Neal Stephenson Quotes

Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

When property is owned communally, everyone has an incentive to use it up quickly, before someone else does. No-one bothers to maintain or improve it, because their efforts will simply benefit others

What belongs to everybody belongs to nobody.

Public crowdfunding still suffers from a tragedy of the commons problem. Everyone will want the benefit of the crowdfunded efforts but is incentivized to sit on the sidelines and hope others chip in.

If individuals can take from a common pot regardless of how much they put in it, each person has an incentive to be a free rider, to do as little as possible and take as much as possible because what one fails to take will be taken by someone else.

It is difficult to administer properly what belongs to all in common.

Use it or lose it.

The fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to none.

The rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another . . . But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit — in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill.

We got to make sure that we have the incentives for people to rise and not put them in a position of where they go to work and they lose more than what they gain and they're like this system is terrible.

Our weird problem is an abundance of resources and a shortage of hard economic reasons not to use them.

But because human being tend to focus on short-term benefits and our own immediate needs, such tragedies of the commons occur frequently .

There was no private property in the past. Everything was communal property. In the Indian community where I was born, everything belonged to the community. This way of life is more equitable.

If you don't toot your own horn, someone else will use it as a spittoon.

I think that markets classically fail in cases where there are public goods that provide benefits that people cannot capture. The big debate is how big these public goods are, where they exist, things of that sort.

You know the old expression "We haven't inherited the world from our parents, we've borrowed it from our children"? Well it's just not true. We haven't borrowed anything.

Dirty energy is a finite resource; the more of it we use, the scarcer it becomes.

Brass shines with constant usage, a beautiful dress needs wearing,Leave a house empty, it rots.

If words fall into disrepair, what will substitute? They are all we have

The pump don't work cause the vandals took the handle

It is a universal principle that whenever one refuses to use his God-given powers, these powers decay and perish.

Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out.

Economic policies need to be analyzed in terms of the incentives they create, rather than the hopes that inspired them.

Food that is necessary for man’s existence is as sacred as life itself. Everything that is indispensable for its preservation is the common property of society as a whole. It is only the surplus that is private property and can be safely left to individual commercial enterprise.