Tragedy of the Commons

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

by Steven Pinker  · 13 Feb 2018  · 1,034pp  · 241,773 words

are a distraction from the gargantuan challenge facing us. The problem is that carbon emissions are a classic public goods game, also known as a Tragedy of the Commons. People benefit from everyone else’s sacrifices and suffer from their own, so everyone has an incentive to be a free rider and let everyone

…

that economists call a negative externality (another name for the collective costs in a public goods game, or the damage to the commons in the Tragedy of the Commons). A carbon tax, which only governments can impose, “internalizes” the public costs, forcing people to factor the harm into every carbon-emitting decision they make

…

Galbraith, John Kenneth, 206 Galileo, 24 Galton, Francis, 399 Galtung, John, 41 game theory, 164, 386 See also Hobbesian trap (security dilemma); pacifist’s dilemma; Tragedy of the Commons Gandhi, Indira, 131 Gandhi, Mohandas, 405, 418. See also nonviolent resistance Gapminder (Web site), xviii, 52 Gates, Bill, 66, 67, 330, 481n16 gay rights. See

…

See also cognitive biases psychotherapy cognitive behavior therapy, 282 Feedback-Informed Treatment, 380 and media focus on negative news, 286–7 public goods game. See Tragedy of the Commons public health bioterror and international networks, 301 Ebola control, 307 Nazi Holocaust invoking, 399 revolution of, 64, 83 See also vaccines “Publius Decius Mus” (Michael

…

, Omar, 447 trade benefits of, 13, 84, 162, 198–9, 228 Trump and international, 334–5 Tragedy of the Belief Commons. See identity-protective cognition Tragedy of the Commons, 141 for beliefs, 358, 359, 376, 379 for carbon emissions, 141, 151, 153, 154 transgenic crops, 77–8, 331 transportation agriculture and food supply and

The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World

by Lawrence Lessig  · 14 Jul 2001  · 494pp  · 142,285 words

of a park, as in the Boston Common. If you've studied economics or political science, your mind will race to tragedy (as in “the tragedy of the commons"). Both senses are related to what I mean, but neither alone is enough.1 The Oxford English Dictionary (mankind's first large-scale collaborative open

…

it will be depleted by the consumption of all. This depletion of a rivalrous resource is the dynamic that biologist Garrett Hardin famously termed “the tragedy of the commons.”7 “Picture a pasture open to all,” Hardin writes, and consider the expected behavior of “herdsmen” who roam that pasture. Each herdsman must decide whether

…

. And, in turn, this blindness leads us to ignore changes to the norms and architecture of the Net that weaken this commons. There is a tragedy of the commons that we will identify here; it is the tragedy of losing the innovation commons that the Internet is, through the changes that are being rendered

…

. . . . [H]ere in the industry, all the projects that are “hot” are networks with built-in techniques of exclusion and prioritization.74 Here is a tragedy of the commons. If the commons is the innovation commons that the protocols of the Net embrace, e2e most important among them, then the tragedy of that commons

…

ends to discriminate, then the ends will restrict and discriminate regardless of the effect on others. Here, then, we have the beginnings of a classic “tragedy of the commons.”46 For if keeping the network as a commons provides a benefit to all, yet closing individual links in the network provides a benefit to

…

the Internet. Yet the architecture of the Internet . . . seriously misallocates scarce bandwidth. Because data cannot easily be prioritized, or billed, within the existing Internet protocols, tragedy of the commons appears frequently. High value communications are jammed in congested arteries with massive volumes of data of only marginal significance. Classically, the brain surgeon cannot read

…

how does her ability to use the Net determine whether the Net “seriously misallocates” resources? Hazlett offers no data to support the claim that the “tragedy of the commons appears frequently.” In fact, capacity has consistently outstripped demand.36 More significant, Hazlett ignores the advantages to innovation that I have identified throughout this book

…

Daldy [imprint], 1871), iii-iv (“There is a common of language to which both poetry and prose have the freest access.”). 7 Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (1968): 1243. The idea of congestion externalities of course predates Hardin. See Posner, “Economic Analysis of Law,” 32-34, citing Frank H. Knight

…

, ed. (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1992), part 2 (describing case studies). 10 Elinor Ostrom has been the most effective in demonstrating the “fallacy” of the “tragedy of the commons.” As she writes: What makes these models so dangerous—when they are used metaphorically as the foundation for policy—is that the constraints that are

…

with end-to-end, but simply that it provides a consistent protocol that could be implemented consistent with end-to-end. 53 Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (1968): 1243, 1244 (emphasis added). 54 National Research Council, 24-25. 55 As Faulhaber put it, “[T]he third view is that, as

Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters

by Steven Pinker  · 14 Oct 2021  · 533pp  · 125,495 words

in advance, tying him to the mast for his own good during the frenzy of an Ego Escalation Game. The Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Tragedy of the Commons Consider a familiar plot from Law and Order. A prosecutor detains partners in crime in separate cells, lacks the evidence to convict them, and offers

…

else pays for them and they are free riders—once a lighthouse is built, anyone can see it. In a poignant environmental version called the Tragedy of the Commons, every shepherd has an incentive to add one more sheep to his flock and graze it on the town commons, but when everyone fattens their

…

can train them to avoid the fallacies outside the classroom.84 * * * • • • Rationality is a public good, and a public good sets the stage for a tragedy of the commons. In the Tragedy of the Rationality Commons, motivated reasoning for the benefit of oneself and one’s side produces an opportunity to free ride on

…

, 241–42, 243–44 Tooby, J., 169 Toplak, M. F., 356–57n67 trade and investment, international, 327 Tragedy of the Carbon Commons, 242–44, 328 Tragedy of the Commons, 242, 243–44, 315 Tragedy of the Rationality Commons, 298, 315–17 Trivers, Robert, 241 trolley problem, 97 Trump, Donald, 6, 60, 82–83, 88

The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good

by William Easterly  · 1 Mar 2006

can also deal with property owned by the community, like common pastureland on which all can graze their cows. Common property is subject to the “tragedy of the commons” problem, in which each herdsman overgrazes the pasture because the costs are borne by the community rather than by the herdsman. (I want my cow

…

to eat the grass before your cow does.) However, if population density is low and land abundant, the tragedy of the commons does not arise, and community ownership works fine. Even when pressure on the land tightens up, informal community arrangements can still control overgrazing (say the

…

offered this account of how his village in Benin managed a common property resource, the fishing pond (overfishing is a classic example used for the tragedy of the commons), when he was growing up: To open the fishing season, elders performed ritual tests at Amlé, a lake fifteen kilometers from the village. If the

…

other issue lobbies of its demands on the scarce aid and administrative resources of agencies, each lobby overemphasizes its goals. This is analogous to the “tragedy of the commons” problem in which too many cows overgraze pastures held in common. To make things worse, each separate aid agency has felt the political pressure to

…

“frame-works” that do everything for the consumer. Consumers pay the cost of asking a product to meet additional goals, and so there is no “tragedy of the commons” excess demand for goals on any one product. Consumers face tradeoffs between alternative products, choosing the one that gives the highest satisfaction for the lowest

