CC–PP game

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The Commonize Costs–Privatize Profits Game (or CC–PP Game) is a concept developed by the ecologist Garrett Hardin to describe a "game" (in the game theory sense) widely played in matters of resource allocation.^[1] The concept is a formalism of the closely related phenomenon known as the Tragedy of the commons.^[2]

Players of the CC–PP Game aim to commonize the costs (or externalities) generated by their activities across the wider community, while privatizing all profits (financial or otherwise) to themselves.

In political discourse, the flow of financial resources within society has been described in similar terms, such as privatizing profits and socializing losses.

It has been argued that in the current economic system, especially in the U.S., large corporations and wealthy parts of society policies can commonize costs and privatize profits, with the effect of a further concentration of wealth. In particular, government sponsoring and bailouts such as the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the proposed bailout of the U.S. financial system in the economic crisis of 2008 have frequently been referred to in the U.S. as “private gains and public losses”^[3] or “privatization of profits and socialization of losses”.^[4][5][6] Economic policies which favor such concentration of capital have frequently been criticized as socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Common good (economics)
• Common-pool resource
• Lender of last resort
• Moral hazard in finance
• Private good
• Tragedy of the commons

[edit] External links

• Who benefits, who pays?, an extract from Filters Against Folly