Goal

Students will understand the issues of collective action, enforcement, and moral worth which surround political decisions. Students will suggest frameworks for the just running of a society.

Learning Tools

Index Cards

Lesson Plan

Experiencing the Tragedy of the Commons

We ask each to anonymously write to us what action they would take. The goal is a reveal in which either some people have profited off of others’ discretion, or no one has profited at all.

Rounds (1-2)  

After 50 (or 10(n-1) where n is the number of students) grazes in a day, the field dies and your profits plummet. Everyone has ten sheep.

How often do you let your ten sheep into the magic pasture?

Do you let all ten of them in?

Round (3)

Suppose there is a disease and if the sheep hasn’t eaten that day then the sheep dies. A dead sheep returns no profit for you. If a sheep dies then there is one fewer graze in a day.

Round (4)

You hear that most people are sending [x] sheep per day. How does your behavior change, if at all?

Round (5-6)

You can discuss how many sheep everyone should send in before making your decision. 

After round five we tell them if people actually followed the social contract. 

Discussion

• How many sheep is in the best interest for you?

• How many sheep is in the best interest for the collective?

• When people’s interests conflict, what problems arise? Lying? The tragedy of the commons?

• What do people deserve who break their promises to others?

• Are these decisions better left up to a governing body? If so, what’s the nature of that body?

The Veil and the Lifeboat

We assign each student as either a lifeboat passenger or not a lifeboat passenger (whether they are a member of first 10, neediest 10, or best 10), but they don’t know which they are (per Rawls). The majority are not in the lifeboat. They do not know the ratio of lifeboat to not among themselves.

5 minutes: Open Discussion. Students decide amongst themselves the best course of action, with the understanding that whatever they come to will be the result.

Optional choices:

Decide to let everyone into the lifeboat.

Then: everyone dies

Decide to let no one into the lifeboat. 

Then: Do they deserve to die?

Simulation over. Those not in a lifeboat die.

Decide to let some into the lifeboat.

Then: Who do you let into the lifeboat? 

Options: first 10; neediest 10; best 10

Decide to take turns in the lifeboat. 

Then: let the simulation go on until people cannot swim, repeat the question 

(Reveal.)

How would you change the outcome, if you would?

Consider:

Moral luck. Why are the people already in the lifeboat worthy of staying in?

The individual vs. collective good. Should your assigned character self-sacrifice?

Extra Time:

• CORONAVIRUS. 

• Who should get face masks? 

• Is it bad to buy hand sanitizer if you are not at risk?

• Is it bad to buy the whole stock of any item in your area?

• Should we lock down the borders?

• Does it matter that we are the people with the most advanced medical equipment in the West?

• Is travel limitation justified? For whom?

• Should medical care be free during the outbreak?

• Why shouldn’t it be free all the time?

• Ryan discusses social contract theory lol.