Solutions to the Social Dilemma of Free Riding

Our class topic on free riding and public goods interested me because it just seemed so unfair. Why do some people in collective action do the right thing and some people just free ride on other people’s efforts? There are many different solutions to this social dilemma of free riding but they all do not seem to solve the problem that well. In this article written by Leon Felkins http://www.perspicuity.net/sd/sd.html, he states various solutions to this social dilemma. Firstly, he talks about morality and how we should build a community with a strong set of morals and values. Secondly, he suggests government as a force to control us. Thirdly, he goes on to say how religion can be a solution, however, it only assumes that the cooperation will result in a greater good for everyone. Lastly, he talks about privatization and metering. He says that privatization can sometimes be successful to solve the problem but not every public good can be privatized. Good examples of privatization working well is with toll roads and the metering of the usage of water so that the people who use it more will be charged more and this will hopefully also, keep people from wasting water. In my opinion, I think that morality is the only answer to solving this social dilemma of free riding. When an individual is in a large group they will naturally reason that his/her own actions will make no serious impact on the group. For example, this is just like voting and thinking that your vote won’t make a difference. If no one voted we would have a huge problem. Another good example is applauding for a performance. We all know that it would not matter that much if we did not contribute to the applauding, however, if everyone thought this way we would have no applauding at all. Therefore, if everyone acts rationally the public good would just disappear. The only answer I can agree with is trying to maintain and build a just and moral society. However,in order for this to work all the members of the group must be very honest and trustworthy. As a society we should focus mainly on raising children to become individuals with strong moral values. I don’t think that religion, government or privatization can necessarily solve these problems. Sure, privatization works with some public goods but it can result in a loss of economic efficiency. For example, what if we all had to build our own roads or just do everything by ourselves. This would not work! We would all be losing out. I think we can only privatize to a certain extent. Another problem with privatization is the enforcement of contracts. What if we have arguments about the usage and property. Moreover, government does not seem to work either. Government just ends up worsening the situation instead of solving it. I agree with Leon Felkins when he said that “supplying a new set of rules is the equivalent of providing another public good, the problem faced by a set of principals is that obtaining these new rules is a second-order collective dilemma.” In other words, that if the government is to solve the social dilemma, then the government which is a public good itself will create a new social dilemma possibly much worse than the original party? What do we do then? Lastly, I do not think that religion works either. Religion may work well at bringing people together and getting cooperation, however, what usually needs to happen to get it this to work is a lot of cheating, fear and manipulation. Therefore, we can see how there is no easy solution to the social dilemma of free riding. The only way to solve this problem is just to simply build a more moral society and hope for the best.