The Rise of Flourishing Societies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Rose
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Social Trust ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Good Problem

This chapter explains how societies can climb a development ladder whereby each step leads to a larger set of transactions through which to increase the value of output per capita. Each step higher is harder because each step adds transactions that require higher levels of social trust. The problem is that many of the benefits of climbing the ladder are realized at the level of society as a whole, so individual adults and individual parents have much to gain by conserving on their own resources while allowing everyone else in society to invest into the inculcation of the required moral beliefs to produce a high-trust society. There is a public good problem associated with investing enough to best promote the common good. This problem is particularly daunting for the kind of moral beliefs required to produce trustworthy individuals and it worsens with societal success.

scholarly journals Avoiding or restricting defectors in public goods games?

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (103) ◽  
pp. 20141203 ◽  
Author(s):  
The Anh Han ◽  
Luís Moniz Pereira ◽  
Tom Lenaerts
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Full Agreement ◽  
Group Interactions ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Public Goods Games ◽  
The Common ◽  
Strategic Solution

When creating a public good, strategies or mechanisms are required to handle defectors. We first show mathematically and numerically that prior agreements with posterior compensations provide a strategic solution that leads to substantial levels of cooperation in the context of public goods games, results that are corroborated by available experimental data. Notwithstanding this success, one cannot, as with other approaches, fully exclude the presence of defectors, raising the question of how they can be dealt with to avoid the demise of the common good. We show that both avoiding creation of the common good, whenever full agreement is not reached, and limiting the benefit that disagreeing defectors can acquire, using costly restriction mechanisms, are relevant choices. Nonetheless, restriction mechanisms are found the more favourable, especially in larger group interactions. Given decreasing restriction costs, introducing restraining measures to cope with public goods free-riding issues is the ultimate advantageous solution for all participants, rather than avoiding its creation.

Making ‘Science as a Public Good’ Meaningful

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 70-73
Author(s):  
Steve Fuller ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Knowledge System ◽  
Georg Simmel ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
Reliable Knowledge

I respond to the challenging comments of Nico Stehr, Stephen Turner and Raphael Sassower to my own article on the sense in which science can be regarded as a ‘public good’. I agree with Stehr that this conceptualization brings various hazards that are exacerbated with increasing democratization of the knowledge system. Here I elaborate on an astute remark he raises from Georg Simmel. Based on a historically well informed account, Turner takes a more ‘demystified’ view of science as a public good, ultimately seeing it as corresponding to John Ziman’s idea of ‘reliable knowledge’. For his part, Sassower pursues a more ‘transcendental’ approach about knowledge being in the ‘common good’, while admitting that it is an aspiration rather than a reality.

Why Culture Matters Most

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Rose
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Large Group ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Group Cooperation ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Common ◽  
Persistent Poverty ◽  
The Stability

A society’s culture can lock in beliefs and practices that inevitably produce persistent poverty and tyranny. But a society’s culture can also provide a foundation for maximizing general prosperity and freedom to produce mass flourishing. This book explains why culture—not genes, geography, institutions, or policies—is therefore what ultimately explains the differential success of societies. In short, when certain kinds of moral beliefs are culturally transmitted, a society can overcome the most fundamental obstacle to societal success: rational self-interest undermining the common good. General prosperity requires large-group cooperation, and the most effective large-group cooperation requires having a high-trust society. This book explains why the larger a society is, the more difficult it is to sustain a high-trust society. At the same time, the larger societies become, the more likely rational self-interest and tribalism will undermine crucial but highly trust-dependent institutions like democratic voting and a free press. This book shows how culture uniquely addresses this problem by aligning individual interests with the common good when specific kinds of moral beliefs are strongly held by most people. Culture also matters instrumentally because childhood instruction, a hallmark of culture, helps overcome the irrationality of adult individuals choosing to have moral beliefs that they know will limit their ability to promote their own welfare at the expense of the common good in the future. The analysis has surprising implications for the family, religion, government, and the stability of Western free market democracies.

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