The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups is a book by Mancur Olson Jr. published in 1965. It develops a theory of political science and economics of concentrated benefits versus diffuse costs. Its central argument is that concentrated minor interests will be overrepresented and diffuse majority interests trumped, due to a free-rider problem that is stronger when a group becomes larger. Overview The book challenged accepted wisdom in Olson's day that: if everyone in a group (of any size) has interests in common, then they will act collectively to achieve them; and in a democracy, the greatest concern is that the majority will tyrannize and exploit the minority. The book argues instead that individuals in any group attempting collective action will have incentives to "free ride" on the efforts of others if the group is working to provide public goods. Individuals will not "free ride" in groups that provide benefits only to active participants. Pure public goods are goods that are non-excludable (i.e. one person cannot reasonably prevent another from consuming the good) and non-rivalrous (one person's consumption of the good does not affect another's, nor vice versa). Hence, without selective incentives to motivate participation, collective action is unlikely to occur even when large groups of people with common interests exist. The book noted that large groups will face relatively high costs when attempting to organize for collective action while small groups will face relatively low costs, and individuals in large groups will gain less per capita of successful collective action. Hence, in the absence of selective incentives, the incentive for group action diminishes as group size increases, so that large groups are less able to act in their common interest than small ones. The book concludes that, not only is collective action by large groups difficult to achieve even when they have interests in common, but situations could occur where the minority (bound together by concentrated selective incentives) can dominate the majority. Critique Olson's original logic of collective action has received several critiques, based either on a different interpretation of the observations on minority interest representation, or on a disagreement on the degree of concentrated interest representation. Information asymmetry Lohmann agrees with puzzling observations made by Olson, which she classifies as economic and political puzzles. Economic puzzles are cases of general welfare loss in favour of a minority benefit which is smaller in sum.