This will be the first of two posts. This one will summarize what we know about the connection between punishment and providing public goods. The follow-up post will be in ~meta and will be my thoughts on how this applies to Stacker News, specifically.
For the sake of brevity and clarity, I speak a little loosely in parts.

What are public goods?

A public good is an economic good that is neither rivalrous nor excludable in consumption. Ok, what does that mean?
  • Economic goods are anything with a positive equilibrium price; i.e. things people are willing to pay for.
  • Rivalrous goods can only be used by a single person; i.e. one person's use precludes someone else's use.
  • Excludable goods can only be used with the permission of the seller.
So, a public good is something valuable that is available to everyone and usable by everyone. A common example of a public good is radio broadcasts. Once it's put out there anyone can receive it and my use won't prevent yours.
The concern with public goods is under-provision. That's because each of us has an incentive to not pay for it, since we'll get it either way (as long as someone pays enough for it to be produced). That's the Free Rider Problem.
There are many possible entrepreneurial solutions to overcome this (like inserting paid ads into the broadcast). Quick aside: the intentional combination of an economic good (the radio program) with an economic bad (the ads) is sometimes called a "kludge".

The role of punishment

Another solution to certain public goods situations, is to punish people for not chipping in. I'm most familiar with this in the setting of subsistence communities. Often, these communities have a communal food distribution because that acts as insurance for those who tried but had poor luck at hunting or fishing or whatever it is.
Because they've created a public good out of their food supply, each member of the community now has an incentive to put in less effort, because they'll get to eat either way. If everyone shirks, though, there won't be enough food for the community. That's why shirking tends to be heavily punished in these communities. That punishment will generally come in the form of some type of ostracism, possibly including loss of access to the communal food.
In that scenario, the public good was an artificial construct in the first place, so it was possible to exclude the bad actor. Also, as some of you probably thought, that food ends up being rivalrous if not enough was produced.
Still, one way to deal with free-riding is to punish it sufficiently that it's preferrable to just do the work.

Punishment itself can be a public good

A punishment like ostracism is also costly to the punisher, assuming they value that relationship. I may be tempted not to ostracize my lazy friend, which makes him less likely to change his ways. If I choose to ostracize my friend, the cost is borne by me, but I share the benefits with the rest of the community.
There are also scenarios where it's sufficient for one person to implement a punishment. This is basically the situation with criminal punishments. If I lock someone up for their antisocial behavior, the whole community benefits, but it comes at great expense to me.

TL;DR

In the context of producing public goods, punishing non-producers is itself a public good, because it produces benefits that are accessible to everyone. That means there likely won't be an optimal amount of punishment (dispersed benefits and concentrated costs), unless some other layer of compensation develops for those who do the punishing.

