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This reminds me of something from Sam Bowles's "Microeconomics": Like the overnight train that left me in an empty field some distance from the settlement, the
by chrismealy 9y ago
This reminds me of something from Sam Bowles's "Microeconomics":
Like the overnight train that left me in an empty field some distance from the settlement, the process of economic development has for the most part bypassed the two hundred or so families that make up the village of Palanpur. They have remained poor, even by Indian standards: less than a third of the adults are literate, and most have endured the loss of a child to malnutrition or to illnesses that are long forgotten in other parts of the world. But for the occasional wristwatch, bicycle, or irrigation pump, Palanpur appears to be a timeless backwater, untouched by India’s cutting edge software industry and booming agricultural regions. Seeking to understand why, I approached a sharecropper and his three daughters weeding a small plot. The conversation eventually turned to the fact that Palanpur farmers sow their winter crops several weeks after the date at which yields would be maximized. The farmers do not doubt that earlier planting would give them larger harvests, but no one the farmer explained, is willing to be the first to plant, as the seeds on any lone plot would be quickly eaten by birds. I asked if a large group of farmers, perhaps relatives, had ever agreed to sow earlier, all planting on the same day to minimize losses. “If we knew how to do that,” he said, looking up from his hoe at me, “we would not be poor.”
- std_throwaway 9y agoThis is how visitors from other planets look at us in regard to resource distribution on earth and space exploration.
- api 9y agoGame theory should be taught in high school.
- chongli 9y agoIf we discover that aliens actually exist and present an existential risk then the game will change. We'll effectively be drafted into team Earth.
- raymondh 9y agoSo, your prediction for Game of Thrones is that the White Walkers will bring about peace and unity to the competing factions of the Seven Kingdoms ;-)
- ferongr 9y agoThe "aliens watching us" meme is overused and tiring to see. The aliens could actually be unable to perceive their existence. Or their civilization could be an ancap paradise/nightmare. Or a an authoritarian, communist dystopia. Or they could be nuanced enough to understand why things ended up happening the way they do.
- rusk 9y agoWhatever it is they are however, they're doubtless more advanced if it's they watching us.
- anigbrowl 9y agoThe key takeaway from that is the difficulty of social organization. The first proponent of early sowing will be viewed as seeking to gain some private advantage precisely because poverty creates an economic incentive to maximize private advantage. Some open source proponents overcame this reluctance in the 1980s with the Stone Soup metaphor.
- andai 9y agoCould you please expand a little on the open source / stone soup metaphor part? I couldn't find anything on Google.
- aurelianito 9y agoThe stone soup is explained in wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup
- andai 9y agoThanks. I read that before I posted my comment but there's nothing about stone soup / open source there (or on Google afaict), so I thought I was missing something specific.
- icc97 9y agoThat wikipedia article does contain this: > Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup a computer game which expanded on an abandoned project using contributions from many different coders;
- anigbrowl 9y agoIt was part of the original documentation for Fractint - software for generating Mandelbrot and Julia sets, substantially expanded later on - which was many people's first exposure to the concept of open source. GNU was already operational but ineffective, which was why Linux (which was more focused on something that worked and less on maintaining ideological purity) took off like a rocket shortly after Linus released it.
- SagelyGuru 9y agoThat story makes no sense. If those farmers of Palanpur can not agree to plant all together at the right time, how come they manage it several weeks later, or ever?
- comicjk 9y agoAt some point, the individual losses from planting later become larger than the losses from birds. Then somebody plants, and then they all do. The first farmer to plant loses more to birds than everyone else, but less than he would by delaying more.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- __Joker 9y agoAlso, I think their will be time limit. Like you have to sow in a week or you loose the window for the winter corp. And you know everybody will sow in that last weeks. I think there is some game theory around this.