Early in Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, he brings up something called "The Tragedy of the Commons," which was a similar theme brought up in my book review of Barbara Monroe's Crossing the Digital Divide. The Tragedy of the Commons concerns how in social situations, when people share resources, they have no incentive to not take more than they need. Shirky's example is a group of shepherds who share a pasture, and have an agreement to not overgraze their sheep, so the other shepherds can feed their flock. Shirky talks about how nothing is stopping one of the shepherds from leaving his sheep out longer, and if he were to do that, the others would have to retaliate to keep up. He also discusses how many restaurants will place a mandatory tip on a large group, because people tend to leave smaller tips in a group setting by assuming others will carry the burden.
This relates to Monroe's idea that on online discussions, many people refuse to speak out or argue, especially in an educational setting, because they're either afraid they're the only one who has that opinion, or someone else will post it for them. I found it interesting that the same theme popped up twice in both books.
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