Referrences

Here are some publicly available sources for those who want to do a deep dive on the topic. I was initially going to tie them into this post, but I got carried away with my stream of consciousness and said most of what I wanted to say.
(To continue the discussion, on this same lines, that @Signal312 started in this post, I'm pasting my comment here to)
In regards of compensation and punishment within SN, what we have to replicate is the standard free market:
  • If your product is good, people buys it (zaps), your trust score improves which leads to more sells -> you grow
  • If your product is bad, people do not buys it (equals mute), your trust score downgrades which leads to less sells -> you go down
One key characteristic of the market is that each opinion is from an actual person, that is, sybil tactics are extremely difficult or impossible. Opinions are free, so you don't have to pay to say that something is good or bad, which helps information to be broadcasted more efficiently and accurately. Now the reason we have "paid opinions" (i.e. down-zaps) is to discourage sybil behaviour. But this also discourages free opinion, because having to pay to say something is bad is functionally a penalization to that kind of opinion as much as a penalization to spam. Now to have free opinion but to penalize sybil tactics you would have to pay to enter SN upfront, but that would discourage everyone from entering SN. So, an account must be free, to let people in, and opinions must be free, to not to discourage flagging. How can we allow that while avoiding sybil tactics? No reward other than trust score improvement can be applied, again, to avoid sybil tactics. Trust score rewards do translate in gains at the moment of making material that gets compensated. That PoW workflow is a great spam deterrent. A sybil tactic there is not a problem if the material is good, only spam is tackled that way which is correct. So, the only conundrum to work out is: what PoW can we implement so to increment the probability of a user to be an individual, in order to get the free market scheme working correctly? Pure behaviour is not a good indicator thanks to bots, so the solution must consist of a cost in sats. It can't be upfront, it can't be at the moment of expressing opinion. Thus, where? The only way I see it working is by considering the zaps you gave, which if I'm not mistaken is considered already in the trust score. So there is your PoW, in your trust score, which leverages your work and interactions by considering the zaps you received and the zaps you gave. It could then be as follows:
  • Down-zapping can be discarded, just to avoid confusion with "negative muting". Being "outlawed" remains at discretion of a territory owner.
  • Everyone can mute, so that the consequence of muting only applies to the one who mutes. The user muted is not affected in any way.
  • If a person haves enough trust score (and proportional to it), apart from muting he can also "negatively mute", which does impacts the muted user trust score. Of course negative impacts are balanced against positive impacts (getting zaps and interacting and etc) to get the end result.
  • The trust-score should be shown next to all users, which is the only way to broadcast the information.
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164 sats \ 7 replies \ @k00b 23 Jul
This is fantastic and super clearly written. I enjoy this kind of thing a lot because it's everywhere and relevant, the concepts and classifications are simple, yet it's still overlooked because of its basicness.
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Thanks. It's fun to write these kinds of posts, but they're more time consuming, so I can't do them very often...for now.
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It so clearly explains the 1% rule we see with downzappers.
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Yeah, many of the public goods experiments find that certain people really love doling out punishment. I guess the species needs a few of them, but doesn't "want" very many.
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I wonder how much of that population overlaps with wikipedia editors. The proportions are consistent so it might be, in part at least, a public good producer impulse.
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Stanford Prison experiment
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Also - this kind of discussion, leading to experimentation in incentive systems - it's a very high value thing to do.
If, through these experiments, a system can be created or evolved that goes a long way towards solving some of these issues - what a incredible win!
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I totally agree. Part of why I feel so at home here is that other people are similarly interested in this stuff and see why it's so important.
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Let's punish the spammers and bots only.
Don't ever punish good and related content.
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I'd hope people behave that way, but you can't count on people doing anything other than following the incentives.
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I'm very clear on it. If people run behind incentives and start downzapping the good content as well, SN wouldn't be the same place as it's now.
Providing incentives for punishment does not seem to me a good option. Also, it seems to me that there's no infestation of bots and spammers on SN upto now. Seeing a few here and there shouldn't bother everyone so much so to start asking for incentives for downzapping.
Take this as my personal opinion! Not an argument, you're better experienced than I.
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I actually agree with you.
While we're a small community, it's easy enough and relatively effective to informally coordinate how we're dealing with spam.
I'm thinking about down the road, when we may be too large for that type of coordination. I'm also just really interested in this kind of mechanism design.
If it's done right, then the incentives for downzapping should be fairly trivial until spam is a much larger issue.
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I've a better suggestion, may be! Why don't we employ some Stackers as spam/bot detectors and give them the ability to downzap such comments and posts. For their work these inspector Stackers should be rewarded. This is the best I can think of for the long run when we have to deal with lot of folks running in here.
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You're proposing we have sheriffs. That would be very much on-brand.
There certainly might be something interesting there.
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I didn't say sherrifs but yeah some responsible Stackers would be required to oversee spam and bots.
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I watched a Stacker get dox’d and threatened for calling out the 5hitty behaviour of bots, 5hitcoiners and AI content.
Really? When was that?
Well said! I agree.
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Public goods are generally poor quality,just compare public schools to private schools
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Low quality can be the way a public good is under provisioned. However, schools are not public goods. They're what's known as a "club good", because they are excludable.
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I'd argue they're pretty rivalrous too. Class size really does make a difference
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I think that's debatable, within certain class size ranges, but then education would just be a normal good.
Similar to your point about imperfect public goods, it's probably better to say that schools are like a club good.
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I don't think class size matters here,but the quality of education kids receive matters. In private schools for a teacher to keep his or her job,kids should perform well,but in public schools!?whether they perform well or not,teachers will still get their pay.
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That's true but not really pertinent to whether it's rivalrous or not.
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Public education is better than no education.
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No education is not really a thing. Humans are always learning no matter what, especially children. It just might not be what society or the government consider proper things to learn.
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That's not particularly clear from the available evidence. For that to be true, government schools would have to be producing about $20k in value per student per year. It's often hard to find any positive effect of government schooling, much less $20k worth.
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Isnt the 20k an investment for the future? Would you rather have a bunch of adults that arent educated? Wouldnt that bring even more of a social rift into our society?
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20k per student is a contribution for the teachers union pension
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I don't think most people retain any significant amount of knowledge from government school. You can basically see that in how kids who are unschooled often outperform kids who went to government school.
