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When I was at University I went to a guest lecturer who was talking about the mathematics of government policies in the UK. They touched on the interesting sub

When I was at University I went to a guest lecturer who was talking about the mathematics of government policies in the UK. They touched on the interesting subject of quotas for the fishing industry, and how they were impacting or not impacting fishermen. * Some fishermen were forced to throw away extra catch back into the sea (which is wasteful), especially if the next week they didn't have a great catch * Some fishermen would team up with other fishermen to split the catches before landing them in harbour * Other fishermen would under declare their catches, along with the harbour fish markets All in all, the conclusion was that quotas are near impossible to enforce, are another layer of bureaucracy and are impossible to gain accurate data observations from. However to the general public, they are an easy sell by goverments, especially on environmental issues like fish and oceans. Which to this day has always instilled a healthy skepticism in quotas. "The beatings will continue until the quotas improve...."

david38 5y ago
So the answer is fishermen should be allowed to harvest natural resources without restrictions? Oh right, we tried that, and look where it got us. These are all solvable problems. Cameras on the boats, tighter limits on nets, etc. If a population is known the scam at a high enough level, it should get tighter oversight.
tzs 5y ago
For fishing, a plus for quotas is they can make it safer. The way crab fishing used to work in the Bering Sea for example is that each for each crab season the agencies that manage the fisheries would determine a total amount that the fishery could support that year, and then the fleet would go out and catch that. This was called the derby system. As each boat caught crab it would report its catch, and when the total across all boats hit the limit the season ended and everyone had to stop fishing. Safety took a back seed to fishing speed in this environment, because if anything slowed down fishing or made you miss some fishing time it could dramatically lower your catch. They replaced that with a quota system. For each type of crab's season each boat gets a quota and the season runs a fixed time. Under the quota system the boats have plenty of time to catch their quotes without having to compromise safety as much. Under the derby system, the Alaska crab fleet was averaging a little over 7 deaths a year. After the switch to the quote system it was around 1 death every 5 or 6 years. Big parts of this decrease can directly be attributed to the change from derby to quotas. Around 2/3 of the derby deaths were due to boats piled high with crab traps capsizing. They went out, dropped everything they had, waiting 12-24 hours, and pulled them. Empty those into the crab tanks and go lay the traps again. Under quota, the boats aren't in such a hurry. When they lay traps they leave them down for 36-48 hours. They can lay some traps and then go pick up more and lay them before it is time to pull the first group so they don't need to go out with the boat piled to near overload with traps. Being about to keep the traps down longer helps them in other ways, too, not safety related. The traps are designed so smaller crab that aren't big enough to legally take can escape, but that takes them time. When you pull in 12-24 hours you get a lot of small crab that haven't escaped yet, meaning more work for the crew to separate them and throw them back. After 36-48 hours a lot more of the small crabs have left so less work for the crew. Also it is pretty traumatic for a crab to be caught and then thrown back, and many don't survive that. In the derby days this killed enough young crabs that it reduced the available harvest in future seasons. Stopping that reversed a long decline in some crab populations.
- foogazi 5y ago
  > Also it is pretty traumatic for a crab to be caught and then thrown back Must be pretty traumatic to those crabs not thrown back too What a morbid thought- that we are humanely concerned about those creatures we spare (for now)
  - pbaka 5y ago
    Crunch munch munch munch ... Crunch munch munch munch.. What did you say ?
raxxorrax 5y ago
Fishing quotas have the advantage to not be racist for a start.
alecst 5y ago
Yea but not all the quotas are the same. Like this is a very specific example of a fishing quota, not an easily enforcible quota like ">12% black students enrolled". Also, points 1 and 2 appear (to me at least) to show the quota working as intended. (If Fisherman A overcatches and splits with Fisherman B who undercatches, that is the same as if they both caught the correct amount.) And if, as you claim, it's impossible to know if the quota worked, it's also impossible to know if it didn't work, so I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from this special case.
- tiagod 5y ago
  Is it that easily enforceable though? Where do you draw the line between black and non-black? Appearance? Genetics? Culture?
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    Also should you treat African-Americans and more recent Africans differently? What about other aspects like refugees vs professional migrants? As there is clear differences between these groups.
    - true_religion 5y ago
      If your goal is reparation then you should only give special treatment to the descendants of people who were harmed in the past. I'd your goal is diversity or simply to "stick it" to the racists then anyone with dark skin is a good choice.
      - newswasboring 5y ago
        Third choice may be to just help an underprivileged class? Even non descendants of slaves have to go through the same BS as descendants of slaves for example. It's not about sticking it to racists, but about protecting a community.
        true_religion 5y ago
kickling 5y ago
I think it would be pretty easy to enforce a quota among the Nobel Prize cadidates, your example really does not apply to that. The question is more about whether it is a good or a bad thing.
- blitzar 5y ago
  Upon what basis does one quota? Should there be correct proportions of each race? Gender? Sex? Nationality? City/Village? Each combination of the above? Is it discriminatory that there are 0% of the candidates that have the name Karen? When clearly the percentage of the population with the name Karen is not 0?
ivan_gammel 5y ago
Those observations about fishing quotas do not mean that they do not work. You do not need 100% proof for that, same way as you do not need to check tickets of 100% of passengers in public transportation or vaccinate 100% of people during pandemic. After all, the purpose of the quota is not to reach certain number, it is to set such constraints where population of fish will not fall beyond irreversible level. If the majority of fishermen are one or another way compliant and the rest cannot significantly exceed their quota without being caught, then the goal will be achieved. I do not know if that was the case with the specific quotas, but the quotas could be even stricter than necessary to take the non-compliant behavior of fishermen into account.
- smegcicle 5y ago
  [dead]

david38 5y ago

So the answer is fishermen should be allowed to harvest natural resources without restrictions? Oh right, we tried that, and look where it got us. These are all solvable problems. Cameras on the boats, tighter limits on nets, etc. If a population is known the scam at a high enough level, it should get tighter oversight.

