Protracted collective disaster can result from an excess of individual rationality.

Evidence

It is tempting to conclude, therefore, that people in the south are either stubbornly irrational or entertain masochistic preferences. While the possibility cannot be excluded that they may have evolved such preferences as a means of reducing the cognitive dissonance caused by prolonged exposure to such an environment, the overall aim of this paper is to reconcile individual rationality with protracted collective disaster. If anything, in this case, the latter results from an excess of individual rationality. This paper is an account of the remarkable responses to a generalized absence of trust and of the mechanisms by which such responses, while reinforcing distrust, have none the less brought about a relatively stable social structure. Its major underlying assumption is that the mafia - although by no means its only element — represents the quintessence of this structure, in which all the crucial behavioural patterns converge to form an indissoluble but explosive mixture. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2093

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the reader’s Hardin trust-under-observable-constraints thesis — collective failure arises not from irrationality but from rational responses to absent trust. — connects to: Collective alienation arises when individually rational actions sum to negative outcomes. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 497; Individual serial actions intensify the collective catastrophe they aim to prevent. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 499
• DEEPTHINKING: Reconciles individual rationality with collective disaster — the density of ‘excess of individual rationality’ as a mechanism demands careful unpacking.