Tyranny of small decisions
Encyclopedia
The tyranny of small decisions refers to a phenomenon explored in an essay by that name, published in 1966 by the American economist Alfred E. Kahn
. The article describes a situation where a number of decisions, individually small in size and time perspective, cumulatively result in an outcome which is not optimal or desired. It is a situation where a series of small, individually rational decisions can negatively change the context of subsequent choices, even to the point where desired alternatives are irreversibly destroyed. Kahn described the problem as a common issue in market economics which can lead to market failure
. The concept has since been extended to areas other than economic ones, such as environmental degradation
, political elections and health outcomes.
A classic example of the tyranny of small decisions is the tragedy of the commons
, described by Garrett Hardin
in 1968 as a situation where a number of herders graze cows on a commons. The herders each act independently in what they perceive to be their own rational self-interest, ultimately depleting their shared limited resource, even though it is clear that it is not in any herder's long-term interest for this to happen.
The event that first suggested the tyranny of small decisions to Kahn was the withdrawal of passenger railway services in Ithaca, New York
. The railway was the only reliable way to get in and out of Ithaca. It provided services regardless of conditions, in fair weather and foul, during peak seasons and off-peak seasons. The local airline and bus company skimmed the traffic when conditions were favourable, leaving the trains to fill in when conditions were difficult. The railway service was eventually withdrawn, because the collective individual decisions made by travellers did not provide the railway with the revenue it needed to cover its incremental costs. According to Kahn, this suggests a hypothetical economic test of whether the service should have been withdrawn.
The failure to reflect the full value to passengers of keeping the railroad service available had its origins in the discrepancy between the time perception within which the travellers were operating, and the time perception within which the railroad was operating. The travellers were making many short term decisions, deciding each particular trip whether to go by the railroad, or whether to go instead by car, bus or the local airline. Based on the cumulative effects of these small decisions, the railroad was making one major long run decision, "virtually all-or-nothing and once-and-for-all"; whether to retain or abandon its passenger service. Taken one at a time, each small travel decision made individually by the travellers had a negligible impact on the survivability of the railroad. It would not have been rational for a traveller to consider the survival of the railroad imperilled by any one of his particular decisions.
(ca. 460 BC-ca. 395 BC) stated:
Aristotle
(384-322 BC) similarly argued against common goods of the polis
of Athens
:
Odum cites, as an example, the marshlands along the coasts of Connecticut and Massachusetts. Between 1950 and 1970, almost 50 percent of these marshlands were destroyed. This was not purposely planned, and the public may well have supported preservation had they been asked. Instead, hundreds of small tracts of marshland were converted to other purposes through hundreds of small decisions, resulting in a major outcome without the overall issue ever being directly addressed.
Another example is the Florida Everglades. These have been threatened, not by a single unfavorable decision, but by many independent pin prick decisions, such as decisions to add this well, that drainage canal, one more retirement village, another roadway... No explicit decision was made to restrict the flow of surface water into the glades, or to encourage hot, destructive fires and intensify droughts, yet this has been the outcome.
With few exceptions, threatened
and endangered species
owe their predicament to series of small decisions. Polar bear
s, humpback whale
s and bald eagle
s have suffered from the cumulative effects of single decisions to overexploit or convert habitats. The removal, one by one, of green turtle nesting beaches for other uses parallels the decline in green turtle populations.
Cultural lake eutrophication
is rarely the result of an intentional decision. Instead, lakes eutrophy gradually as a cumulative effect of small decisions; the addition of this domestic sewage outfall and then that industrial outfall, with a runoff that increases steadily as this housing development is added, then that highway and some more agricultural fields. The insidious effects of small decisions marches on; productive land turns to desert
, groundwater resources are overexploited
to the point where they can't recover, persistent pesticides are used and tropical forests are cleared without factoring in the cumulative consequences.
Odum advocates that at least some scientists should study systems so the negative consequences that result when many small decisions are made from a limited perspective can be avoided. There is a similar need for politicians and planners to understand large scale perspectives. Environmental science teachers should include large scale processes in their courses, with examples of the problems that decision making at inappropriate levels can introduce.
Alfred E. Kahn
Alfred Edward Kahn was an American professor, an expert in regulation and deregulation, and an important influence in the deregulation of the airline and energy industries...
. The article describes a situation where a number of decisions, individually small in size and time perspective, cumulatively result in an outcome which is not optimal or desired. It is a situation where a series of small, individually rational decisions can negatively change the context of subsequent choices, even to the point where desired alternatives are irreversibly destroyed. Kahn described the problem as a common issue in market economics which can lead to market failure
Market failure
Market failure is a concept within economic theory wherein the allocation of goods and services by a free market is not efficient. That is, there exists another conceivable outcome where a market participant may be made better-off without making someone else worse-off...
. The concept has since been extended to areas other than economic ones, such as environmental degradation
Environmental degradation
Environmental degradation is the deterioration of the environment through depletion of resources such as air, water and soil; the destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of wildlife...