…

colonized high-technology exports IMF aid to takeoff in ten best per capita growth rates Thompson, Tommy Tibet tied aid titles to property Togo trachoma tragedy of the commons traps “poverty trap,” Trebbi, Francesco Trevelyan, Charles triads triple-drug cocktail Truman, Harry S. Tshisekedi, Étienne tuberculosis Tullock, Gordon Turkey Turkmenistan Tutsis Twain, Mark tyranny

Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously About the Planet

by Roger Scruton  · 30 Apr 2014  · 426pp  · 118,913 words

an important part to play. Rational self-interest is subject to the well-known free rider and prisoner’s dilemma syndromes, and can avert ‘the tragedy of the commons’17 only in special circumstances. Social contract theorists, from Hobbes to Rawls, have attempted to overcome the problems of social choice, but always they come

…

that is the failure of collective rationality commented upon by Aristotle in the Politics and known, following an acclaimed article by Garrett Hardin, as ‘the tragedy of the commons’.151 Many of the earth’s resources are either unowned or owned in common by some particular community – the fish in a lake, the grazing

…

Common Fisheries Policy of the European Union. Yet it is precisely the wrong response, not the least because it fails to take seriously what the tragedy of the commons shows. Even if people were not greedy, but merely wishing to obtain enough to satisfy their needs, a common resource would run the risk of

…

to resist him. This is the reason for thinking that it is not state control, but property rights, that are the real solution to the tragedy of the commons. And once property rights are in place they lead of their own accord to a market, as people transfer their rights to those most eager

…

to acquire them and in return receive something preferable in exchange. The tragedy of the commons is not due to market failure, but to market absence. Hence there have been very few vulnerable resources that have not been managed, by those

…

Switzerland, by a democratic vote among members of a defined local community with exclusive rights to take the relevant decisions.160 Those solutions to the tragedy of the commons depend on the rational self-interest of essentially co-operative people. Much of the antipathy to market solutions has come from those who see markets

…

the same kind of countervailing pressures that are exerted by a market on competition among individuals, and if so, whether these pressures will prevent the tragedy of the commons. But they also challenge us to find other forms of negative feedback than those associated with ‘market forces’. Long before Ostrom put the study of

…

common advantage. Game theory, the theory of the market, the theories of preference orderings and social choice – all have addressed the question encapsulated in the tragedy of the commons. And those disciplines have finely illustrated the difficulties that impede co-ordination when we try to adjust our choices to the sparse information that we

…

of national property rights, which had been effective in conserving fish stocks in the North Sea and the English Channel, was destroyed, and a new tragedy of the commons created in its place. The result has been a major ecological disaster, with stocks in the North Sea continuing to decline at an alarming rate

…

of Swiss participatory democracy, in which the people are involved at every stage in planning their environment.333 Curzon Price shows in detail how the tragedy of the commons is enacted under the regime that operates in France, while it is avoided for the most part in Switzerland, as people come to agree among

…

, www.arab-hdr.org/publications/other/ahdr/ahdr2009e.pdf. 16 On the theory of ‘rent seeking’, see Chapters 3 and 4. 17 Garrett Hardin, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science, 162.1, 1968, pp. 243 –8. 18 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651; John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 1971, 2005. 19 Edmund Burke, Reflections on

…

Peltzman was the first to hit on the idea. 150 Adams, op. cit. 151 See 1261b in Aristotle, The Politics, Oxford, 1994; Garrett Hardin, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science, 162, 13 December 1968, pp. 1243–8. Hardin’s original response to the tragedy was to call for government intervention to protect ‘public assets

…

A. C. Pigou, The Economics of Welfare, London, 1920, part 2. Pigou’s solution was accepted by Garrett Hardin, in his original response to ‘the tragedy of the commons’. Later he became more ‘Coasey’. 175 Coase’s Theorem is also insensitive to the so-called ‘endowment effect’, according to which the receipt of property

…

York, Oxford University Press, 2009. Hansen, James, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe, New York, Bloomsbury, 2009. Hardin, Garret, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science, 162, 13 December 1968, pp. 1243–8. Harvey, Graham, The Killing of the Countryside, London, Jonathan Cape, 1997. Hayek, Friedrich A., Individualism and Economic

…

, ref2n, ref3 Tooby, John, ref1 tort law, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Town and Country Planning Association, ref1 Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights, ref1 tradition, ref1 tragedy of the commons, ref1, ref2, ref3 transition towns, ref1 transnational government, ref1, ref2 treaties, ref1f, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Treaty of Rome, ref1 Trevelyan, G. M., ref1, ref2

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

by Steven Pinker  · 24 Sep 2012  · 1,351pp  · 385,579 words

reckoned in the lives of soldiers. The War of Attrition is one of those paradoxical scenarios in game theory (like the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the Tragedy of the Commons, and the Dollar Auction) in which a set of rational actors pursuing their interests end up worse off than if they had put their heads

…

be women around. They just want someone else to raise them. Female infanticide is a kind of social parasitism, a free rider problem, a genealogical tragedy of the commons.129 Free rider problems arise when no one owns a common resource, in this case, the pool of potential brides. In a free market in

…

. The tragedy is that contributions will dwindle to zero and everyone ends up worse off. (The biologist Garrett Hardin proposed an identical scenario called the Tragedy of the Commons. Each farmer cannot resist grazing his own cow on the town commons, stripping it bare to everyone’s loss. Pollution, overfishing, and carbon emissions are

…

: Axelrod, 1984/2006. 188. Indirect reciprocity: Nowak, 2006; Nowak & Sigmund, 1998. 189. Public Goods game: Fehr & Gächter, 2000; Herrmann, Thöni, & Gächter, 2008a; Ridley, 1997. 190. Tragedy of the Commons: Hardin, 1968. 191. Effectiveness of deterrence in economic games: Fehr & Gächter, 2000; Herrmann, Thöni, & Gächter, 2008b; McCullough, 2008; McCullough et al., 2010; Ridley, 1997. 192

…

Society & History, 18, 297–320. Hanlon, G. 2007. Human nature in rural Tuscany: An early modern history. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hardin, G. 1968. The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162, 1243–48. Hare, R. D. 1993. Without conscience: The disturbing world of the psychopaths around us. New York: Guilford Press. Harff, B. 2003

…

of and gentle commerce Cool Hand Luke (film) Cooney, Mark cooperation in commerce evolution of and intelligence norms of in Prisoner’s Dilemma games and Tragedy of the Commons coordination games corporal punishment: of children and torture Correlates of War Project Cosmides, Leda cosmopolitanism and democracy and end of Cold War vs. genocidal ideologies

…

gambling, and violence game theory; see also coordination games; Dictator game; Escalation game; Pacifist’s Dilemma; positive-sum games; Prisoner’s Dilemma; Public Goods game; Tragedy of the Commons; Trust game; Ultimatum game; War of Attrition game; zero-sum games Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Rajmohan Gangs of New York (film) Garrard, Graeme

