3 ms·

The Tragedy of the Tragedy of the Commons

8 points by jensgk 8y ago

deogeo 8y ago
The closest he gets to criticizing the idea of the tragedy of the commons is by pointing out the metaphor doesn't perfectly fit the actual implementation of the British commons (which it supposedly refers to) - the rest is nothing but ad hominem.
- wahern 8y ago
  Rereading the original paper I can't find anything objectionable. It's still insightful, applicable, and worthy of being a classic piece of scholarship. Maybe the man was racist but there's nothing overtly racist about the article itself unless one willfully infers intent based on words like "breeding". Problem being, nothing in the paper suggests that he didn't mean it to also apply to whites or to his own nation; rather, the obvious reading is that it applies universally, subject only to the institution of his recommended mitigations--education, property rights, legal and administrative prohibitions, etc. What the paper gets wrong, if anything, is that populations can and do stabilize--even begin to shrink--much earlier than ever anticipated. More importantly, this occurs not in the face of disease or hardship but seemingly paradoxically because of wealth and selfishness. But that was never self-evident judging by how universally unchecked population explosion was assumed back then and how difficult the reality remains for people to appreciate even today. We only understood this after it had already come to pass in nations like Japan, and in general scholarship only relatively recently has it become presumed as a possible and natural outcome in the due course of industrialization. This also wouldn't be the first time that a scholar put forth a remarkably simple and accurate statement of natural dynamics and then subsequently failed to apply their own argument with sufficient rigor and restraint, resulting in suspect secondary conclusions.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  Since the Tragedy of the Commons is mathematically sound game theory (it essentially is a multiplayer generalization of the Prisoner's Dilemma) any critique really has to challenge the relevance of game theory to the real world, which is something of an uphill slog, even given the known problems with rational choice theory. EDIT: And the extent to which the modern environmental movement relies on it is nothing to do with the details of the motivating example, it's entirely at the level of the broad game theory and desire to interpose an regulatory force to rearrange the incentives by internalizing externalities so that the payoff matrix for individuals no longer promotes universal defection, enabling the more optimal outcome to be acheived.
Joe-Z 8y ago
The author raises some points which would've been interesting to dig in more deeply, but then mainly digresses to an ad hominem argument against the author of the original tragedy of the commons essay. Also I don't understand how he can just equate Hardin's personal views with the "intellectual roots" of the tragedy of the commons concept. Surely there's not much room for racist thoughts in a metaphor based on 19th grazing laws "exclusive to a defined set of indidivuals"?[0] Please don't take this to mean I want to defend Hardin here. But just saying "the guy who wrote this was a racist" and "it's based on some really old essay" does not convince me that the argument itself is flawed. I wish I'd gotten some nerdy know-it-all material to throw at someone the next time they bring up the tragedy of the commons :/ [0]user wahern (in the comment section here) re-read the original paper and confirms this suspicion of mine
- wahern 8y ago
  FWIW, here's the version I just read: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243
gumby 8y ago
Unfortunately the "web" link doesn't fix this "thread"/x nonsense. How does one invoke the tool that makes these readable?

8 points by jensgk 8y ago

The closest he gets to criticizing the idea of the tragedy of the commons is by pointing out the metaphor doesn't perfectly fit the actual implementation of the British commons (which it supposedly refers to) - the rest is nothing but ad hominem.

wahern 8y ago
Rereading the original paper I can't find anything objectionable. It's still insightful, applicable, and worthy of being a classic piece of scholarship. Maybe the man was racist but there's nothing overtly racist about the article itself unless one willfully infers intent based on words like "breeding". Problem being, nothing in the paper suggests that he didn't mean it to also apply to whites or to his own nation; rather, the obvious reading is that it applies universally, subject only to the institution of his recommended mitigations--education, property rights, legal and administrative prohibitions, etc. What the paper gets wrong, if anything, is that populations can and do stabilize--even begin to shrink--much earlier than ever anticipated. More importantly, this occurs not in the face of disease or hardship but seemingly paradoxically because of wealth and selfishness. But that was never self-evident judging by how universally unchecked population explosion was assumed back then and how difficult the reality remains for people to appreciate even today. We only understood this after it had already come to pass in nations like Japan, and in general scholarship only relatively recently has it become presumed as a possible and natural outcome in the due course of industrialization. This also wouldn't be the first time that a scholar put forth a remarkably simple and accurate statement of natural dynamics and then subsequently failed to apply their own argument with sufficient rigor and restraint, resulting in suspect secondary conclusions.
dragonwriter 8y ago
Since the Tragedy of the Commons is mathematically sound game theory (it essentially is a multiplayer generalization of the Prisoner's Dilemma) any critique really has to challenge the relevance of game theory to the real world, which is something of an uphill slog, even given the known problems with rational choice theory. EDIT: And the extent to which the modern environmental movement relies on it is nothing to do with the details of the motivating example, it's entirely at the level of the broad game theory and desire to interpose an regulatory force to rearrange the incentives by internalizing externalities so that the payoff matrix for individuals no longer promotes universal defection, enabling the more optimal outcome to be acheived.

Joe-Z 8y ago

The author raises some points which would've been interesting to dig in more deeply, but then mainly digresses to an ad hominem argument against the author of the original tragedy of the commons essay. Also I don't understand how he can just equate Hardin's personal views with the "intellectual roots" of the tragedy of the commons concept. Surely there's not much room for racist thoughts in a metaphor based on 19th grazing laws "exclusive to a defined set of indidivuals"?[0] Please don't take this to mean I want to defend Hardin here. But just saying "the guy who wrote this was a racist" and "it's based on some really old essay" does not convince me that the argument itself is flawed. I wish I'd gotten some nerdy know-it-all material to throw at someone the next time they bring up the tragedy of the commons :/ [0]user wahern (in the comment section here) re-read the original paper and confirms this suspicion of mine

wahern 8y ago
FWIW, here's the version I just read: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243

gumby 8y ago

Unfortunately the "web" link doesn't fix this "thread"/x nonsense. How does one invoke the tool that makes these readable?