We judge investments on their return. If people don't measurably advance their knowledge because of government schooling, then it's an investment with a terrible return. For $20k you could pay for many hours of private tutoring. You have to think about what those resources could otherwise do.
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Im not sure. Basic life skills like math and science are somewhat important. Even english.
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If only kids were actually learning those things, beyond what they would learn on their own.
Education is great. School sucks.
Many students are deficient in math and reading based on their test scores
You can basically see that in how kids who are unschooled often outperform kids who went to government school.
Unschooled or home schooled?
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Im pretty sure he is talking about homeschooled. Because people that are unschooled rarely succeed in life. I might be wrong, but that was my impression.
Really? like Baltimore and St Louis?
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I am still under the belief that public school is better than no school.
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Just imagine if this was possible for the people who are on public funding projects?
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Public funding doesn't equate to public good, but it would be odd to start flogging people for not doing road maintenance. Although, they might finally finish these damn roads in that case.
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What I thought was amazing was the amount of work that got done at night. In taiwan, they cranked away at things and got stuff done. Especially the roads.
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I missed this earlier. Great idea for a post. Did I also miss your meta post relating it directly to SN? Timely for me. I just started downzapping more often.
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I haven't made the ~meta post yet. I'll try to make it more of a jumping off point for discussing different options, but I need to think through a few things and probably refresh my memory on some of these different experiments first.
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I look forward to it.
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Big zaps on this post. Nice work sir.
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Thank you. I have very generous benefactors. At this rate, I might be able to semi-retire like you.
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Keep at it and I am sure you will.
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Anything that is described as a public good is not a public good
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I agree, fellow public goods truther, but it's a useful concept.
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ChatGPT argued roads were a public good and then i asked about road congestion and it basically started contradicted itself without blinking. Have a nice day.
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When I teach about public goods, I emphasize that the characteristic of being non-rival and non-excludable isn't a hard and fast rule but can depend on circumstances. Hence, the degree of non-rivalry of a road depends on the level of congestion.
It's like the concept of a slope. One can say that mountains are sloped, but it doesn't mean that they're sloped equally everywhere. Rather, the degree of slope can vary from position to position. That doesn't make the concept of slope useless, just as it doesn't make the concept of rivalry and excludability useless.
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Well put. In many cases, things are only effectively public goods, rather than perfect public goods.
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You reach people that roads are public goods?
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The slope of a roof can endanger law enforcement
You teach economics? more people need to learn economics even if it's a weekly column by John Cochrane
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Yep, I teach economics and I totally agree that more people need to have some basic economic literacy.
Interestingly, I find that young people are much less interested in it than middle age people. I guess it's something that doesn't seem interesting until you personally experience how much it affects you.
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The concept of "Public Goods" is not economic literacy tho. Its a bad concept
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Street musicians fit the definition of a public good but the "experts" assert some kind of privilege and decide to not classify them as public goods.
Same thing about roads. Roads do not fit the definition of a public good, but then the "experts" assert some kind of privilege and call it a public good anyway
So what is the motivation behind this term? Why do experts push the concept?
During the 1980s and 90s there was a movement combining the disciplines of Law and Economics. Famous people affiliated with Law and Economics were Nobel Prize winner Ronald Coase, David Friedman, Richard Epstein, Richard Posner and Douglas Ginsburg. Many of them were affiliated with U. of Chicago.
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and law enforcement can be a public good
QED
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Great Article! Punishment is defined as a technique for reducing or eliminating unwanted behaviours. In psychology it's defined as one of types for Operant Conditioning!
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What are your views about downzapping being used as a negative reinforcement to mould behaviours how we discuss here at SN?
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We’ll get into that more in the follow up post, but it’s something to be concerned about.
The worst outcome would be over incentivizing downzapping and turning Stacker News into a full blown echo chamber.
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When you talk about incentivizing downzapping, do you realise that it will then be used much similar to zapping now! Some Stackers will even choose to downzap what they personally don't like. The echo chamber you talk about may lead us to a full blown war between zappers and downzappers.
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I hadn’t thought about that sort of escalation, but I know it’s very important to not screw up the incentives.
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Not trying to object to your views but incentivising punishment may lead to manipulation of rewards by some of us who would more often downzap in order to reward themselves!
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It's a balancing act to make punishment worth doing, without making it lucrative.
I think there are ways to limit the benefits of downzapping, to keep it from getting out of control.
Radio broadcast is a public good. Sirius XM is not public good?
What about podcasts?
Television broadcast? I realize cable or premium channels are not public goods.
what about health care? or public schools?
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In general, digital goods are public goods, because the marginal cost of production is near zero and they're non-rivalrous. We have some artificial obstacles to consumption in the form of IP laws, but the nature of those goods makes them public goods.
Health care is definitely not, as it's both excludable and rivalrous (if you get an organ transplant, then no one else can get it.) That makes it a "normal good".
Public schools may be considered non-rival, if the school is not over capacity, but they are excludable. We have legal policies that artificially make schools more like a public good, but it is possible to exclude someone, so they aren't real public goods. Schools are technically "club goods".
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Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.
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Public Goods: These are things everyone can use, like a beautiful sunset or a radio broadcast. When you enjoy them, it doesn’t stop others from doing the same. Free Rider Problem: People often don’t want to pay for public goods because they’ll benefit anyway. Imagine not paying for a radio program – you can still listen! Solutions: Entrepreneurs get creative. They mix good things (like the radio program) with less desirable things (like ads) to fund public goods. Punishment: Sometimes, we need rules. In communities, if everyone shirks their duties (like not hunting), there won’t be enough food. So, punishment encourages cooperation. Remember, public goods challenge our usual thinking, but we find ways to make them work! 🌟
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I always ask, “by what standard”. And what examples do we see on how this has played out in the world
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The article is very interesting but can you offer another way out or way to solve it?
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stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.
stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.