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Ira Chaleff’s plea for members of the U.S. Congress to mitigate their proclivities toward gridlock [“Congress’s tragedy of the commons,” Washington Forum, June 3] is also a reminder that the “prisoner’s dilemma,” with its classic clash between nature-driven individual interest and nurture-guided collective welfare, is still very much a feature of the human landscape.
That we often pursue our own interests at the expense of the commons, making conditions worse not just for our competitors and adversaries but for ourselves as well, is not startling. What is startling is that we continue to do so in the face of complex challenges such as global warming that defy the efforts of any one of us to deal with on our own — clearly a case of nature trumping nurture, with all of us losing in the bargain.
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