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> Because of deforestation and rapid erosion, the lake has been filling with silt and is no longer able to hold as much water as it used to. This is a problem t
by j1elo 3y ago
> Because of deforestation and rapid erosion, the lake has been filling with silt and is no longer able to hold as much water as it used to. This is a problem that has been known for the last few decades, but very little has been done to address it.
So that lake is like the small open source project that supports the weight of all internet: critical for everybody, yet neglected.
The Canal moves such amounts of money every year, not to say over decades, that preserving the lake in better conditions ought to have been easy. Now the ball of mud is exploding in their faces. It's like if "we" (collectively) never learned.
- chiefalchemist 3y agoSounds like a riff on The Tragedy of The Commons. Everyone is so busy so successful using the resource no one wants to pause to consider saving the resource.
- dustingetz 3y agoalways has been .jpg coordination dilemmas, particularly resource allocation, are The Problem
- lazide 3y agoMisaligned incentives too
- throwaway736261 3y agoIt's not Tragedy of the Commons because it's not a commons: there's a single controlling entity that should be interested in managing the resource. It's closer to a discounting problem, because future benefits from investment made today are discounted because it's the future's problem. (And it's a great service to society that people have been debunking the myth of the Tragedy of the Commons which was an armchair moralist article in scientific clothing that had no empirical basis when it was published and yet got widely cited for a while because it was emotionally appealing.)
- richk449 3y agoCan you tell me more about how the tragedy of the commons is a myth? I am no economist, but I thought it was a straightforward and well understood outcome.
- Affric 3y agoPDF warning: https://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/bitstream/handle/10535/3113/buck_NoTragedy.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y https://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/bitstream/handle/10535/3113... The commons were well managed by local people and enclosure was a land grab by the rich.
- richk449 3y agoI see. Thank you for the interesting article. The Tragedy of the Commons as a historical event in Medieval England has been criticized (hard to say debunked from this one article, but perhaps there are more). The Tragedy of the Commons as an economical/social phenomena has not been debunked. Since 99.9% of the uses of the phrase Tragedy of the Commons are referring to the second case, I'm not sure it is helpful to say that it has been debunked.
- hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago>The Tragedy of the Commons as an economical/social phenomena has not been debunked. This was what I came here for too. I'm sure someone out there is more interested in the history of the phrase than the economics phenomenon it points to, but it sure isn't me. You could rename it the Doohickey, drop any historical precedent, and I'd still be very interested if someone said the Doohickey was debunked.
- TaylorAlexander 3y agoI suppose it is also worth asking the opposite: is there any reason to believe in the tragedy of the commons as an economic or social phenomenon? There must be anecdotes in favor or against, but so we have any reason to believe it is a generally applicable rule?
- Anotheroneagain 3y agoThis is a natural monopoly, the tragedy of the commons is something else.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoThe canal authority doesn't control the watershed land so it would have been up to the Panamanian government to enact the relevant legislation in the 90s or prior. That doesn't sound easy at all, even getting better resourced governments to care about things that will directly affect their voters in 30 years in big ways is already very difficult. Let alone when it's multiple steps removed and the costs are so diffusely spread out across billions of consumers.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- atoav 3y agoMaybe this sounds stupid as I don't know about Panamanian politics, but I would have expected that this is their most important source of income?
- codybontecou 3y agoI don't think Panama owns the Panama Canal. I believe it's entirely run and governed by the US.
- justsomehnguy 3y ago> The Panama Canal Authority (Spanish: Autoridad del Canal de Panamá (ACP)) is the agency of the government of Panama responsible for the operation and management of the Panama Canal. The ACP took over the administration of the canal from the Panama Canal Commission, the joint US–Panama agency that managed the canal, on December 31, 1999, when the canal was handed over from the United States to Panama as per the Torrijos–Carter Treaties. > The Panama Canal Authority is established under Title XIV of the National Constitution, and has exclusive responsibility for the operation, administration, management, preservation, maintenance, and modernization of the canal. It is responsible for the operation of the canal in a safe, continuous, efficient, and profitable manner.[1] Emphasis mine
- atoav 3y agoI am not sure if (or how) the ownership question would change that the country definitely profits from it's canal.
- imroot 3y agoThe Inter-American Development Bank loaned Panama the money for the Panama canal expansion, so, my thought is that the money that they're making might be tied up covering the notes for the expansion.