tzs 5y ago

For fishing, a plus for quotas is they can make it safer. The way crab fishing used to work in the Bering Sea for example is that each for each crab season the agencies that manage the fisheries would determine a total amount that the fishery could support that year, and then the fleet would go out and catch that. This was called the derby system. As each boat caught crab it would report its catch, and when the total across all boats hit the limit the season ended and everyone had to stop fishing. Safety took a back seed to fishing speed in this environment, because if anything slowed down fishing or made you miss some fishing time it could dramatically lower your catch. They replaced that with a quota system. For each type of crab's season each boat gets a quota and the season runs a fixed time. Under the quota system the boats have plenty of time to catch their quotes without having to compromise safety as much. Under the derby system, the Alaska crab fleet was averaging a little over 7 deaths a year. After the switch to the quote system it was around 1 death every 5 or 6 years. Big parts of this decrease can directly be attributed to the change from derby to quotas. Around 2/3 of the derby deaths were due to boats piled high with crab traps capsizing. They went out, dropped everything they had, waiting 12-24 hours, and pulled them. Empty those into the crab tanks and go lay the traps again. Under quota, the boats aren't in such a hurry. When they lay traps they leave them down for 36-48 hours. They can lay some traps and then go pick up more and lay them before it is time to pull the first group so they don't need to go out with the boat piled to near overload with traps. Being about to keep the traps down longer helps them in other ways, too, not safety related. The traps are designed so smaller crab that aren't big enough to legally take can escape, but that takes them time. When you pull in 12-24 hours you get a lot of small crab that haven't escaped yet, meaning more work for the crew to separate them and throw them back. After 36-48 hours a lot more of the small crabs have left so less work for the crew. Also it is pretty traumatic for a crab to be caught and then thrown back, and many don't survive that. In the derby days this killed enough young crabs that it reduced the available harvest in future seasons. Stopping that reversed a long decline in some crab populations.

foogazi 5y ago
> Also it is pretty traumatic for a crab to be caught and then thrown back Must be pretty traumatic to those crabs not thrown back too What a morbid thought- that we are humanely concerned about those creatures we spare (for now)
- pbaka 5y ago
  Crunch munch munch munch ... Crunch munch munch munch.. What did you say ?

raxxorrax 5y ago

Fishing quotas have the advantage to not be racist for a start.

alecst 5y ago

Yea but not all the quotas are the same. Like this is a very specific example of a fishing quota, not an easily enforcible quota like ">12% black students enrolled". Also, points 1 and 2 appear (to me at least) to show the quota working as intended. (If Fisherman A overcatches and splits with Fisherman B who undercatches, that is the same as if they both caught the correct amount.) And if, as you claim, it's impossible to know if the quota worked, it's also impossible to know if it didn't work, so I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from this special case.

tiagod 5y ago
Is it that easily enforceable though? Where do you draw the line between black and non-black? Appearance? Genetics? Culture?
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Also should you treat African-Americans and more recent Africans differently? What about other aspects like refugees vs professional migrants? As there is clear differences between these groups.
  - true_religion 5y ago
    If your goal is reparation then you should only give special treatment to the descendants of people who were harmed in the past. I'd your goal is diversity or simply to "stick it" to the racists then anyone with dark skin is a good choice.
    - newswasboring 5y ago
      Third choice may be to just help an underprivileged class? Even non descendants of slaves have to go through the same BS as descendants of slaves for example. It's not about sticking it to racists, but about protecting a community.
      - true_religion 5y ago

kickling 5y ago

I think it would be pretty easy to enforce a quota among the Nobel Prize cadidates, your example really does not apply to that. The question is more about whether it is a good or a bad thing.

blitzar 5y ago
Upon what basis does one quota? Should there be correct proportions of each race? Gender? Sex? Nationality? City/Village? Each combination of the above? Is it discriminatory that there are 0% of the candidates that have the name Karen? When clearly the percentage of the population with the name Karen is not 0?

ivan_gammel 5y ago

Those observations about fishing quotas do not mean that they do not work. You do not need 100% proof for that, same way as you do not need to check tickets of 100% of passengers in public transportation or vaccinate 100% of people during pandemic. After all, the purpose of the quota is not to reach certain number, it is to set such constraints where population of fish will not fall beyond irreversible level. If the majority of fishermen are one or another way compliant and the rest cannot significantly exceed their quota without being caught, then the goal will be achieved. I do not know if that was the case with the specific quotas, but the quotas could be even stricter than necessary to take the non-compliant behavior of fishermen into account.

smegcicle 5y ago
[dead]