While reading an article on The Thirteen Tipping Points of global warming for my environmental studies class, I took notice of one hypothetical solution to make people more active in combating global warming: A public lottery.

The article starts by informing readers that democratic, cooperative species tend to survive through the millennium. This is contrary to some economic theory which suggests that humans will only ever act in their own self-interest.

It also cites a game theory experiment in which greater success is obtained by the group as a whole when all participants can see how much each player is contributing to the communal “pot”:

A recent study hints at the evolution of altruism. A team of Swiss and American mathematicians and population biologists ran a variant of game theory known as a public goods game, in which players contribute money to a common pot that an experimenter doubles, divides evenly, and returns to the players. In ordinary play, if all players contribute all their money, everyone wins big. If one player cheats, everyone wins small. If an altruist and a cheater go head-to-head, the cheater wins consistently. This paradox is known as the Tragedy of the Commons.

But in the new computer variant, population dynamics were introduced into the game. Players were divided into small groups that played among themselves. Each player eventually “reproduced” in proportion to the payoff received from play—thereby passing her cooperator or cheater strategy to her offspring. Mutations and dispersions were introduced, creating a shifting population of individuals divided into groups of changing sizes and allegiances.

After 100,000 generations, the results were surprising. Rather than succumbing to the cheaters, the
cooperators overwhelmed them.

Drawing on this evidence, the article presents an intriguing possible solution that would encourage humans to be more active in preventing further global warming:

How might we get these messages across? Imagine a lottery funding advertising about he fiery monster, the Lilliputian arrows, the neighborhood dangers. Ideally these advertisements would be big and splashy and persistent enough to awaken us from our slumber in the televised lagoon.

Instead of a ticket, we’d buy a web listing displaying our commitment to the battle as well as our marksmanship rating: a number reflecting how much money we’d donated, the efficiency of our car, home, appliances. The highest-rated players would earn high-visibility web pages. Low-rated players could improve their ratings by following a list of lifestyle amendments. The higher our rating, the greater our chances in the lottery. Every week someone would win.

Would we play?

An interesting scenario to say the last. It has some obvious holes, but might have the potential to create real change if somehow implemented on a large scale.

I just finished watching a documentary called The Corporation, an intriguing look at the modern day exploits of global corporations. I wanted to quickly mention a couple points that I found particularly interesting:

• For all legal purposes, corporations are considered a person
• Being a person, corporations are allowed to give campaign constitutions because it is free speech
• Before 1987, the patent office clearly stated that it was not legal to patent any living thing. After a misguided supreme court ruling stating that a bacteria looked more like a chemical than a bug, a corporation was allowed to copyright that bacteria. The ruling now states that you can patent any living thing in the world except a full birth human being.

The end of the documentary gives a list of things we can do to remedy the issues that are posed by modern corporations:

• End corporate personhood
• Put people before profit
• Build economic democracy
• Use full-cost accounting
• Stop corporate welfare
• Localize ownership
• Support unions
• 3 strikes for corporations
• Be an active shareholder
• Jail corporate criminals
• Strength regulatory systems
• Get corporations out of schools
• Make trade fair
• Run corporations from politics
• Use local democratic power
• Support independent media
• Internalize externalities
• Buy local
• Work for worker rights
• Jam corporate culture
• Ride a bike

I think this is a fantastic list of things that people can do to fix some of the broken aspects of corporations.

I hope everyone has a chance to watch the documentary. I’d love to hear any comments anyone has on the film or about corporations in general.