits without contributing to the cost. And cyclists trigger this anger when they use the roads but don't follow the same rules as cars.

Now, cyclists reading this might think "but the rules aren't made for us ? we're more vulnerable, discriminated against, we shouldn't have to follow the rules." Perhaps true, but irrelevant when other road-users perceive you as breaking rules they have to keep. Maybe the solution is to educate drivers that cyclists are playing an important role in a wider game of reducing traffic and pollution. Or maybe we should just all take it out on a more important class of free-riders, the tax-dodgers.

[Huguenot]

Now, put that in context with the oft misinterpreted attention that particular individuals receive on the forum...

Is it that they are 'bullied', or is it that the transgression upon etiquette (rules?) is perceived to devalue the currency of a common resource?

[Huguenot]

Or even (Quids forgive) is that what drives me with Europe? That we should even attempt to gain the benefits without carrying the common cost?

Is that the essence of my protest? That the UK's attempt to be a free rider on the European project will likely result in swift and appropriate diplomatic punishment from European partners simply on the basis that we're trying to get all the benefits like the cyclist running the lights?

[BrandNewGuy]

In what sense is Britain a "free rider" in Europe? Financially? Philosophically?

[Huguenot]

At the moment? No, I don't think so - in the future? Yes I believe that is the driving motivation.

There is a view that being an outrigger on Europe will allow us to derive all the benefits of a free market without being constrained by it.

I don't believe that is plausible. Because of the 'free rider' effect I'm absolutely confident that European contributing nations will consistently act on a marginal basis against our interests, and the outcome in twenty years will be a pathetic and disenfranchised Britain.

[BrandNewGuy]

But with driving, the rules are fairly transparent, whether it's through the road traffic laws, the Highway Code or road signs and traffic lights. With Europe, it's not clear what "the rules" are, so it's difficult to single out transgressors or free riders. The European project has morphed through the years - and sometimes in directions that are seen as undesirable to British governments. Most Brits, I suspect, have no problem with something they see as "the common market" - it's the rest of the political structure that they're not so keen on.

[Huguenot]

Well, as with the cyclist jumping red lights and pedestrian walkways, that's fairly apparent. They're not so keen on the 'rest of it' either.

Most Brits are okay about an export market without let or hindrance (or tariffs or restrictions), but less willing to welcome an import market on the same terms ('Romanian' horsemeat blamed for local authority cuts?).

Brits are happy to regulate the quality of UK imports, but squeal against Eurocucumbers when its applied to the UK.

It's entirely possible that the UK can negotiate terms that involve getting every benefit for the UK of a free and easy export market without conforming to EU compromises, but the brutal reality is that 'free rider' principles tells us that's an empty dream.

Anyway, I didn't want to use this as an EU thread, it was just interesting how the 'free rider' principles heavily influence such a large proportion of my beliefs - forum, EU or queueing. And the rest.

[Chillaxed]

Not mutually exclusive H.

You perceive them to be 'free riders', so you 'bully' them. The theory explains the reaction, it doesn't justify it.

Huguenot Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Now, put that in context with the oft

> misinterpreted attention that particular

> individuals receive on the forum...

>

> Is it that they are 'bullied', or is it that the

> transgression upon etiquette (rules?) is perceived

> to devalue the currency of a common resource?

[Huguenot]

Nonsense, I wasn't trying to justify anything.

The forum is self regulating. If I peed off, it wouldn't change the forum.

[El Pibe]

THat is interesting, a sort of extension of tragedy of the commons and I have to say also has gut appeal to me too.

[Huguenot]

Zigakly.

Someone tell LadyD

[Chillaxed]

OK, just read like it to me [winky face]

Huguenot Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Nonsense, I wasn't trying to justify anything.

>

> The forum is self regulating. If I peed off, it

> wouldn't change the forum.

[Huguenot]

What's your point?

[Chillaxed]

Easy now H. My point was that your theory (which does appeal) explains why drivers get angry at cyclists (or forum members get angry at other forum members) but it doesn't justify a driver getting out and nutting a cyclist.

I?ve already clarified why I made this point, which was that I (mis)interpreted your post as justification for forum ?bullying?.

I?m strictly a working hours forumite so you?ve 12 minutes to respond if we?re to thrash this out [winky face]

[DaveR]

"it was just interesting how the 'free rider' principles heavily influence such a large proportion of my beliefs"

I think this is a self-fulfilling prophecy - if you believe in the theory then you are more likely to be someone who believes in, and largely adheres to, the 'mini morality' of every day co-operation, and consequently more likely to be offended by perceived free riding wherever you see it.

On the other hand, unsurprisingly, i think your analysis of the EU situation is entirely wrong - the free riders of the recent past were the weaker members of the eurozone.

[Huguenot]

Eh what DaveR?

I think I made it pretty clear that it was a forecast not a review of 'recent past'.

*padding like a sulky silverback unwinding himself from his nest, DaveR spuds his bitches, scratches his nads, scowls at the camera and makes it clear that this is HIS domain*

[????]

Alienated, stood alone, belligerent Cameron (and his many allies, not least in reform terms the Germans) just won a 3 percent reduction in the EU budget. your analysis is stuck back in 1973. the Germans are absolutely petrified of the UK leaving the EU and them alone of the big economies to fight for free trade and reform.

[????]

Anyway, interesting op, not the European bit :)

[Top Banana]

Cameron hasn't won anything yet. It has not been signed off by the EU Parliament. EU Parliament President Martin Schulz is the man with the final say. It doesn't matter what our "leaders" decide. If Schulz is against the deal, Parliament will most likely reject it.