Tyranny of small decisions
[1] The article describes a situation where a series of small, individually rational decisions can negatively change the context of subsequent choices, even to the point where desired alternatives are irreversibly destroyed.
Suppose each person in the cities served were to ask himself how much he would have been willing to pledge regularly over some time period, say annually, by purchase of prepaid tickets, to keep rail passenger service available to his community.
As long as the amount that he would have declared (to himself) would have exceeded what he actually paid on the period–and my own introspective experiment shows that it would–then to that extent the disappearance of the passenger service was an incident of market failure.
[7]Thomas Mun (1571–1641), an English mercantilist, commented about decisions made with a myopic, small time perspective: [T]hey search no further than the beginning of the work, which mis-informs their judgements, and leads them into error: For if we only behold the actions of the husbandman in the seed-time when he casteth away much good corn into the ground, we will rather account him a mad-man than a husbandman: but when we consider his labours in the harvest which is the end of his endeavours, we find the worth and plentiful increase of his actions.
[8]Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (1851–1914), an Austrian economist, observed that decisions made with small time perspectives can have a seductive quality:
[9]In 1982, estuarine ecologist William Odum published a paper where he extended the notion of the tyranny of small decisions to environmental issues.
No explicit decision was made to restrict the flow of surface water into the glades, or to encourage hot, destructive fires and intensify droughts, yet this has been the outcome.
Polar bears, humpback whales and bald eagles have suffered from the cumulative effects of single decisions to overexploit or convert habitats.
[2] The insidious effects of small decisions marches on; productive land turns to desert, groundwater resources are overexploited to the point where they can't recover, persistent pesticides are used and tropical forests are cleared without factoring in the cumulative consequences.
[2] Considering all of the pressures and short-term rewards that guide society toward simple solutions, it seems safe to assume that the "tyranny of small decisions" will be an integral part of environmental policy for a long time to come.
[2] Odum advocates that at least some scientists should study systems so the negative consequences that result when many small decisions are made from a limited perspective can be avoided.
Odum says that environmental science teachers should include large-scale processes in their courses, with examples of the problems that decision making at inappropriate levels can introduce.
