Large anonymous groups cannot sustain collective action without some enforcing mechanism

Evidence

But it is very difficult, and indeed impossible, that a thousand persons should agree in any such action; it being difficult for them to concert so complicated a design, and still more difficult for them to execute it; while each seeks a pretext to free himself of the trouble and expence, and would lay the whole burden on others. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 412

Categorization

• XREF: Hume’s free-rider problem directly parallels the collective action problem that Norenzayan argues Big Gods evolved to solve; also echoes Olson’s logic of collective action and the Milgrom one-shot cheating analysis previously read. — connects to: Individual data-rights enforcement cannot succeed without collective action — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1548; Dependence on anonymous producers drives demand for formal legal control — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 180; Horizontal protest collectives cannot negotiate because they lack decision mechanisms — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 445 (+1 more)