Why groups can keep choosing outcomes almost nobody wants

Scott Alexander gathers examples of systems in which individually defensible decisions produce a collectively miserable result. His organizing image, Moloch, names the pressure rather than a secret decision-maker.

In a stylized fishing economy, everyone benefits from clean water, but each operator can save money by skipping pollution controls. A cooperative arrangement is desirable; unilateral restraint can be costly when competitors continue polluting. Arms races and other competitive systems reproduce the same structure: participants may dislike the equilibrium while lacking a safe way to leave it.

The argument goes beyond ordinary selfishness. Competition can select against things people value whenever preserving them makes a participant easier to defeat. Better intentions alone do not change that incentive.

These are thought experiments and a philosophical synthesis, not measurements establishing one explanation for every social problem. The essay’s lasting contribution is the distinction between wanting a better outcome and possessing institutions that make cooperation stable enough to achieve it.