…

executions totalitarianism and genocide see also autocracy; dictatorships; theocracy total war Townshend, Pete Toynbee, Arnold, A Study of History trade, international trafficking, see human trafficking Tragedy of the Commons Tremblay, Richard tribalism tribes: archaeological sites and community elders group dominance horse tribes kinship in and sorcery violence between and witchcraft see also hunter-gatherers

Liars and Outliers: How Security Holds Society Together

by Bruce Schneier  · 14 Feb 2012  · 503pp  · 131,064 words

its members forsake their own interests when they run counter to society's interest. Societal dilemmas have many names in the literature: collective action problem, Tragedy of the Commons, free-rider problem, arms race. We'll use them all. Part II fully develops my model. Trust is essential for society to function, and societal

…

analysis, they'll end up collapsing the fishing stocks and ruining the industry for everyone. This is called a Tragedy of the Commons, and was first described by the ecologist Garrett Hardin in 1968.6 A Tragedy of the Commons occurs whenever a group shares a limited resource: not just fisheries, but grazing lands, water rights, time on

…

the trade-off for himself, but when an unorganized group together owns the forest there's no one to limit the harvest, and a Tragedy of the Commons can result. A Tragedy of the Commons is more complicated than a two-person Prisoner's Dilemma, because the other fishers aren't making this decision collectively. Instead, each individual

…

or future fishing stocks. But at some point, either the waters will get crowded enough or the fishers will get technologically advanced enough that the Tragedy of the Commons dilemma will occur. The disconnect between Alice's individual actions and the effect of the group's actions as a whole makes societal dilemmas even

…

or defection won't change that. All she's really deciding is whether to seize or forgo the short-term benefits of defecting. Societal Dilemma: Tragedy of the Commons. Society: Some group of people, either a society of interest or a society of circumstance. Group interest: That the common resource not run out, and

…

. Group norm: Cooperate and share that resource within its sustainability limits.. Corresponding defection: Take as much of that shared resource as you can. In a Tragedy of the Commons, people acting in their self-interest harm the group interest. There's another type of societal dilemma, where people can receive the benefit of those

…

two prisoners, or the merchant and customer, can't trust each other, they both end up defecting. The larger societal dilemmas—the arms race, the Tragedy of the Commons, and the free-rider problem—are similarly unsolvable. Defecting is the only course that makes logical sense, even though the end result will be disastrous

…

. However, once the group size grows larger and the social ties between people weaken, reputation alone doesn't cut it. Commenting on Hardin's original Tragedy of the Commons paper, psychologist Julian Edney wrote that “the upper limit for a simple, self-contained, sustaining, well-functioning commons may be as low as 150 people

…

big step for the development of society, and it allowed larger and more complex social groupings—like cities. Garrett Hardin, who created the phrase “the Tragedy of the Commons,” later wished he'd called it “the tragedy of the unmanaged commons.” The point of his paper was not that defectors will inevitably ruin things

…

glass eels—immature eels that are a delicacy in Japan and Europe—started rising, more people began to fish for them. The result was a Tragedy of the Commons: illegal overfishing and poaching in England, France, and the northeastern U.S. resulted in reduced yields, which resulted in higher prices. This resulted in even

…

psychologist to ever win a Nobel Prize, and he won it in economics. (7) Many of the criticisms of Hardin's original paper on the Tragedy of the Commons pointed out that, in the real world,systems of regulation were commonly established by users of commons. (8) Douglas Hofstadter calls this “superrationality.” He assumes

…

Commons,” Nature, 340:91–3. David Feeny, Fikret Berkes, Bonnie J. McCay, and James M. Acheson (1990), “The Tragedy of the Commons: Twenty-Two Years Later,” Human Ecology, 18:1–19. Carl J. Dahlman (1992), “The Tragedy of the Commons that Wasn't: On Technical Solutions to the Institutions Game,” Population & Environment, 12:285–96. Elinor Ostrom, Joanna

…

(1981), “The Evolution of Cooperation,” Science, 211:1390–6. Robert Axelrod (1984), The Evolution of Cooperation, Basic Books. open grazing pasture Garrett Hardin (1968), “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science, 162:1243–8. Chapter 6 predictably irrational Dan Ariely (2008), Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape our Decisions, Harper Perennial. Cuban Missile Crisis

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

by Jared Diamond  · 2 Jan 2008  · 801pp  · 242,104 words

levels between years or decades; that it’s difficult to get people to agree on exercising restraint in harvesting a shared resource (the so-called tragedy of the commons, to be discussed in later chapters); and that the complexity of ecosystems often makes the consequences of some human-caused perturbation virtually impossible to predict

…

to the extent that government regulations, laws, and public attitudes permit. One particular form of clashes of interest has become well known under the name “tragedy of the commons,” in turn closely related to the conflicts termed “the prisoner’s dilemma” and “the logic of collective action.” Consider a situation in which many consumers

…

, and the individual owners may find it even harder than a government’s coast guard or police to exclude intruders. The remaining solution to the tragedy of the commons is for the consumers to recognize their common interests and to design, obey, and enforce prudent harvesting quotas themselves. That is likely to happen only

…

and Pacific Oceans, peak catches were attained in the year 1989 and have declined since then. The main reasons behind all these failures are the tragedy of the commons, discussed in the preceding chapter, which makes it difficult for consumers exploiting a shared renewable resource to reach agreement despite their shared interest in doing

…

. If wild fish stocks were managed appropriately, the stock levels could be maintained, and they could be harvested perpetually. Unfortunately, the problem known as the tragedy of the commons (Chapter 14) has regularly undone efforts to manage fisheries sustainably, and the great majority of valuable fisheries already either have collapsed or are in steep

…

irrigation in recent times, did reach agreement to subordinate their individual rights to group interests. They thereby succeeded in managing shared resources and avoiding the tragedy of the commons that has befallen so many other groups. The government of China restricted the traditional freedom of individual reproductive choice, rather than let population problems spiral

…

that of McGovern et al., whose model should be consulted by anyone interested in pursuing this puzzle. Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues have studied the tragedy of the commons (alias common-pool resources), using both comparative surveys and experimental games to identify the conditions under which consumers are most likely to recognize their common

…

, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, and America’s adoption of the Marshall Plan in 1947. Garrett Hardin’s classic and often-cited article “The tragedy of the commons” appeared in Science 162:1243-1248 (1968). Mancur Olson applies the metaphor of stationary bandits and roving bandits to Chinese warlords and other extractive agents

…

, Allen Bolle Report (1970) borax mining Borneo, illegal logging in Bosch, Juan bottom-up environmental management Australia Inuits New Guinea Southwestern U.S. Tikopia and tragedy of the commons Bougainville copper mine BP (British Petroleum) Buffalo Creek, West Virginia Burundi: genocide in independence of business, see big business Cahokia, collapse of Canada: Franklin Expedition

…

of and marine habitats and Marine Stewardship Council and mining in Montana and non-native species overfishing perverse subsidies in protein provided in sustainable and tragedy of the commons by trawling and water quality and whirling disease Flenley, John Florida, native species of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) food distribution food taboos Ford, Henry

