5 ms·
He doesn't even give an example of "ancient human tribes," but modern day nomads whose traditions have also developed over thousands of years. If ancient human
by Aunche 3y ago
He doesn't even give an example of "ancient human tribes," but modern day nomads whose traditions have also developed over thousands of years. If ancient human tribes were so great at avoiding tragedy of the commons, I would be eating a mammoth steak right now.
- oh_sigh 3y agoMaybe losing mammoths wasn't actually a tragedy.
- rocketbop 3y agoIt was for the mammoths.
- bawolff 3y agoAnd for the people who liked to eat mammoths More to the point, the word "tragedy" in context isn't saying that the end result is neccesarily a tragedy for the people involved. The "tragedy" is our (alleged) inability to have nice shared stable resources, not any specific outcome of any specific resource being exhausted.
- oh_sigh 3y agoSure - my point was that maybe mammoths weren't viewed as nice shared stable resources, but rather like cruel giants that might destroy your settlement, crops, and family randomly for fun. Sort of like how how elephants are viewed by rural farmer folk in many parts of Africa.
- coldtea 3y agoThe author explained very well what they meant (optimizing for lower risk vs profit) and this has little to do with preserving mammoths. That would be a very peripheral concern (if it was one at all).
- Aunche 3y agoMammoths were an easy protein source for ancient people that were hunted into extinction. This is optimizing for short term profit.
- me_me_me 3y agoIt was any kind of fauna that was hunted into extinction when humans moved in. And its still happening to this day. I was staying in a tribe village in Thailand, a full day trek into jungle. They had a dirt road connecting them to the rest of thailand but were surrounded by jungle. I was sharing few drinks with people i traveled and locals, and there was small commotion. When asking about it, locals explained that someone saw monkey out in the jungle and people were discussing who should shoot it. They explained that there is no animals in over 5km around the village as its hunted for the meat the moment its spotted. Basically a deadzone for anything that has enough meat to be worth a shotgun shell. Its clear as day that everyone in the village would benefit from cooperation but they dont. Humans on average are not rational. And we are barely more advanced than the ancient people. We have better tech, and a bit more empathy. But the wiring is still the same.
- Fluorescence 3y agoI believe it was mainly climate change and loss of habitat during glacial retreat that caused Mammoth and other mega-fauna to die out. Human hunting was likely a minor contributor and nothing like the industrial slaughter of bison.
- more_corn 3y agoNot true. Megafauna died out across the world in hundreds of different habitats when humans arrived and hunted them to extinction.
- Aunche 3y agoThere is still plenty of tundra in Canada and Siberia where mammoths could still live today. Megafauna survived several cycles of climate change. They went extinct during the cycle when humans arrived.
- pvdoom 3y agoThe whole tragedy of the commons was literally made up by a very reactionary dude to justify fucking people over and justify enclosure and privatisation. Historically people have actually had rather complicated and at the same time very effective ways of sustainably managing the commons. It also happens that privatisation is the thing that makes the tragedy of the commons happen.
- concordDance 3y ago> Historically people have actually had rather complicated and at the same time very effective ways of sustainably managing the commons. Ones that scale to more than a million people?
- pvdoom 3y agoYup.
- RandomLensman 3y agoHistorically, quite a few people ruined themselves.
- inglor_cz 3y agoHistorically, people also cut down most of the forests in the Mediterranean for firewood and shipbuilding without even attempting to balance the process, causing major problems for their descendants. Most of this activity predated modern capitalism by millennia. Historically and currently, people polluted common waters and air with all sorts of agricultural and industrial runoff. Heck, someone around me has been feeding their home fireplace with plastic right now and fifty other families have to smell the acrid smoke. Historically and currently, people overfished oceanic stocks to total depletion in certain seas. Historically and currently, people dumped their refuse somewhere behind their village or city, creating rotting heaps of trash. I don't see anything made up about the tragedy of the commons.
- pvdoom 3y agoAnd a lot of those things you list are not tragedy of the commons as stated, but a consequences of the very thing that Hardin was defending - the enclosure of the commons and privatisation. Because privatisation and capitalism both encourage competition, and unsustainable behaviour towards common resources. This is why we see agricultural and industrial runoffs, oceanic stock depletion etc. Historical communities tend to have tools and practices that prevent all of that stuff from happening, practices that have been put aside with colonialism, enclosure and markets ...