, political elections and health outcomes.
A classic example of the tyranny of small decisions is the tragedy of the commons
Tragedy of the commons
The tragedy of the commons is a dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource, even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this...
, described by Garrett Hardin
Garrett Hardin
Garrett James Hardin was an American ecologist who warned of the dangers of overpopulation and whose concept of the tragedy of the commons brought attention to "the damage that innocent actions by individuals can inflict on the environment"...
in 1968 as a situation where a number of herders graze cows on a commons. The herders each act independently in what they perceive to be their own rational self-interest, ultimately depleting their shared limited resource, even though it is clear that it is not in any herder's long-term interest for this to happen.
The Ithaca railroad
Ithaca, New York
The city of Ithaca, is a city in upstate New York and the county seat of Tompkins County, as well as the largest community in the Ithaca-Tompkins County metropolitan area...
. The railway was the only reliable way to get in and out of Ithaca. It provided services regardless of conditions, in fair weather and foul, during peak seasons and off-peak seasons. The local airline and bus company skimmed the traffic when conditions were favourable, leaving the trains to fill in when conditions were difficult. The railway service was eventually withdrawn, because the collective individual decisions made by travellers did not provide the railway with the revenue it needed to cover its incremental costs. According to Kahn, this suggests a hypothetical economic test of whether the service should have been withdrawn.
Suppose each person in the cities served were to ask himself how much he would have been willing to pledge regularly over some time period, say annually, by purchase of prepaid tickets, to keep rail passenger service available to his community. As long as the amount that he would have declared (to himself) would have exceeded what he actually paid on the period–and my own introspective experiment shows that it would–then to that extent the disappearance of the passenger service was an incident of market failure.
The failure to reflect the full value to passengers of keeping the railroad service available had its origins in the discrepancy between the time perception within which the travellers were operating, and the time perception within which the railroad was operating. The travellers were making many short term decisions, deciding each particular trip whether to go by the railroad, or whether to go instead by car, bus or the local airline. Based on the cumulative effects of these small decisions, the railroad was making one major long run decision, "virtually all-or-nothing and once-and-for-all"; whether to retain or abandon its passenger service. Taken one at a time, each small travel decision made individually by the travellers had a negligible impact on the survivability of the railroad. It would not have been rational for a traveller to consider the survival of the railroad imperilled by any one of his particular decisions.
The fact remains that each selection of x over y constitutes also a vote for eliminating the possibility thereafter of choosing y. If enough people vote for x, each time necessarily on the assumption that y will continue to be available, y may in fact disappear. And its disappearance may constitute a genuine deprivation, which customers might willingly have paid something to avoid. The only choice the market offered travellers to influence the longer-run decision of the railroad was thus shorter in its time perspective, and the sum total of our individual purchases of railroad tickets necessary added up to a smaller amount, than our actual combined interest in the continued availability of rail service. We were victims of the "tyranny of small decisions".
Earlier references to the idea
ThucydidesThucydides
Thucydides was a Greek historian and author from Alimos. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC...
(ca. 460 BC-ca. 395 BC) stated:
[T]hey devote a very small fraction of time to the consideration of any public object, most of it to the prosecution of their own objects. Meanwhile each fancies that no harm will come to his neglect, that it is the business of somebody else to look after this or that for him; and so, by the same notion being entertained by all separately, the common cause imperceptibly decays.
Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
(384-322 BC) similarly argued against common goods of the polis
Polis
Polis , plural poleis , literally means city in Greek. It could also mean citizenship and body of citizens. In modern historiography "polis" is normally used to indicate the ancient Greek city-states, like Classical Athens and its contemporaries, so polis is often translated as "city-state."The...
of Athens
History of Athens
Athens is one of the oldest named cities in the world, having been continuously inhabited for at least 7000 years. Situated in southern Europe, Athens became the leading city of Ancient Greece in the first millennium BCE and its cultural achievements during the 5th century BCE laid the foundations...
:
For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill; as in families many attendants are often less useful than a few.
Environmental degradation
In 1982, the estuarine ecologist, William Odum, published a paper where he extended the notion of the tyranny of small decisions to environmental issues. According to Odum, "much of the current confusion and distress surrounding environmental issues can be traced to decisions that were never consciously made, but simply resulted from a series of small decisions."Odum cites, as an example, the marshlands along the coasts of Connecticut and Massachusetts. Between 1950 and 1970, almost 50 percent of these marshlands were destroyed. This was not purposely planned, and the public may well have supported preservation had they been asked. Instead, hundreds of small tracts of marshland were converted to other purposes through hundreds of small decisions, resulting in a major outcome without the overall issue ever being directly addressed.
Another example is the Florida Everglades. These have been threatened, not by a single unfavorable decision, but by many independent pin prick decisions, such as decisions to add this well, that drainage canal, one more retirement village, another roadway... No explicit decision was made to restrict the flow of surface water into the glades, or to encourage hot, destructive fires and intensify droughts, yet this has been the outcome.
