I think we should be very careful when taking away options from other people, like this post suggest. But there certainly exists some cases in wich is useful, such as pretty much every formal agreement.
But one case I find ilustrative is public transport. Imagine a game were you have four possibilities (simplification):
Everyone takes the bus, no traffic. Everyone is on time.
You drive your car, everyone else takes the bus. You can arrive early.
You take the bus, everyone else take their car. Everyone is late, but you are very late.
Everyone takes their car, everyone arrieves late (traffic)
If you take the car option away from people you force an “everyone on time” situation.
Note: I’m not saying a “car prohibition policy” is a good policy. There are better options for incentivizing the use of the public transport without taking such an extreme stance.
I think we should be very careful when taking away options from other people, like this post suggest. But there certainly exists some cases in wich is useful, such as pretty much every formal agreement.
But one case I find ilustrative is public transport. Imagine a game were you have four possibilities (simplification):
Everyone takes the bus, no traffic. Everyone is on time.
You drive your car, everyone else takes the bus. You can arrive early.
You take the bus, everyone else take their car. Everyone is late, but you are very late.
Everyone takes their car, everyone arrieves late (traffic)
If you take the car option away from people you force an “everyone on time” situation.
Note: I’m not saying a “car prohibition policy” is a good policy. There are better options for incentivizing the use of the public transport without taking such an extreme stance.
This post was directly inspired by that post! I wanted a quantitative estimate.