“When you think about the mechanisms you need to induce in this setting you gotta focus a lot more attention on this person than you do on this person, because the person at the head of the stream has a larger influence than people downstream [inaudible]. So, again, not quite the same as just rotating cattle on the common, and also, not the same as harvesting lobster. So, the particulars matter. In each one of these cases, Hence Ostrom says no panacea. So what we’ve seen in this simple lecture is that we can write down these mathematical models and say, here’s a collective action problem, here’s a common pool resource problem, here’s a prisoner’s dilemma. And by bringing that model to bear in a real life situation, we identify the nature of the problem. Once we’ve identified the nature of the problem, then we can use our expertise at a particular situation, embrace the particulars, take thicker descriptions of what’s going on and then construct institutions and incentives that help us solve those problems. Overcome the collective action problem; solve the common pool resource problem, get cooperation in the prisoner’s dilemma. “- Transcript from Scott Page Coursera
Source:
Scott Page Model Thinking MOOC Course
