Tragedy of the Commons and Bumhunting - Page 2

On September 21 2010 22:41 Helmet wrote: wow. nice article! ok... time to go hunt bumhunters now...

FYP

On September 21 2010 12:20 tomson wrote: Personally I find most criticism towards bumhunting to be ludicrous. Let's be serious - the people who speak it out against are not noble utilitarians. They don't reflect about their winrates "I could be making 2x as much, but I feel I should not as a favor to my fellow regulars". Mostly they just have ego issues. They don't have the patience to constantly search out the weakest players, they feel they will improve faster if they face tougher opponents. They have this disdain (jealousy, I think) towards players like Leatherass, because they consider him to be not all that impressive and he's still making a lot more than they do (to be fair though, he's doing a terrible job at PR management). So they build up this misplaced sense of self-righteousness, when in reality their whole crusade is just flawed. It's like someone at the table vehemently complaining that you just stacked the fish when you could have just called on the river with nuts so everybody could get a piece of the pie. The fishing companies example is not analogous to the poker world. Whether or not you bust a bad player does not affect the influx of new recreational players. Bad players don't reproduce to create other bad players. Regrettably. I do realise however that some things may seem in bad taste, for instance a whole table sitting out when the fish takes a break. But even in that situation, if you think deep, deep down inside you'll realise that it's not the fact that he might feel hurt bothers you. It's what his feeling hurt might do to your income.

Well put sir. I agree with everything you just said.

This holds true for many other real life situations:

Bum hunters = Companies
Fish = Natural resources
Pokerstars rake = Bankers interests rates