5 ms·
> how do we deal with the Tragedy of the Commons? How do we make hidden externalities visible & accurately priced We do (pretend to do) when it's easy enough.
by myshpa 3y ago
> how do we deal with the Tragedy of the Commons? How do we make hidden externalities visible & accurately priced
We do (pretend to do) when it's easy enough. But mostly we don't. Some examples:
- (micro)plastic pollution
- climate change (greenhouse gases)
- deforestation
- biodiversity loss
- overfishing, bycatch
We even subsidize the sectors causing most of the damage. But for for a regular joe wanting to have water ... sure, that's easy enough.
- fouc 3y agoyep, we're failing to price those hidden externalities big time.
- gottorf 3y agoThere's a philosophical question here, which is that as science and technology get better and our ability to measure things improve, the hidden externalities become less and less hidden. Nobody told Grok the caveman not to burn sticks in his cave for warmth, out of concern for releasing CO2 and particulate matter; but nowadays it's frowned upon to use a wood pellet furnace instead of electric heat, for example. Existence itself is an externality, since everything any living organism does affects every other living organism, however minutely. There probably exists some amount of externalities that we have to choose to ignore.
- nahuel0x 3y agoWe can stop destroying the entire biosphere first and then get philosophical with the remaining details.