…

analogies in irrational behavior in landscape amnesia in logic of collective action psychological denial in rational behavior in short-term focus in success in in tragedy of the commons unsuccessful solutions in groupthink Haakonsson, King Haakon of Norway habitat destruction Habyarimana, General Haiti: agriculture of border of Dominican Republic and cooperation between Dominican Republic

…

collapse Tokugawa era, see Japan Tonga top-down environmental management China Dominican Republic Inca Empire Tokugawa-era Japan and tragedy of the commons Totman, Conrad toxic chemicals toxic wastes, in mining industry trade, friendly partners in tragedy of the commons tree ring studies (dendrochronology) trouble spots (map) Trout Unlimited Trujillo, Rafael Tuamotu Archipelago Tuchman, Barbara turf cutting Tutsi

Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America

by Shawn Lawrence Otto  · 10 Oct 2011  · 692pp  · 127,032 words

freedom relate to regulation and the commons—the common property of humankind. These questions are central to the relationship between science and democracy itself. THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS In December of 1968, a little-known University of California Santa Barbara biologist named Garrett Hardin published a paper in Science that would change the

…

way we look at economics. The core dilemma it identified, which came to be called “the tragedy of the commons” after the paper’s title, lies at the heart of the unresolved environmental challenges of the twentieth century, among them climate change, ocean acidification, overfishing

…

that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.” FREEDOM VERSUS TYRANNY The simple dilemma that drives the tragedy of the commons is writ large in the greatest political argument of our time: the clash between individualism and collectivism. In the political realm this first became a

…

a limited planet, today’s herdsmen—nation-states, supranational corporations, and individuals—all have powerful economic incentives to pursue their rational self-interests until the tragedy of the commons occurs on a global scale. This is the nature of a boom or a bubble, but the assumption of limitless growth is what our economic

…

affords the opportunity through regulation to govern the engine before it races to ruin. Understanding this relationship, teasing out the logical fallacy that underlies the tragedy of the commons, ties into the fundamental relationship between economics, democracy, and knowledge gained from science. Finding ways to create more freedom and more wealth that allow for

…

, it does provide some useful ways for thinking about the interplay between wealth and the environment. What makes it interesting is that it turns the tragedy of the commons on its head, functioning in reverse. Like science, wealth affords freedom by expanding the power of choice. Insurance is a commons, a shared pasture, if

…

the United States for exercising leadership and providing that fair and equitable regulation, that sheriff, and freeing them from the Wild West tyranny of the tragedy of the commons. We don’t lack ability; we lack leadership. The assumption that other economies will not follow the United States’ lead is incorrect. Much of the

…

. Electronic Classics Series. Hazleton, PA: Pennsylvania State University, n.d. www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/adam-smith/Wealth-Nations.pdf. 3. Hardin, G. The Tragedy of the Commons. Science 1968;162(3859):1243–1248. www.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243.full. 4. Rand, A. The Virtue of Selfishness. New York: Signet, 1964

…

. The Crime of Galileo: Indictment and Abjuration of 1633. Internet Modern History Sourcebook, January 1999. www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1630galileo.html. Hardin, G. The Tragedy of the Commons. Science 1968;162(3859):1243–1248. www.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243.full. Harman, O. Cyril Dean Darlington: The Man Who “Invented” the Chromosome

…

, 258, 265 opportunity cost and, 257 science and, 187, 255–56 SEEP challenges and, 187 self-interest and, 250, 260 sustainability and, environmental, 258, 261 tragedy of the commons and, 247–51, 268 tyranny on the commons and, 253–55 Ecosystem services, 258, 265 Ecosystem, value on, 259 Education Bloom’s view of, 127

…

, 245 Thimerosal, 152–53 Thompson, Mi ke, 19 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 57–59, 294, 315–16 Tolerance, 53, 59, 137–38 Tortolero, Susan, 275–76 Tragedy of the commons, 247–51, 268 “Transgressing the Boundaries” hoax, 129–31 Tree-ring density measurements, 199 Truth Conservatives and, 131 erosion of telling, 134 knowledge and, 49

Life on the Rocks: Building a Future for Coral Reefs

by Juli Berwald  · 4 Apr 2022  · 495pp  · 114,451 words

University of California at Berkeley named Garrett Hardin gave a talk to the American Association for the Advancement of Science with the catchy title “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Drawing from an essay published a century earlier, in 1866, Hardin described a grassy pasture on which herders could happily graze their cows. This mind

…

calculation. The pasture became overgrazed and all the cows went hungry. Hardin concluded, “Freedom in the commons brings ruin to all.” The parable of the Tragedy of the Commons is obviously not just about some herders and a pasture, but about any shared resource and humanity’s apparent inability not to overexploit it. Trapping

…

, carbon dioxide. Everyone shares the cost of discharging wastes into the common space. It’s cheaper for individuals to pollute. When Hardin wrote about the Tragedy of the Commons, power plants were spewing sulfates and nitrates into the air, causing acid rain. Cancer-causing chemicals like DDT were being dumped into rivers and soils

…

to recognize CO2 in this same way, creating a legacy that will haunt our children. The future of the coral reefs requires reckoning with the Tragedy of the Commons. The major problems for coral—carbon dioxide pollution causing warming, fertilizer and sewage runoff causing disease, coastal development causing sedimentation, illegal fishing—all result from

…

focusing eastward toward the Atlantic still supported the paradigm that the sea’s resources were in a category all their own, not subject to the Tragedy of the Commons. But Hawaiian fisheries ecologist H. Scott Gordon, looking at the Pacific, proposed that the seas might have limits, writing that “the plight of fishermen and

…

.” * * * — After my conversation with Lizzie, I thought a lot about the implications of traditional marine tenure. If there were places that managed to skirt the Tragedy of the Commons through systems like sasi in Indonesia and no-take MPAs, what does that mean for the validity of Garrett Hardin’s idea? Is the

…

Tragedy of the Commons a fundamental truth of humankind, or is it flawed? Flawed, was the answer articulated in the 1980s by Elinor Ostrom, the first—and until 2019

…

. The competing demands of farmers, builders, and residents were draining it dry. Observing the water wars and pumping races gave Lin critical insight into the Tragedy of the Commons. Remember the herders grazing in Garrett Hardin’s field? Lin recognized that for Hardin’s logic to work, he had to impose unnatural rules on

…

the aisle seat with great conviction. The flight attendant looked at me helplessly. The travel fates had pitted me against someone with the Garrett Hardin Tragedy of the Commons philosophy. She’d gotten to the seat first, and so she took it. “Fine,” I said, collapsing into the aisle seat. I shot the woman

…

fifty-first reef? The philosophical conundrum posed by the 50 Reefs project isn’t new. In 1974, Garrett Hardin—that same thinker who coined the Tragedy of the Commons—published an essay titled “Living on a Lifeboat,” which frames “lifeboat ethics” like this: Suppose you are in a lifeboat that contains fifty people, although

…

reef. * * * — When Nobel Prize–winning economist Lin Ostrom looked around the world for examples of management plans that defied Garrett Hardin’s notion of the Tragedy of the Commons, she discovered that they all shared certain traits. Those that succeeded were not entirely private and also not entirely controlled by a central government. A

