Free Rider Problem Quotes

“That’s the walkaway dilemma. If you take without giving, you’re a mooch. If you keep track of everyone else’s taking and giving, you’re a creep scorekeeper. It’s our version of Christian guilt—it’s impious to feel good about your piety. You have to want to be good, but not feel good about how good you are. The worst thing is to be worrying about what someone else is doing, because that has nothing to do with whether you’re doing right.”
― Cory Doctorow, Walkaway

“The free rider problem is one reason why international standards have an inherent tendency to be rather lax. If standards are too strict, some States may not sign up to them at all. It is better to have standards that are loose enough for all the important participants in the activity to accept, so that all of the key States are at least bound by some standards, than to have stricter standards and find that some States refuse to accept them.”
― Vaughan Lowe, International Law: A Very Short Introduction