Hmm, I agree with your overall description - I believe economist describe problems of this sort as externalities[1]. The example of externalities that comes t

Hmm, I agree with your overall description - I believe economist describe problems of this sort as externalities[1]. The example of externalities that comes to mind is shipping companies running absurdly large ships to shave margins and so being concerned that their behemoth might lodge in the Suez Canal and disrupt much of world trade. IE, producers not being concerned about the larger impact of their decisions. But your example leaves me scratching my head. My impression is that cloud providers effectively selling CPU cycles by the dollar. There must be some pricing tradeoff for fast versus slow cycles. If a cloud provider can sell 20 throttled instances cheaper than 17 unthrottled instances, that's a deal that might suit buyer and seller. But maybe there's something I'd missing here. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality