Talk:Tyranny of small decisions

A fact from Tyranny of small decisions appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 27 February 2010 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the tyranny of small decisions is a concept developed by the American economist Alfred E. Kahn in 1966, and has been applied to market failures, environmental degradation and health outcomes?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2010/February.

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Counters

I believe there should be a discussion of the questions of individual rights to liberty, rather than merely assuming that quote-unquote "upper-level decision making" is preferable to an individuals freedom to fail... so long as they may chose their own path, using their own rights for such.--71.91.88.212 (talk) 22:28, 18 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. The solution to the tragedy of the commons is for the commons to have an owner who will look out for its interests over the long term. Similarly any public property is doomed to the tragedy of the commons. 192.35.44.24 (talk) 00:11, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Quote of Thucydides Was Hard to Find

It’s in Chapter V: Second Congress at Lacedaemon - Preparations for War and Diplomatic Skirmishes - Cylon - Pausanias - Themistocles (The original having a line break instead of a colon), which is not contained in [1], but only in the full text version on the same page, [2]. I’d say this is a rather unfortunate circumstance as it has taken longer that I think it should have to locate it. Well, I realize that this is not exactly the right place to bring this up, but there’s hope someone else might look at the talk page when unable to find it. Also, maybe somebody else will know if and how to advise this fact best in the article itself. 93.215.211.81 (talk) 12:44, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, the reason for me to even want to source this quote (I generally rely on those being accurate on Wikipedia ;) ), is that I was curious how it sounds in German, and there is quite some difference indeed:

Wenn ſie nach langem Zaudern zuſammen kommen, ſo widmen ſie der Berathung des allgemeinen Wohls nur kurze Zeit, die Meiſten hingegen der Betreibung ihrer beſondern Angelegenheiten. Jeder meint, ſein gleichgültiges Betragen werde nicht viel ſchaden, und es werde ſchon ein Anderer die Mühe übernehmen, ſtatt ſeiner etwas zu beſorgen: weil daher jeder Einzelne dieſe Einbildung für ſich hegt, ſo leidet unvermerkt das Geſammtwohl Noth.

(Transferred by hand from the digitalized copy of Die Geschichte des Peloponnesischen Kriegs: Band 1, translated by Christian Nathanael Osiander, originally published in 1827, available for free on Google Play: Direct link to the right page, page 131, where section 141 is continued.) 93.215.211.81 (talk) 14:03, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Environmental degradation and Counters sections

These sections all rely on a single source. They also seem to me to be a bit unencylopaedic in style; but if the text is directly quoted from the source then this should be made clearer. 178.48.16.181 (talk) 12:59, 19 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Everglades sentence

There needs to be a discussion about the example of the Florida Everglades. The sentence begins These have been threatened not by a single unfavorable decision but by many independent pin prick decisions, such as. There seems to be a dispute about what should follow.

Example 1:  These have been threatened, not by a single unfavorable decision, but by many independent pin prick decisions, such as decisions to add this well, that drainage canal, one more retirement village, another roadway...

Example 2: These have been threatened not by a single unfavorable decision but by many independent pin prick decisions, such as decisions to add canals, villages and roads.

My first observation is that the article is about "small decisions", so it doesn't make sense to introduce a different term ("pin prick decision") which is not used anywhere else in the article.

Second, the content following "such as" need to be examples of "small decisions". The list in example 2 fails to illustrate "small decisions". A "small decision" is "this is just one canal, it won't matter"; multiple "small decisions" then accumulate into a large impact.

The list in example 1 could be better written. It took me 4 read-throughs to make grammatical sense of it (probably due to the ambiguous nature of "well"). And ending a sentence with an ellipsis isn't great.

I'd suggest something along the lines of These have been threatened not by a single deliberate decision, but by many small decisions, such as a single well being added in one place and a drainage canal in another place and a roadway in yet another place. Schazjmd (talk) 17:45, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Notice

Due to edit warring, the page has been protected for 10 days.

If there is further edit warring, further sanctions may be applied, such as blocking.

Please discuss and find consensus. - jc37 17:58, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Um, wouldn't page blocks on the involved editors be more sensible? I have other changes I'd like to make. E Eng 07:05, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed The void century 12:40, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

How is this different from cumulative effects?

The topic of this article seems to be one economist's perspective on Cumulative effects (environment). I am considering a merge proposal/AfD, but I want to get more info before assuming it's a WP:CONTENTFORK. I'm also unclear as to why this change garnered an edit war. It doesn't seem to be a significant change and it does seem to improve the WP:TONE. @Epipelagic and @EEEEEE1, can you explain how this article's topic is different from cumulative effects? The void century 23:13, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]