[GhettoComputers]

I don't know if its related, but I think of taxes. It may be rational for one person to not pay taxes, but if everyone was "rational" it would be disastrous for society.

> (In my mind Hayek is the person most associated with distributed knowledge.)

Why do you say that? What does it mean? I think of the internet, but not a person, I always thought of him as a free market economist. When I think of individual and society, I think of Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents where the individual can never be free.

[cortesoft]

I think you are talking about the problem of Collective Action and the Free Rider problem... I think they are a little different, because those are situations about needing to cooperate for the best outcome, but having no way to enforce cooperation while having individual incentives to not cooperate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-rider_problem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem

[GhettoComputers]

Yes that is it! Thanks!

[chii]

> may be rational for one person to not pay taxes

it's rational to pay the lowest tax you can legally get away with, but not to evade taxes illegally especially if the chance of getting caught is high (as would be in a digital world where records of transactions are stored and analyzed). Much easier in a cash based society - case in point the Greek economy has a lot of tax evasion, and thus their gov't revenue shortfalls consistently.

[GhettoComputers]

Hypothetically it’s all cash based. It’s the tragedy of the commons. What is rational in isolation is not overall like pollution.