The tragedy of the commons is a false and dangerous myth
The tragedy of the commons is a false and dangerous myth
Far from being profoundly destructive, we humans have deep capacities for sharing resources with generosity and foresight
The features of successful systems, Ostrom and her colleagues found, include clear boundaries (the ‘community’ doing the managing must be well-defined); reliable monitoring of the shared resource; a reasonable balance of costs and benefits for participants; a predictable process for the fast and fair resolution of conflicts; an escalating series of punishments for cheaters; and good relationships between the community and other layers of authority, from household heads to international institutions.
Somehow the author extrapolates this into 'Tragedy can be avoided, therefore it doesn't exist and is a myth'. What is this ridiculous logic?
You misunderstood the article. The entire idea of a "tragedy of the commons" is an vast oversimplification used to justify privatising commonly held resources and thus stealing from the current users.
The tragedy of the commons is a known behaviour that we can see daily everywhere. How exactly is it a myth? The article is entirely about ways to AVOID the tragedy and husband the shared resources in such a way that we don't engage in a race to the bottom. I agree with 90% of the article, but it feels like they decided to go for a clickbait title.
Thank you for sharing this. I've bookmarked it to read later when I can focus.
It's so hard to correct misconceptions once they've taken hold in the public consciousness, especially something that's been used as an excuse to uphold an inherently inequitable system. Often, people will change their view once they've had time to process. As someone who is rather stubborn and learned about the tragedy of the commons in college, I have some firsthand experience with this lol
You misunderstand, the tragedy doesn't actualize because the tragedy is recognized before it becomes irreversible. The commons being grazed on were never depleted. The hypothesis is that it would be after several real life examples have proven the scenario false, we need to recognize the Tragedy of the Commons as a fallacy.
The real life scenarios have all been resolved through shared, communal decision that had specific frameworks for sharing as well as a progressive punishment structure for bad behavior. Ultimately there was never a tragedy and only an oversimplified thought experiment would result in the original outcome of totally depleted resources.
This sounds less like a debunking or disproving and more like defining further conditions and ways to avoid it happening.
They key thing that caught my attention was that potential ToC scenarios were averted by a community realizing the potential for it and agreeing to rules with accountability built in that govern the resource at risk.
The lesson I think is that the ToC's judgement of humans as just naturally destructive is false, but that what keeps humans from being destructive out of carelessness is systems of rules which naturally remind people to act with care.
Key example, libraries, ToC says they'd fail due to everyone stealing the books, but because there's a rule system that has in built accountability, the only people who even try to are mostly considered to be "too clever for their own good by half." thinking they can beat the system that literally knows they were the last one to have the book they haven't gotten back yet.
… despite being thoroughly dissected decades ago, despite being contradicted by millennia of human existence …
“the tragedy of the commons” was first coined by white supremacist, eugenicist, and Neomalthusian ecologist Garret Hardin in 1968
— [Andrewism] The REAL Tragedy of the Commons
I thought this was common knowledge by now.
Hardin was a fascist who published what he thought would justify the destruction of those he saw as subhuman.
Anyone using the phrase “tragedy of the commons” at this point is just a pathetic lackey of his cause.
"this person proved it wrong with these two anecdotes"
You mean an extensive body of research by Elinor Ostrom, a Nobel Price of Economics winner, are "two anecdotes"?
Lol no.
It should be called the tragedy of capitalism because it's the only system it ever happens under
I fucking hate capitalism but this is verifiably false.
It happened countless times in history long before capitalism was even a notion.
Not necessarily, communist governments sound a lot like the application of force and control over resources because smaller communities are not trusted to do it fairly.