…

going to solve problems a lot quicker.” This kind of work of building connection is the ultimate flaw Lin Ostrom discovered in Garrett Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons: By speaking to one another and working together, we can find ways to serve all our goals. Just as the coral and the algae have

…

, https://forceblueteam.org/news/100-yards-of-hope-team-outplants-1100-corals/. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Chapter 16. The Tragedy of Scale “The Tragedy of the Commons”: Originally given as an address to the Pacific Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, then republished as Garrett Hardin, “The

…

Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162, no. 3859 (1968): 1243–48, https://science.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243.full. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT California’s sardines:

…

pandemic, 262 methane compared with, 247 Montreal Protocol on, 300n9 and ocean acidification, 50–53 and Paris Climate Accords, 288, 322n284 reduction efforts, 14 and Tragedy of the Commons model, 116 Caribbean and coral bleaching, 62, 64, 65 and evolution of corals, 93–94 reef damage in, 5–6, 94, 218–19 and tourism

…

protection value, 7, 103–4, 228, 241 and land restoration model, 185 total value estimates, 7 tourism value, 181–86, 203–4, 238, 313n141 and Tragedy of the Commons model, 115–17, 120, 230, 243 See also aquarium trade El Niño events, 19, 63–64, 65, 70, 117 Elbow Reef, 190 Eldridge, Alice, 146

…

benefits of reefs, 7, 11, 184, 285 and marine protected areas, 118–21 and Pacific island traditional practices, 117–18 sustainability practices, 182–83 and Tragedy of the Commons model, 115–17, 120, 230, 243 and Waterkeeper Alliance, 99–100 See also bleaching of corals; climate change and global warming Erdmann, Mark, 139 erosion

…

efforts, 289 impact of coral harvests, 162 international enforcement efforts, 288 and Red List fish species, 182 and sasi system, 117–18, 120, 140 and Tragedy of the Commons model, 120–21 and Tuna Blueprint study, 134–35 and Vibrant Oceans Initiative, 231 flood protection from coral reefs, 7, 11, 104, 126, 171, 218

…

, 87, 182, 225 and satellite imagery, 233 and scope of threats to corals, 7, 15, 26, 162, 187, 289 and social justice issues, 267 and Tragedy of the Commons model, 115–17 and Waterkeeper Alliance, 99–100 polycentric governance, 243 polyps, 37 Popular Science, 223 Porites coral, 143 Port of Miami, 99–100 poverty

…

Tonga, 162 Tortugas Laboratory, 55–56, 59 tourism, 85–86, 181–86, 203–4, 238, 313n141 toxins, 37, 160–61 Traditional Owners, 261–62, 272 Tragedy of the Commons, 115–17, 120, 230, 243 transatlantic flight, 13 Tres Palmas Marine Reserve, 190 Tropical Forest Conservation Act, 237–38 Trujillo, Rafael, 203 Trump, Donald, 290

Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution

by Howard Rheingold  · 24 Dec 2011

The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America

by Mehrsa Baradaran  · 7 May 2024  · 470pp  · 158,007 words

Peer-to-Peer

by Andy Oram  · 26 Feb 2001  · 673pp  · 164,804 words

Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All

by Paul A. Offit M.D.  · 28 Dec 2010  · 377pp  · 89,000 words

Collapse

by Jared Diamond  · 25 Apr 2011  · 753pp  · 233,306 words

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

by Clay Shirky  · 28 Feb 2008  · 313pp  · 95,077 words

Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons

by Peter Barnes  · 29 Sep 2006  · 207pp  · 52,716 words

The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?

by David Brin  · 1 Jan 1998  · 205pp  · 18,208 words

Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World

by Deirdre N. McCloskey  · 15 Nov 2011  · 1,205pp  · 308,891 words

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

by Jeremy Rifkin  · 31 Mar 2014  · 565pp  · 151,129 words

The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis

by Jeremy Rifkin  · 31 Dec 2009  · 879pp  · 233,093 words

Extreme Economies: Survival, Failure, Future – Lessons From the World’s Limits

by Richard Davies  · 4 Sep 2019  · 412pp  · 128,042 words

Humankind: A Hopeful History

by Rutger Bregman  · 1 Jun 2020  · 578pp  · 131,346 words

Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World

by David Easley and Jon Kleinberg  · 15 Nov 2010  · 1,535pp  · 337,071 words

Dark, Salt, Clear: Life in a Cornish Fishing Town

by Lamorna Ash  · 1 Apr 2020  · 319pp  · 108,797 words

The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity

by Toby Ord  · 24 Mar 2020  · 513pp  · 152,381 words

The Irrational Bundle

by Dan Ariely  · 3 Apr 2013  · 898pp  · 266,274 words

Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist

by Kate Raworth  · 22 Mar 2017  · 403pp  · 111,119 words

The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay

by Guy Standing  · 13 Jul 2016  · 443pp  · 98,113 words

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

by Robert M. Sapolsky  · 1 May 2017  · 1,261pp  · 294,715 words

The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution

by Francis Fukuyama  · 11 Apr 2011  · 740pp  · 217,139 words

Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow

by Tim Jackson  · 8 Dec 2016  · 573pp  · 115,489 words

Hacking Capitalism

by Söderberg, Johan; Söderberg, Johan;

The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier

by Ian Urbina  · 19 Aug 2019

Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy

by Robert A. Sirico  · 20 May 2012  · 267pp  · 70,250 words

Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid

by Meredith. Angwin  · 18 Oct 2020  · 376pp  · 101,759 words

Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet

by Jeffrey Sachs  · 1 Jan 2008  · 421pp  · 125,417 words

Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach

by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig  · 14 Jul 2019  · 2,466pp  · 668,761 words

Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age

by Duncan J. Watts  · 1 Feb 2003  · 379pp  · 113,656 words

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

by Matt Ridley  · 17 May 2010  · 462pp  · 150,129 words

The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good

by Robert H. Frank  · 3 Sep 2011

Who Owns the Future?

by Jaron Lanier  · 6 May 2013  · 510pp  · 120,048 words

The Sport and Prey of Capitalists

by Linda McQuaig  · 30 Aug 2019  · 263pp  · 79,016 words

Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives

by Michael A. Heller and James Salzman  · 2 Mar 2021  · 332pp  · 100,245 words

Leading From the Emerging Future: From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies

by Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer  · 14 Apr 2013  · 351pp  · 93,982 words

A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity and a Shared Earth

by Chris Smaje  · 14 Aug 2020  · 375pp  · 105,586 words

Markets, State, and People: Economics for Public Policy

by Diane Coyle  · 14 Jan 2020  · 384pp  · 108,414 words

The Internet of Money

by Andreas M. Antonopoulos  · 28 Aug 2016  · 200pp  · 47,378 words

Energy: A Human History

by Richard Rhodes  · 28 May 2018  · 653pp  · 155,847 words

Green and Prosperous Land: A Blueprint for Rescuing the British Countryside

by Dieter Helm  · 7 Mar 2019  · 348pp  · 102,438 words

Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It

by Azeem Azhar  · 6 Sep 2021  · 447pp  · 111,991 words

Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America

by Cass R. Sunstein  · 6 Mar 2018  · 434pp  · 117,327 words

Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking

by Richard E. Nisbett  · 17 Aug 2015  · 397pp  · 109,631 words

The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life

by Alice Schroeder  · 1 Sep 2008  · 1,336pp  · 415,037 words

Thinking in Systems: A Primer

by Meadows. Donella and Diana Wright  · 3 Dec 2008  · 243pp  · 66,908 words

The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts

by Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind  · 24 Aug 2015  · 742pp  · 137,937 words

