Talk:Free rider problem

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Question: are the Free rider problem and the tragedy of the commons really the same thing?

I understand that free riding occurs with Public goods, where the people who benefit from a good have insufficient incentive to pay money towards its creation, thus resulting in underproduction of the good. Note: it is unusual for rational agents to pay no money towards public goods - especially when the pool of potential consumers is small. Thus, the correct term may be the Easy rider problem.

The tragedy of the commons, OTOH, occurs when some limited (ie, rivalrous) good is open to all (ie, non-excluable). These are often called Common pool resources. In this situation, each individual will take more of the resource than is socially desirable.

The easy rider problem thus applies to information goods, for example, while the tragedy of the commons applies to a fish supply. The phenomena seem related, but not the same.

Pde 05:55 Jan 23, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Merge into public good

I've tagged this article to merge into public good, as any discussion of free riders should probably include public goods to be well understood, and vice versa. There's also more on free riders at the public good article than there is here. Scott Ritchie 21:51, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

They should definately not be merged, they are two seperate terms for different things (of course closely related though). Maybe we could consider moving material on the free rider problem from the public good article to this one, I think that would be a much more satisfactory solution. thanks Martin 10:39, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

When do you have free riders and not a public good, i.e. a positive externality? Scott Ritchie 03:04, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I know what you mean, but the free rider problem is something associated with public goods, they are not the same thing. Martin 09:51, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Just because they're not the same thing doesn't mean it isn't more useful to the reader to have them in the same article. These two topics seem like things best explained together - that's even what the articles do already. Perhaps more relevant, they're both a bit short at the moment, particularly the free rider problem article. However, you may be right if the public good article gets long enough: Wikipedia:Guide_to_writing_better_articles#Articles_covering_subtopics notes that sub articles should be formed when the parent article gets too long - it's just not there yet. Scott Ritchie 04:26, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

These article should not be merged, imho. Free rider problems deserve a separate entry. It is of course, however, only natural that the article includes a cross-reference to the more general discussion under public good. Popular concepts such as this should have a seperate article, so that users are not forced to look for an easy explanation of the concept in a larger, multi-topical article. I have removed the tag --Thorsen 07:42, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problem with example

"The result is that it is possible no system will be installed, an example of market failure."

As written, this is not an example of market failure, as it assumes that the utility of the scheme is $2,500. If several people decline to contribute $100 they may well be acting rationally. In which case this is a market success.

I have made slight modifications to the example to clarify it against this point.