Public economics heavily studies the free-rider problem, a frustrating market failure that occurs when individuals actively consume a shared resource without paying their fair share for its maintenance.

A closer look

Public economics heavily studies the free-rider problem, a frustrating market failure that occurs when individuals actively consume a shared resource without paying their fair share for its maintenance. A classic example is a public radio station or Wikipedia relying on community donations to survive, while the vast majority of listeners and readers simply consume the free content and let a tiny fraction of guilty nerds foot the entire bill. This parasitic dynamic completely undermines the utopian socialist concept that humans will naturally cooperate for the greater good of society. We fundamentally cannot have nice things because a significant portion of the general population is perfectly content to watch the entire communal infrastructure burn to the ground as long as they personally saved five dollars on a monthly subscription fee