[wat10000]

Because if I do that, I lose my vacation and I don’t gain a local store full of people I know and trust.

Collective action problems aren’t solved by individually performing the action, and therefore the fact that people aren’t doing it doesn’t show they don’t want it.

[ryandrake]

> Collective action problems aren’t solved by individually performing the action

This is a truth that a lot of the west, particularly Americans, struggle to accept. We keep trying "the free market and individual incentives must solve all problems" over and over, and fail over and over.

Huge problems require collective action to solve. Collective action requires good coordination, strong institutions, leadership, and most importantly, the societal willingness to not always optimize for the individual's freedom/desires/expectations. None of these are currently present in America.

[wat10000]

It's a very attractive idea. It gives you an immediate counterargument (people must prefer it this way because they're all doing it), and gives you the satisfaction of calling the other person a hypocrite (you think it's better yet you aren't doing it).

I've lost count of how many times I've had someone tell me, "If you think you should pay more taxes, you can always send the IRS some extra cash."

[olelele]

Thank you

[DFHippie]

Any problem with externalized costs or benefits is a collective action problem. You get a benefit everyone pays for or you incur a cost which everyone pays. The individual incentive is to freeload on the resources of others. It is functionally theft.

Regulation and other government actions can solve these problems by internalizing these costs/benefits. Any solution to these problems involves collective control of individual actions, which is to say, government at some scale.

There is some irony in the people who say "taxation is theft" ignoring the theft of the commons counteracted by taxation and the government services it supports.

[wat10000]

"Pollution is theft" would be a nice way to put the libertarian case for environmental regulation, but it doesn't have quite the same ring to it.