The answer to your question is simple: indiscriminate antibiotic use is something where the good results are entirely for the person making the choice, while the bad results are spread out across all humanity.<p>It&#x27;s essentially a big and complicated version of a simple game: if you press this button, you will get $10, but everybody else on the planet will lose $0.00001. Do you press the button?<p>The rational choice is to say yes. The benefit to you far outweighs your cost. It even far outweighs the combined costs to all the people you know.<p>In short, externalities make people choose bad things in a rational way. It has pretty much nothing to do with how society is structured. If you want to change it, then you need to figure out a way to make the costs to the individual outweigh the benefits to the individual.