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> Ostrom’s achievement effectively answers popular theories about the “Tragedy of the Commons”, which has been interpreted to mean that private property is the

> Ostrom’s achievement effectively answers popular theories about the “Tragedy of the Commons”, which has been interpreted to mean that private property is the only means of protecting finite resources from ruin or depletion. I found this a weird characterization of the Tragedy of the Commons. My sense of TooC has always been that it's an effective refutation to the belief that the Nash equilibrium is best for everyone. With some first-year calculus you can prove that a regulated global optimum creates a greater individual payoff over time than a Nash equilibrium. That's the opposite of the above characterization.

dvt 7y ago
> refutation to the belief that the Nash equilibrium is best for everyone That's not the claim of the Nash equilibrium. The idea behind a Nash equilibrium is that there's no better -- not best -- strategy for anyone (if all strategies are known). You can trivially build a game where outcomes are pretty awful for somebody -- or everybody -- but not as awful as changing strategies. The Tragedy of the Commons isn't really game-theoretic (or a Nash equilibrium, for that matter[1]), but rather regarded as a public policy thought experiment. Ostrom's discussion on the Tragedy is from this latter point of view. [1] http://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2018/09/18/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-is-not-a-nash-equilibrium/ http://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2018/09/18/the-tragedy-of-...
- tunesmith 7y ago
  I don't mean that it's the claim of the Nash equilibrium itself, I'm referring to the common belief that self-interest alone is a functional guiding principle. Objectivists, some libertarians, etc. I take the Nash equilibrium to mean that everyone knows everyone else's strategy and no one has individual incentive to change. But when that balance is reached, there can still exist superior choices that require coordination where the result will still yield better individual payoffs for everyone. So that's a refutation of the notion that self-interest is king. That point can always be contested by dickering with the definition of self-interest, for instance by saying it's by definition in someone's self-interest to coordinate, but that's about where the usefulness of the discussion falls apart. It really just comes down to how many externalities you want to bring in to your mental model.

dvt 7y ago

> refutation to the belief that the Nash equilibrium is best for everyone That's not the claim of the Nash equilibrium. The idea behind a Nash equilibrium is that there's no better -- not best -- strategy for anyone (if all strategies are known). You can trivially build a game where outcomes are pretty awful for somebody -- or everybody -- but not as awful as changing strategies. The Tragedy of the Commons isn't really game-theoretic (or a Nash equilibrium, for that matter[1]), but rather regarded as a public policy thought experiment. Ostrom's discussion on the Tragedy is from this latter point of view. [1] http://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2018/09/18/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-is-not-a-nash-equilibrium/ http://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2018/09/18/the-tragedy-of-...

tunesmith 7y ago
I don't mean that it's the claim of the Nash equilibrium itself, I'm referring to the common belief that self-interest alone is a functional guiding principle. Objectivists, some libertarians, etc. I take the Nash equilibrium to mean that everyone knows everyone else's strategy and no one has individual incentive to change. But when that balance is reached, there can still exist superior choices that require coordination where the result will still yield better individual payoffs for everyone. So that's a refutation of the notion that self-interest is king. That point can always be contested by dickering with the definition of self-interest, for instance by saying it's by definition in someone's self-interest to coordinate, but that's about where the usefulness of the discussion falls apart. It really just comes down to how many externalities you want to bring in to your mental model.