The Land Grabbers: The New Fight Over Who Owns the Earth

by Fred Pearce  · 28 May 2012  · 379pp  · 114,807 words

What's Mine Is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption Is Changing the Way We Live

by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers  · 2 Jan 2010  · 411pp  · 80,925 words

Meat: A Benign Extravagance

by Simon Fairlie  · 14 Jun 2010  · 614pp  · 176,458 words

The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything

by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey  · 27 Feb 2018  · 348pp  · 97,277 words

Against Intellectual Monopoly

by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine  · 6 Jul 2008  · 607pp  · 133,452 words

Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models

by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann  · 17 Jun 2019

Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action

by Elinor Ostrom  · 29 Nov 1990

The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move

by Sonia Shah

The State and the Stork: The Population Debate and Policy Making in US History

by Derek S. Hoff  · 30 May 2012

The Butterfly Defect: How Globalization Creates Systemic Risks, and What to Do About It

by Ian Goldin and Mike Mariathasan  · 15 Mar 2014  · 414pp  · 101,285 words

Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control

by Stuart Russell  · 7 Oct 2019  · 416pp  · 112,268 words

Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World

by Simon Winchester  · 19 Jan 2021  · 486pp  · 139,713 words

Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress--And How to Bring It Back

by Marc J Dunkelman  · 17 Feb 2025  · 454pp  · 134,799 words

The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions

by Greta Thunberg  · 14 Feb 2023  · 651pp  · 162,060 words

Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet

by Mark Lynas  · 1 Apr 2008  · 364pp  · 101,193 words

We-Think: Mass Innovation, Not Mass Production

by Charles Leadbeater  · 9 Dec 2010  · 313pp  · 84,312 words

The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Fresh Water in the Twenty-First Century

by Alex Prud'Homme  · 6 Jun 2011  · 692pp  · 167,950 words

The Plundered Planet: Why We Must--And How We Can--Manage Nature for Global Prosperity

by Paul Collier  · 10 May 2010  · 288pp  · 76,343 words

The Ministry for the Future: A Novel

by Kim Stanley Robinson  · 5 Oct 2020  · 583pp  · 182,990 words

Imagining India

by Nandan Nilekani  · 25 Nov 2008  · 777pp  · 186,993 words

India's Long Road

by Vijay Joshi  · 21 Feb 2017

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths  · 4 Apr 2016  · 523pp  · 143,139 words

Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business

by Rana Foroohar  · 16 May 2016  · 515pp  · 132,295 words

The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning

by Jeremy Lent  · 22 May 2017  · 789pp  · 207,744 words

Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity From Politicians

by Joe Quirk and Patri Friedman  · 21 Mar 2017  · 441pp  · 113,244 words

Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life

by Daniel C. Dennett  · 15 Jan 1995  · 846pp  · 232,630 words

Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All

by Michael Shellenberger  · 28 Jun 2020

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us)

by Tom Vanderbilt  · 28 Jul 2008  · 512pp  · 165,704 words

Licence to be Bad

by Jonathan Aldred  · 5 Jun 2019  · 453pp  · 111,010 words

Good Profit: How Creating Value for Others Built One of the World's Most Successful Companies

by Charles de Ganahl Koch  · 14 Sep 2015  · 261pp  · 74,471 words

Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?

by Aaron Dignan  · 1 Feb 2019  · 309pp  · 81,975 words

The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts

by Shane Parrish  · 22 Nov 2019  · 147pp  · 39,910 words

The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain

by Brett Christophers  · 6 Nov 2018

The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature

by Matt Ridley  · 14 Aug 1993  · 474pp  · 136,787 words

Limitless: The Federal Reserve Takes on a New Age of Crisis

by Jeanna Smialek  · 27 Feb 2023  · 601pp  · 135,202 words

The People's Republic of Walmart: How the World's Biggest Corporations Are Laying the Foundation for Socialism

by Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski  · 5 Mar 2019  · 202pp  · 62,901 words

Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To

by David A. Sinclair and Matthew D. Laplante  · 9 Sep 2019

The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth

by Jonathan Rauch  · 21 Jun 2021  · 446pp  · 109,157 words

The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age

by Astra Taylor  · 4 Mar 2014  · 283pp  · 85,824 words

Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization

by Parag Khanna  · 18 Apr 2016  · 497pp  · 144,283 words

Peers Inc: How People and Platforms Are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism

by Robin Chase  · 14 May 2015  · 330pp  · 91,805 words

The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans

by Mark Lynas  · 3 Oct 2011  · 369pp  · 98,776 words

Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software

by Nadia Eghbal  · 3 Aug 2020  · 1,136pp  · 73,489 words

The Behavioral Investor

by Daniel Crosby  · 15 Feb 2018  · 249pp  · 77,342 words

The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, the Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite

by Duff McDonald  · 24 Apr 2017  · 827pp  · 239,762 words

Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution

by David Harvey  · 3 Apr 2012  · 206pp  · 9,776 words

Because We Say So

by Noam Chomsky

The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics

by William R. Easterly  · 1 Aug 2002  · 355pp  · 63 words

Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society

by Eric Posner and E. Weyl  · 14 May 2018  · 463pp  · 105,197 words

The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-First Century

by Ronald Bailey  · 20 Jul 2015  · 417pp  · 109,367 words

The Winner-Take-All Society: Why the Few at the Top Get So Much More Than the Rest of Us

by Robert H. Frank, Philip J. Cook  · 2 May 2011

Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity

by Douglas Rushkoff  · 1 Mar 2016  · 366pp  · 94,209 words

Complexity: A Guided Tour

by Melanie Mitchell  · 31 Mar 2009  · 524pp  · 120,182 words

The World's First Railway System: Enterprise, Competition, and Regulation on the Railway Network in Victorian Britain

by Mark Casson  · 14 Jul 2009  · 556pp  · 46,885 words

Tyler Cowen-Discover Your Inner Economist Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist-Plume (2008)

by Unknown  · 20 Sep 2008  · 246pp  · 116 words

Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them

by Donovan Hohn  · 1 Jan 2010  · 473pp  · 154,182 words

Who Owns England?: How We Lost Our Green and Pleasant Land, and How to Take It Back

by Guy Shrubsole  · 1 May 2019  · 505pp  · 133,661 words

More From Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources – and What Happens Next

by Andrew McAfee  · 30 Sep 2019  · 372pp  · 94,153 words

You Are Not So Smart

by David McRaney  · 20 Sep 2011  · 270pp  · 83,506 words

Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World

by Malcolm Harris  · 14 Feb 2023  · 864pp  · 272,918 words

A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?

