I think cooperation is more complex than that, as far as who benefits. Superficially, yes it benefits lower status participants the most and therefore suggests they’re the ones most likely to ask. In very simple systems, I think you see this often. But as the system or cultural superstructure gets more complex, the benefit rises toward higher status participants. Most societies put a lot of stock in being able to organize—a task which includes cooperation in its scope. That’s a small part of the reason you get political email spam asking for donations, even if you live in an area where your political party is clearly dominant. Societies also tend to put an emphasis on active overall participation (the ‘irons in the fire’ mentality), where peer-cooperation is rewarded, and it’s often unclear who has higher status in those situations without being able to tell who has the most ‘irons in the fire’ so to speak. I feel like this is where coauthoring falls. Although it probably depends on what subculture has developed around the subject being authored.
And then there’s the people who create organizations entirely centered around cooperation. The idea being that there’s power in being able to set the rules of how the lower status participants are allowed to cooperate, and how they are rewarded for their cooperation. For example, Youtube and Kickstarter. In these and similar systems, cooperation effectively starts at the highest possible status and rolls downhill.
This Thorin guy sounds pretty clever. Too bad he followed his own logic straight to his demise, but hey he stuck to his guns! Or pickaxe, as it were.
His argument attempting to prevent Bifur from trying to convince fellow Dwarves against mining into the Balrog’s lair sounds like a variation on the baggage carousel problem (this is the first vaguely relevant link I stumbled across, don’t take it as a definitive explanation)
Basically, everyone wants resource X, resulting in a given self-interested behavior whose result is to collectively lower everyone’s overall success rate, but where the solution that maximizes total success directly goes against each person’s self-interest. This results in an equilibrium where everyone works sub-optimally.
In this variation, the action of Thorin’s operation achieving resource M moves everyone slightly closer to negative consequence B. So the goal is no longer to maximize resource collection, but to minimize it. Doing so goes against everyone’s self-interest, resulting in etc. That is what Thorin is so eloquently trying to prevent Bifur from doing.
There are a couple ways Bifur can approach this.
He could do it through logical discourse: Thorin is in error when he claims
because it assumes unearthing the Balrog is a matter of incrementally filling a loading bar, where each Dwarf’s contribution is miniscule. That’s the naive way to imagine the situation, since you see in your mind the tunnel boring ever closer to the monster. But given that we can’t know the location or depth of the Balrog, each miner’s strike is actually more like a dice roll. Even if it’s a large dice roll, recontexualizing the danger in this manner will surely cause some dwarves to update their risk-reward assessment of mining Mithril. A campaign of this nature will at least lower the number of dwarves willing to join Thorin’s operation, although it doesn’t address the “Balrog isn’t real” or “Balrog isn’t evil” groups.
Alternatively, he could try to normalize new moral behavior. People are willing to work against their self-interest if doing so demonstrates a socially accepted/enforced moral behavior. If he were a sly one, he could sidestep the divisive Balrog issue altogether and simply spread the notion that wearing or displaying Mithril is sinful within the context of Dwarven values. eg maybe it’s too pragmatic, and not extravagant enough for a proper ostentatious Dwarven sensibility. That could shut down Thorin’s whole operation without ever addressing the Balrog.
But Bifur probably sees the practical value of Mithril beyond its economic worth. As Thorin says, it’s vital for the war effort—completely shutting down all Mithril mining may not be the best plan if it results in a number of Dwarf casualties similar to or greater than what he estimates a Balrog could do. So a more appetizing plan might be to combine the manipulation of logic and social norms. He could perform a professional survey of the mining systems. Based on whatever accepted arbitrary standards of divining danger the Dwarves agree to (again, assuming the location of the Balrog is literally unknowable before unearthing it due to magic), Bifur could identify mining zones of ever increasing danger within whatever tolerances he’s comfortable with. He could then shop these around to various mining operations as helpful safety guidelines until he has a decent lobby behind him in order to persuade the various kings to ratify his surveys into official measuring standards. Dwarves are still free to keep mining deeper if they wish, but now with a socially accepted understanding that heading into each zone ups their risk relative to their potential reward, naturally preventing a majority of Dwarves from wanting to do so. Those who believe the Balrog doesn’t exist or is far away would be confronted with Bifur’s readily available surveys, putting them on the defensive. There would still be opposition from those who see the Balrog as “not evil”, but the momentum behind Bifur’s social movement should be enough to shout them down. This result would allow Thorin’s operation to continue to supply the realm with life-saving Mithril, while at least decreasing the danger of a Balrog attack for as long as Bifur’s standards are recognized.
Finally, Bifur could try to use evidenced-based research and honestly performed geological surveys, but even in the real world where locating the Balrog beforehand is technologically possible, that tends to be a weaker tactic than social manipulation. Only other experts will be able to parse them, his opponents will have emotional arguments that will give them the upper hand, and Thorin’s baggage carousel logic would remain unchallenged.