This note is a part of my Zettelkasten. What is below might not be complete or accurate. It
is also likely to change often.
A Collective Action Problem (poetically dubbed the Moloch problem) is defined as a problem associated with collective action, where individual incentives misalign with globally optimal outcomes.
This is a situation where a solving a problem for a system will cause better outcome for everyone on average but its in nobody's individual interest to work for that change since the benefit to the individual is not proportional.
“Imagine a country with two rules: first, every person must spend eight hours a day giving themselves strong electric shocks. Second, if anyone fails to follow a rule (including this one), or speaks out against it, or fails to enforce it, all citizens must unite to kill that person. Suppose these rules were well-enough established by tradition that everyone expected them to be enforced.”
- Scott Alexander
This leads to a situation where nobody works on the problem and the problem doesnt get solved.
This is complemantary to the Tragedy of the commons problem.
Examples: