Title: The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups by Mancur Olson
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The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups
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Content: it might be Americans, or White people, or Christians, or Red Sox fans, or economists, or University of Michigan alumni; and indeed most people will identify in varying degrees with many different groups at once—and much of the conflict in our lives comes from being torn between such identifications. ( The rest probably comes from conflict between the groups we identify with and that one special group that contains only ourselves.) Actually, even neoclassicists have been forced to accept the most extreme examples: They speak of "households" and "firms" as though they were indivisible entities, even though a household contains several individuals and a firm may literally contain millions. Why does this work? Because they are indivisible, at least in terms of their tendency to act in their own self-interest. A corporation is far more likely to act in its own self-interest than any individual human being would be. Households are also not strictly selfish, but they are at least close to it sometimes; whereas, anyone who would stop feeding their own child because they ceased to be amusing we would all immediately and rightfully recognize as a horrible and defective human being. (