by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith  · 6 Nov 2023  · 490pp  · 132,502 words

The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a Warning

by Justin E. H. Smith  · 22 Mar 2022  · 198pp  · 59,351 words

Luxury Fever: Why Money Fails to Satisfy in an Era of Excess

by Robert H. Frank  · 15 Jan 1999  · 416pp  · 112,159 words

Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex

by Rupert Darwall  · 2 Oct 2017  · 451pp  · 115,720 words

The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality

by Angus Deaton  · 15 Mar 2013  · 374pp  · 114,660 words

The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update

by Donella H. Meadows, Jørgen Randers and Dennis L. Meadows  · 15 Apr 2004  · 357pp  · 100,718 words

Radicals Chasing Utopia: Inside the Rogue Movements Trying to Change the World

by Jamie Bartlett  · 12 Jun 2017  · 390pp  · 109,870 words

The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

by Steve Stewart-Williams  · 12 Sep 2018  · 1,132pp  · 156,379 words

Having and Being Had

by Eula Biss  · 15 Jan 2020  · 199pp  · 61,648 words

A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload

by Cal Newport  · 2 Mar 2021  · 350pp  · 90,898 words

Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change

by George Marshall  · 18 Aug 2014  · 298pp  · 85,386 words

Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart

by Nicholas Carr  · 28 Jan 2025  · 231pp  · 85,135 words

Amateurs!: How We Built Internet Culture and Why It Matters

by Joanna Walsh  · 22 Sep 2025  · 255pp  · 80,203 words

Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell

by Phil Lapsley  · 5 Feb 2013  · 744pp  · 142,748 words

The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future

by Joseph E. Stiglitz  · 10 Jun 2012  · 580pp  · 168,476 words

The Locavore's Dilemma

by Pierre Desrochers and Hiroko Shimizu  · 29 May 2012  · 329pp  · 85,471 words

How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities

by John Cassidy  · 10 Nov 2009  · 545pp  · 137,789 words

Clock of the Long Now

by Stewart Brand  · 1 Jan 1999  · 194pp  · 49,310 words

Big Three in Economics: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes

by Mark Skousen  · 22 Dec 2006  · 330pp  · 77,729 words

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein  · 7 Apr 2008  · 304pp  · 22,886 words

The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Doto Get More of It

by Kelly McGonigal  · 1 Dec 2011  · 354pp  · 91,875 words

Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now

by Douglas Rushkoff  · 21 Mar 2013  · 323pp  · 95,939 words

Public Places, Urban Spaces: The Dimensions of Urban Design

by Matthew Carmona, Tim Heath, Steve Tiesdell and Taner Oc  · 15 Feb 2010  · 1,233pp  · 239,800 words

Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization

by Edward Slingerland  · 31 May 2021

Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside

by Xiaowei Wang  · 12 Oct 2020  · 196pp  · 61,981 words

Small Men on the Wrong Side of History: The Decline, Fall and Unlikely Return of Conservatism

by Ed West  · 19 Mar 2020  · 530pp  · 147,851 words

Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley From Building a New Global Underclass

by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri  · 6 May 2019  · 346pp  · 97,330 words

Jellyfish Age Backwards: Nature's Secrets to Longevity

by Nicklas Brendborg  · 17 Jan 2023  · 222pp  · 68,595 words

The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It

by Jonathan Zittrain  · 27 May 2009  · 629pp  · 142,393 words

Competition Overdose: How Free Market Mythology Transformed Us From Citizen Kings to Market Servants

by Maurice E. Stucke and Ariel Ezrachi  · 14 May 2020  · 511pp  · 132,682 words

Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto

by Stewart Brand  · 15 Mar 2009  · 422pp  · 113,525 words

Investing to Save the Planet: How Your Money Can Make a Difference

by Alice Ross  · 19 Nov 2020  · 197pp  · 53,831 words

Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition

by Charles Eisenstein  · 11 Jul 2011  · 448pp  · 142,946 words

The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life

by Robert Wright  · 1 Jan 1994  · 604pp  · 161,455 words

The Penguin and the Leviathan: How Cooperation Triumphs Over Self-Interest

by Yochai Benkler  · 8 Aug 2011  · 187pp  · 62,861 words

Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism

by Wolfgang Streeck  · 1 Jan 2013  · 353pp  · 81,436 words

Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance

by Julia Angwin  · 25 Feb 2014  · 422pp  · 104,457 words

Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City

by Peter D. Norton  · 15 Jan 2008  · 409pp  · 145,128 words

The Invisible Hands: Top Hedge Fund Traders on Bubbles, Crashes, and Real Money

by Steven Drobny  · 18 Mar 2010  · 537pp  · 144,318 words

Engineering Security

by Peter Gutmann

Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming

by Mckenzie Funk  · 22 Jan 2014  · 337pp  · 101,281 words

Superminds: The Surprising Power of People and Computers Thinking Together

by Thomas W. Malone  · 14 May 2018  · 344pp  · 104,077 words

Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society

by Nicholas A. Christakis  · 26 Mar 2019

Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny

by Robert Wright  · 28 Dec 2010

The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration

by Jake Bittle  · 21 Feb 2023  · 296pp  · 118,126 words

The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea

by Sebastian Junger  · 30 Sep 1999

The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality

by Brink Lindsey  · 12 Oct 2017  · 288pp  · 64,771 words

Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb  · 20 Feb 2018  · 306pp  · 82,765 words

How to Speak Money: What the Money People Say--And What It Really Means

by John Lanchester  · 5 Oct 2014  · 261pp  · 86,905 words

The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future

by Laurence C. Smith  · 22 Sep 2010  · 421pp  · 120,332 words

Don't Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

by Steve Krug  · 2 Jan 2000  · 170pp  · 42,196 words

Making Globalization Work

by Joseph E. Stiglitz  · 16 Sep 2006

The Finance Curse: How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer

by Nicholas Shaxson  · 10 Oct 2018  · 482pp  · 149,351 words

The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene

by Richard Dawkins  · 1 Jan 1982  · 506pp  · 152,049 words

Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

by Bill McKibben  · 15 Apr 2019

Gnomon

by Nick Harkaway  · 18 Oct 2017  · 778pp  · 239,744 words

Who Rules the World?

by Noam Chomsky

More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy

by Philip Coggan  · 6 Feb 2020  · 524pp  · 155,947 words

The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter

by Peter Singer and Jim Mason  · 1 May 2006  · 400pp  · 129,320 words

The Weightless World: Strategies for Managing the Digital Economy

by Diane Coyle  · 29 Oct 1998  · 49,604 words

Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth

by Michael Jacobs and Mariana Mazzucato  · 31 Jul 2016  · 370pp  · 102,823 words

Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil

by Nicholas Shaxson  · 20 Mar 2007

Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save the Economy (Bicycle)

by Elly Blue  · 29 Nov 2014  · 221pp  · 68,880 words

Makers

by Chris Anderson  · 1 Oct 2012  · 238pp  · 73,824 words

Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

by Steve Krug  · 1 Jan 2000  · 170pp  · 45,121 words

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner  · 11 Apr 2005  · 339pp  · 95,988 words

