4 ms·

Tangent, but as someone who often finds the tragedy of the commons as the simplest explanation to many things, I'm interested in hearing your take on it

ATsch 5y ago
There's a lot of more qualified people who have written better criticisms of it than I can, but it generally boils down to a few things: 1. Lack of basis in reality. While of course there are occasional cases of communities mismanaging resources, this was and is far from univeral or usual. In fact the english public land that the thought expermiment gets it's name from and claims can not work had succesfully been in common ownership for to my knowledge all of recorded history until it's relatively recent enclosure (privatization). 2. It supposes the commoners would desire infinite short term growth above and beyond what they needed, could personally tend to or the land could sustain. This is both ahistorical and circular logic. In reality commoners had long known the amount of cattle the commons could sustain and allocated limits among themselves. 3. Where examples of over-grazing do exist, it was as a result of deliberate action by wealthy people to drive commoners off of the land for enclosure. This is not unlike the patterns we do commonly see in the real world today, where resource exhaustion generally takes place when there there are big power differences. 4. Far more than as a prediction of reality, it has been successful as a justification for various unsightly things, from land theft and colonialism past and present, to eugenics and global poverty. It is not a neutral description of human nature and historical tendencies, but a distortion of them that aids the wealthy and poweful. If you are looking for a better alternative I suggest you look at the power relationships between the people who are using the commons instead, it's usually much more enlightening.

ATsch 5y ago

There's a lot of more qualified people who have written better criticisms of it than I can, but it generally boils down to a few things: 1. Lack of basis in reality. While of course there are occasional cases of communities mismanaging resources, this was and is far from univeral or usual. In fact the english public land that the thought expermiment gets it's name from and claims can not work had succesfully been in common ownership for to my knowledge all of recorded history until it's relatively recent enclosure (privatization). 2. It supposes the commoners would desire infinite short term growth above and beyond what they needed, could personally tend to or the land could sustain. This is both ahistorical and circular logic. In reality commoners had long known the amount of cattle the commons could sustain and allocated limits among themselves. 3. Where examples of over-grazing do exist, it was as a result of deliberate action by wealthy people to drive commoners off of the land for enclosure. This is not unlike the patterns we do commonly see in the real world today, where resource exhaustion generally takes place when there there are big power differences. 4. Far more than as a prediction of reality, it has been successful as a justification for various unsightly things, from land theft and colonialism past and present, to eugenics and global poverty. It is not a neutral description of human nature and historical tendencies, but a distortion of them that aids the wealthy and poweful. If you are looking for a better alternative I suggest you look at the power relationships between the people who are using the commons instead, it's usually much more enlightening.