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This is like saying it's rude to choose not to give all your money to charity - after all, that too is a choice that is only justified by benefitting the would-

This is like saying it's rude to choose not to give all your money to charity - after all, that too is a choice that is only justified by benefitting the would-be giver. Doing what you want with the resources available to you is a perfectly valid choice within any system - unless there was a corporate decree saying you can only use so many Tejava bottles, that person's not doing anything problematic. Their behaviour may be an inconvenience to other people, but that behaviour itself is not the root cause behind the inconvenience. The short supply in the office is an artificial constraint, and could easily be increased at nominal cost, which the bottle taker rightly points out.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
You miss the point of the author. "Doing what you want with the resources available to you is a perfectly valid choice within any system" isn't valid social behavior when resources are constrained. That's how societies fail. This is called "tragedy of the commons", which author explicitly references. Sure, in this case the company could easily increase the amount of resources at little cost. Then again, said person may then start taking a dozen bottles home, because they've already displayed antisocial behavior. There are two separate problems here: one is unnecessarily constrained resources. Second is a person who defects instead of cooperating when faced with resource constraint.
- AkshatM 7y ago
  This is a good point. I hadn't considered it from that angle, and I hadn't understood the significance of the "tragedy of the commons" remark. In my original answer, I had talked about how choosing not to give money to charity is a valid choice. It seems to me this is similar to choosing not to cooperate when money is a resource constraint, and my conclusion there was that defection is perfectly alright. However, your argument would mean that defection wouldn't be the valid choice in this case, so I'm interested in understanding this discrepancy/my error. Under what circumstances would you say is defection valid?
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    I'd say: only when the goal people are trying to coordinate around is something you consider invalid or wrong, so you want to shut it all down. I think the difference between the microkitchen case and charity case is that in the former, you're using a scarce shared resource, whereas in the latter, you own the resources and choose what to use them for. It's a social norm that when shared resources are scarce, everyone gets to take a fair share of them[0], and if you try to take more than it's fair, you're defecting and considered a bad actor (a "freeloader"). It's also a social norm that the wealth you own is for you to spend as you wish. Charities are considered optional spending, which is why no one can demand or should try to shame you into donating. Contrast that with taxes, which are non-optional. Not donating to charity isn't defecting, because there's no cooperative situation happening. Not paying taxes would be defecting, because there's a social (and legal) expectation that everyone should contribute to the shared pool of money that buys public services. -- [0] - For some definition of "fair". The Schelling point, when there's nothing suggesting a fairer split, is that "everyone gets the same amount". Unequal splits can happen too, if that ends up benefiting everyone more.
    - jevgeni 7y ago
      These are very good points. The beverages in the microkitchen are a public good not your own property. Hence it’s not the same as “not donating to charity” as you’ve so well described. I’d also add (leaving any empathy questions aside), that behaving in a solely egoistic, yet “lawful” way is still a bad strategy in mid- to long-term. Even if its utility in the short term seems great. The problem here is that you would be playing a zero-sum game, when everyone else is playing a positive-sum game. Meaning you would be constantly choosing a suboptimal strategy making the most optimal choice for other players to cooperate against you until you are out of the game.
    - AkshatM 7y ago
      Thanks for the response. This helped tremendously. I've been fairly engrossed recently in readings on moral relativism, in an attempt to understand what ethical behaviour might look like without the influence of social norms. Your response made me realize I've been forgetting to take off my academic hat - I should be evaluating this from the perspective of the society I'm currently in right now. Thanks for the reminder to go speak to actual humans again :)

TeMPOraL 7y ago

You miss the point of the author. "Doing what you want with the resources available to you is a perfectly valid choice within any system" isn't valid social behavior when resources are constrained. That's how societies fail. This is called "tragedy of the commons", which author explicitly references. Sure, in this case the company could easily increase the amount of resources at little cost. Then again, said person may then start taking a dozen bottles home, because they've already displayed antisocial behavior. There are two separate problems here: one is unnecessarily constrained resources. Second is a person who defects instead of cooperating when faced with resource constraint.

AkshatM 7y ago
This is a good point. I hadn't considered it from that angle, and I hadn't understood the significance of the "tragedy of the commons" remark. In my original answer, I had talked about how choosing not to give money to charity is a valid choice. It seems to me this is similar to choosing not to cooperate when money is a resource constraint, and my conclusion there was that defection is perfectly alright. However, your argument would mean that defection wouldn't be the valid choice in this case, so I'm interested in understanding this discrepancy/my error. Under what circumstances would you say is defection valid?
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  I'd say: only when the goal people are trying to coordinate around is something you consider invalid or wrong, so you want to shut it all down. I think the difference between the microkitchen case and charity case is that in the former, you're using a scarce shared resource, whereas in the latter, you own the resources and choose what to use them for. It's a social norm that when shared resources are scarce, everyone gets to take a fair share of them[0], and if you try to take more than it's fair, you're defecting and considered a bad actor (a "freeloader"). It's also a social norm that the wealth you own is for you to spend as you wish. Charities are considered optional spending, which is why no one can demand or should try to shame you into donating. Contrast that with taxes, which are non-optional. Not donating to charity isn't defecting, because there's no cooperative situation happening. Not paying taxes would be defecting, because there's a social (and legal) expectation that everyone should contribute to the shared pool of money that buys public services. -- [0] - For some definition of "fair". The Schelling point, when there's nothing suggesting a fairer split, is that "everyone gets the same amount". Unequal splits can happen too, if that ends up benefiting everyone more.
  - jevgeni 7y ago
    These are very good points. The beverages in the microkitchen are a public good not your own property. Hence it’s not the same as “not donating to charity” as you’ve so well described. I’d also add (leaving any empathy questions aside), that behaving in a solely egoistic, yet “lawful” way is still a bad strategy in mid- to long-term. Even if its utility in the short term seems great. The problem here is that you would be playing a zero-sum game, when everyone else is playing a positive-sum game. Meaning you would be constantly choosing a suboptimal strategy making the most optimal choice for other players to cooperate against you until you are out of the game.
  - AkshatM 7y ago
    Thanks for the response. This helped tremendously. I've been fairly engrossed recently in readings on moral relativism, in an attempt to understand what ethical behaviour might look like without the influence of social norms. Your response made me realize I've been forgetting to take off my academic hat - I should be evaluating this from the perspective of the society I'm currently in right now. Thanks for the reminder to go speak to actual humans again :)