The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia

by Andrew Lih  · 5 Jul 2010  · 398pp  · 86,023 words

The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications

by Michal Zalewski  · 26 Nov 2011  · 570pp  · 115,722 words

Model Thinker: What You Need to Know to Make Data Work for You

by Scott E. Page  · 27 Nov 2018  · 543pp  · 153,550 words

The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning

by James E. Lovelock  · 1 Jan 2009  · 239pp  · 68,598 words

Food and Fuel: Solutions for the Future

by Andrew Heintzman, Evan Solomon and Eric Schlosser  · 2 Feb 2009  · 323pp  · 89,795 words

They Have a Word for It A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words & Phrases-Sarabande Books (2000)

by Howard Rheingold  · 10 Mar 2020

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

by David Graeber and David Wengrow  · 18 Oct 2021

Bulletproof Problem Solving

by Charles Conn and Robert McLean  · 6 Mar 2019

Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age

by Clay Shirky  · 9 Jun 2010  · 236pp  · 66,081 words

Rethinking Narcissism: The Bad---And Surprising Good---About Feeling Special

by Dr. Craig Malkin  · 6 Jul 2015  · 259pp  · 67,261 words

The Economics of Enough: How to Run the Economy as if the Future Matters

by Diane Coyle  · 21 Feb 2011  · 523pp  · 111,615 words

More Joel on Software

by Joel Spolsky  · 25 Jun 2008  · 292pp  · 81,699 words

Facebook: The Inside Story

by Steven Levy  · 25 Feb 2020  · 706pp  · 202,591 words

WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us

by Tim O'Reilly  · 9 Oct 2017  · 561pp  · 157,589 words

Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer

by Duncan J. Watts  · 28 Mar 2011  · 327pp  · 103,336 words

Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World

by Jane McGonigal  · 20 Jan 2011  · 470pp  · 128,328 words

The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality

by Katharina Pistor  · 27 May 2019  · 316pp  · 117,228 words

The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley

by Leslie Berlin  · 9 Jun 2005

Are Trams Socialist?: Why Britain Has No Transport Policy

by Christian Wolmar  · 19 May 2016  · 79pp  · 24,875 words

What's Wrong With Economics: A Primer for the Perplexed

by Robert Skidelsky  · 3 Mar 2020  · 290pp  · 76,216 words

A Brief History of Neoliberalism

by David Harvey  · 2 Jan 1995  · 318pp  · 85,824 words

Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire

by Brad Stone  · 10 May 2021  · 569pp  · 156,139 words

What's Next?: Unconventional Wisdom on the Future of the World Economy

by David Hale and Lyric Hughes Hale  · 23 May 2011  · 397pp  · 112,034 words

Red Mars

by Kim Stanley Robinson  · 23 Oct 1992  · 660pp  · 213,945 words

Green Mars

by Kim Stanley Robinson  · 23 Oct 1993  · 746pp  · 239,969 words

The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone, Especially Ourselves

by Dan Ariely  · 27 Jun 2012  · 258pp  · 73,109 words

Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

by Martin Ford  · 4 May 2015  · 484pp  · 104,873 words

A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Carbon Emissions

by Muhammad Yunus  · 25 Sep 2017  · 278pp  · 74,880 words

We Are Electric: Inside the 200-Year Hunt for Our Body's Bioelectric Code, and What the Future Holds

by Sally Adee  · 27 Feb 2023  · 329pp  · 101,233 words

A Man for All Markets

by Edward O. Thorp  · 15 Nov 2016  · 505pp  · 142,118 words

2312

by Kim Stanley Robinson  · 22 May 2012  · 561pp  · 167,631 words

The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving

by Leigh Gallagher  · 26 Jun 2013  · 296pp  · 76,284 words

After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back

by Juliet Schor, William Attwood-Charles and Mehmet Cansoy  · 15 Mar 2020  · 296pp  · 83,254 words

The Hacker's Diet

by John Walker

The Second Intelligent Species: How Humans Will Become as Irrelevant as Cockroaches

by Marshall Brain  · 6 Apr 2015  · 215pp  · 56,215 words

Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy

by Jonathan Taplin  · 17 Apr 2017  · 222pp  · 70,132 words

Spite: The Upside of Your Dark Side

by Simon McCarthy-Jones  · 12 Apr 2021

Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems

by Martin Kleppmann  · 17 Apr 2017

Java: The Good Parts

by Jim Waldo  · 193pp  · 31,998 words

The Rationalist's Guide to the Galaxy: Superintelligent AI and the Geeks Who Are Trying to Save Humanity's Future

by Tom Chivers  · 12 Jun 2019  · 289pp  · 92,714 words

Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems

by Martin Kleppmann  · 16 Mar 2017  · 1,237pp  · 227,370 words

Early Retirement Extreme

by Jacob Lund Fisker  · 30 Sep 2010  · 346pp  · 102,625 words

Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech

by Jamie Susskind  · 3 Sep 2018  · 533pp

Economists and the Powerful

by Norbert Haring, Norbert H. Ring and Niall Douglas  · 30 Sep 2012  · 261pp  · 103,244 words

Where We Are: The State of Britain Now

by Roger Scruton  · 16 Nov 2017  · 190pp  · 56,531 words

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb  · 1 Jan 2001  · 111pp  · 1 words

Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code

by Jeff Atwood  · 3 Jul 2012  · 270pp  · 64,235 words

Independent Diplomat: Dispatches From an Unaccountable Elite

by Carne Ross  · 25 Apr 2007  · 212pp  · 68,690 words

Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair (And What We Can Do About It)

by William Poundstone  · 5 Feb 2008

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

by Nick Bostrom  · 3 Jun 2014  · 574pp  · 164,509 words

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

by Jonathan Haidt  · 13 Mar 2012  · 539pp  · 139,378 words

Elsewhere, U.S.A: How We Got From the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms,and Economic Anxiety

by Dalton Conley  · 27 Dec 2008  · 204pp  · 67,922 words

Roads and Bridges

by Nadia Eghbal  · 139pp  · 35,022 words

The Growth Delusion: Wealth, Poverty, and the Well-Being of Nations

by David Pilling  · 30 Jan 2018  · 264pp  · 76,643 words

You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All

by Adrian Hon  · 14 Sep 2022  · 371pp  · 107,141 words

Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

by Douglas Rushkoff  · 7 Sep 2022  · 205pp  · 61,903 words

Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World

by Michael Lewis  · 2 Oct 2011  · 180pp  · 61,340 words

Unsustainable Inequalities: Social Justice and the Environment

by Lucas Chancel  · 15 Jan 2020  · 191pp  · 51,242 words

Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire: My Unlikely Escape From Corporate America

by Dan Conway  · 8 Sep 2019  · 218pp  · 68,648 words

Dark Pools: The Rise of the Machine Traders and the Rigging of the U.S. Stock Market

by Scott Patterson  · 11 Jun 2012  · 356pp  · 105,533 words