[arjie]

Eh? It looks like they turned it on for the Ankara blasts[0].

Anyway, the whole thing reminds me of the NPR bit about "The Cost of Free"[1]. People's expectations rapidly change once you offer some of them something. While the main lesson in that story is about charging after offering something for free for many years, there's the second lesson: the reason it was made free was that the Brits were upset that the Americans got free doughnuts.

Afterwards, no one got free doughnuts. It's funny. Something that seems clearly like a Pareto improvement ends up not being one because of people's opinions of perceived privilege.

0: https://www.facebook.com/sheryl/posts/10156585333855177

1: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-c...

[IkmoIkmo]

There's a very popular experiment that goes a bit like this. You and another person must share $100. You get to pick the distribution, the other gets to accept or reject. You get one choice.

If you pick say $50 each, the other person tends to always accept. If you give him more, he'll accept too. But what if you give yourself $75, and the other $25?

If he rejects it, you both get nothing. Turns out, at certain levels (cant remember where), people tend to reject.

Which is interesting, because every non-0 figure is a benefit to you. If you get $5 and the other $95, why reject it? You'd get nothing. It's a one-time experiment, you're basically rejecting free money.

It turns out that the other guy getting $95 and 'screwing you', is so bad, that you'd rather reject free money than for him to get more than he 'deserves'.

Now if this was your enemy, or say someone close to you, sure. But this experiment holds with complete strangers you don't see and will never meet. The notion that someone gets more than you, when normal moral notions suppose you deserve an equal amount, incites people to be vengeful even at the cost of free money.

[RobertoG]

I think that there is a good explanation for that emotional reaction.

We have not evolved in an environment where you interact with "complete strangers you don't see and will never meet". So, you can't allow others take the upper hand on you too much. That is even more true if third parties are observing the interaction.

You can see the same, for instance, in how pub fights start for the most stupid reasons. Even if is a big city and they will never meet again, they can't just leave it alone because when our brain was programmed it was not going to be only an interaction. And if your friends, or god forbid, attractive women are present, then the contenders are trapped in the situation.

[jsprogrammer]

There is no such thing as free money.