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One individual catching one more fish from a pond since there is fish in the pond would lead there to be less fish in the pond for the individual over time. On
by tunesmith 10y ago
One individual catching one more fish from a pond since there is fish in the pond would lead there to be less fish in the pond for the individual over time.
One individual choosing to simply not catch the one more fish (choosing to not drive the additional road) would make no difference because other people would take the fish/road.
Regulating overfishing (removing the road) leads to more fish for every individual over time (leads to better traffic times for everyone).
- jon_richards 10y agoI don't like the fishing to driving analogy. It's easy to see that regulation can lead to more total fish extracted from the ocean, but I'm having a hard time imagining an instance of this paradox for driving that isn't a consequence of fewer overall divers (or weird effects at intersections).
- stale2002 10y agoExactly, this paradox is basically nonsense. There isn't any situations where this would happen, beyond some made-up math extreme edge cases.
- jon_richards 10y agoI can see it happening quite easily in the real world if you do something like close a little shortcut that gets back on the main road via a light that only ever changes when it detects a car on the shortcut, but that's an intersection effect, which I don't think the paradox is focusing on.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- grkvlt 10y agoApart from the cited situations mentioned in the article, you mean, like: > In Seoul, South Korea, a speeding up in traffic around the city was seen when a motorway was removed as part of the Cheonggyecheon restoration project. It also mentions Stuttgart, New York City, Boston, and London.
- jon_richards 10y agoA few of those examples admit that a large number of vehicles "disappeared", which brings the others into doubt. I'd be much more interested in examples where the total traffic volume was confirmed to remain the same, but traffic conditions still improved.
- boomboomsubban 10y agoWouldn't cars "dissapearing" be a sign that people have decided the quickest route to take involves not taking a car? How does that cast doubt on the data?
- beobab 10y agoOr lift-sharing?
- tarikjn 10y agoYour example misses some variable. Here is a better example: regulate fishing in an area where fishing is expensive. Prices go up. More fish flock to areas where fishing is done at an industrial cost-effective scale, more fish is extracted at a lower cost and re-imported, resulting in a permanent increase in extraction. It's obviously more complicated in the real world as it misses some economic and biospheric mechanics, but it gives a starting thinking exercise.