Throughout the history of the United States, an era filled with controversy brought this country to prosperity. Society experienced a drastic transformation in various aspects in several decades, including the call for equality from different oppressed groups, the distribution of wealth in the society, the shift in general social morales, production methods, etc. This era was named after the famous Mark Twain's novel —— "The Gilded Age." The nature of this era can be inferred from its name: while making dazzling achievements in the country's overall development, the so-called "exterior facet," the interior facet of the nation, is stormy and brawling.

First of all, the definition of a “social dilemma”given by the core-econ textbook is “a situation in which actions taken independently by individuals in pursuit of their own private objectives result in an outcome which is inferior to some other feasible outcome that could have occurred if people had acted together, rather than as individuals.”