With few exceptions, threatened
Threatened species
Threatened species are any speciesg animals, plants, fungi, etc.) which are vulnerable to endangerment in the near future.The World Conservation Union is the foremost authority on threatened species, and treats threatened species not as a single category, but as a group of three categories,...
and endangered species
Endangered species
An endangered species is a population of organisms which is at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in numbers, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters...
owe their predicament to series of small decisions. Polar bear
Polar Bear
The polar bear is a bear native largely within the Arctic Circle encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is the world's largest land carnivore and also the largest bear, together with the omnivorous Kodiak Bear, which is approximately the same size...
s, humpback whale
Humpback Whale
The humpback whale is a species of baleen whale. One of the larger rorqual species, adults range in length from and weigh approximately . The humpback has a distinctive body shape, with unusually long pectoral fins and a knobbly head. It is an acrobatic animal, often breaching and slapping the...
s and bald eagle
Bald Eagle
The Bald Eagle is a bird of prey found in North America. It is the national bird and symbol of the United States of America. This sea eagle has two known sub-species and forms a species pair with the White-tailed Eagle...
s have suffered from the cumulative effects of single decisions to overexploit or convert habitats. The removal, one by one, of green turtle nesting beaches for other uses parallels the decline in green turtle populations.
Cultural lake eutrophication
Eutrophication
Eutrophication or more precisely hypertrophication, is the movement of a body of water′s trophic status in the direction of increasing plant biomass, by the addition of artificial or natural substances, such as nitrates and phosphates, through fertilizers or sewage, to an aquatic system...
is rarely the result of an intentional decision. Instead, lakes eutrophy gradually as a cumulative effect of small decisions; the addition of this domestic sewage outfall and then that industrial outfall, with a runoff that increases steadily as this housing development is added, then that highway and some more agricultural fields. The insidious effects of small decisions marches on; productive land turns to desert
Desertification
Desertification is the degradation of land in drylands. Caused by a variety of factors, such as climate change and human activities, desertification is one of the most significant global environmental problems.-Definitions:...
, groundwater resources are overexploited
Overexploitation
Overexploitation, also called overharvesting, refers to harvesting a renewable resource to the point of diminishing returns. Sustained overexploitation can lead to the destruction of the resource...
to the point where they can't recover, persistent pesticides are used and tropical forests are cleared without factoring in the cumulative consequences.
Counters
An obvious counter to the tyranny of small decisions is to develop and protect appropriate upper levels of decision making. Depending on the issue, decision making may be appropriate at a local, state, country or global level. However, organisations at these levels can entangle themselves in their own bureaucracy and politics, assigning decisions by default back to the lower levels. Political and scientific systems can encourage small decisions by rewarding specific problems and solutions. It is usually easier and more politic to make decision on individual tracts of land or single issues rather than implementing large scale policies. The same pattern applies with academic science. Most scientists are more comfortable working on specific problems rather than systems. This reductionist tendency towards the small problems is reinforced in the way grant monies and academic tenure are assigned.Odum advocates that at least some scientists should study systems so the negative consequences that result when many small decisions are made from a limited perspective can be avoided. There is a similar need for politicians and planners to understand large scale perspectives. Environmental science teachers should include large scale processes in their courses, with examples of the problems that decision making at inappropriate levels can introduce.
See also
- Unscrupulous diner's dilemma
- Free rider problemFree rider problemIn economics, collective bargaining, psychology, and political science, a free rider is someone who consumes a resource without paying for it, or pays less than the full cost. The free rider problem is the question of how to limit free riding...
- Greedy algorithmGreedy algorithmA greedy algorithm is any algorithm that follows the problem solving heuristic of making the locally optimal choice at each stagewith the hope of finding the global optimum....
- OverexploitationOverexploitationOverexploitation, also called overharvesting, refers to harvesting a renewable resource to the point of diminishing returns. Sustained overexploitation can lead to the destruction of the resource...
- Path dependencePath dependencePath dependence explains how the set of decisions one faces for any given circumstance is limited by the decisions one has made in the past, even though past circumstances may no longer be relevant....
- Race to the bottomRace to the bottomA race to the bottom is a socio-economic concept that is argued to occur between countries as an outcome of regulatory competition, progressive taxation policies and social welfare spending...
- Social dilemmaSocial dilemmaSocial dilemmas are situations in which collective interests are at odds with private interests. Such situations arise when faced with prioritizing either short-term selfish interests or the long-term interests of a group, organization, or society. Many of the most challenging issues, from the...
- Social trapSocial trapSocial trap is a term used by psychologists to describe a situation in which a group of people act to obtain short-term individual gains, which in the long run leads to a loss for the group as a whole...
- The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is LessThe Paradox of Choice: Why More Is LessThe Paradox of Choice - Why More Is Less is a 2004 book by American psychologist Barry Schwartz. In the book, Schwartz argues that eliminating consumer choices can greatly reduce anxiety for shoppers...
- Tragedy of the commonsTragedy of the commonsThe tragedy of the commons is a dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource, even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this...