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This is self conflicting. You take "human selfishness is the deepest of truths" as a mere assumption, then you say "we need to transcend our base natures". Hum

This is self conflicting. You take "human selfishness is the deepest of truths" as a mere assumption, then you say "we need to transcend our base natures". Human selfishness IS nature. It is not just about humans either, all evolution is guided by environment (resource availability). For anything else you need ALL people to NOT be selfish, only some being altruistic does not cut it. Your only other option is to punish selfishness, but then you will ban progress. If most people don't create the balloon.txt file, BUT, there is no punishment for creating one, then if I believe I have a good idea and that I DESERVE more resources to pursue it, I'll create a nice big balloon.txt file. Your only option is to punish me for doing so. I would not want to live in a world where people are punished for trying to gather resources to make things that most other people won't. Some people have bright ideas, and they need resources to pursue them. Most people don't have many ideas and they don't want to do anything. If you prevent the means of passionate people to gather big resources to do big things, and want to live in a zero entropy world where everything is equal (made sure through the use of force / punishment, which will eventually be corrupt, because by definition punishers can't be equals to others) and nothing moves because of it, keep dreaming. It is not even scary because that literally cannot happen.

nybble41 6y ago
The way to resolve this particular tragedy of the commons, like most other such cases, is to privatize the commons: make people pay for the disk space they use. If you want a nice big balloon.txt file to reserve space for the future, fine, but you're paying for the space you reserved. How you use it is up to you. In return, the administrators get both the money and incentive they need to buy more storage capacity, ensuring that running out of available space will be less of a concern.

nybble41 6y ago

The way to resolve this particular tragedy of the commons, like most other such cases, is to privatize the commons: make people pay for the disk space they use. If you want a nice big balloon.txt file to reserve space for the future, fine, but you're paying for the space you reserved. How you use it is up to you. In return, the administrators get both the money and incentive they need to buy more storage capacity, ensuring that running out of available space will be less of a concern.