No tragedy of the commons
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Useful update on the rebuttal of the theory but not for our reasons
“We’ve been told that if there is open access, then there must be tragedy, but that’s simply not true,” said Mark Moritz, lead author of the paper and associate professor of anthropology at The Ohio State University.
https://phys.org/news/2018-11-people-sustainably-resources-conditions.html
Good rebuttal based on facts, but why do you say the argument is different from ours? Isn’t our argument too that in conditions like this people don’t act like capitalist homo economicus but abide by generally accepted rules whether written or unwritten, in the common interest? It only becomes a tragedy under capitalism, where you have, for instance, profit-seeking fishing companies competing to make a profit out of fishing.
It only becomes a tragedy under capitalism, where you have, for instance, profit-seeking fishing companies competing to make a profit out of fishing.
Very true and in Hardin’s original paper published in the 60s the assumption is made that because the land is common property, that this is what gives rise to it being overgrazed. No mention is made of the fact that, because the herds are the private property of the herders themselves, who are in competition with each other, that this is what incentivises them to increase the size of their own herd while externalising or sharing the environmental costs this entails with the other herders. Hardin evidently did not consider the possibility of making all the cattle common property along with the land that the cattle grazed
Simply because they also adds a number of caveats, alb, that i don’t necessarily think are required.
“Other necessary conditions include low population densities, low market value of the resources, variability in resource distribution”
How important they are for the researchers i don’t know but they do appear to differentiate them for our case, as made by you an Robbo.
A related article on WW which makes useful reading on the Commons
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1230/competition-and-cooperation/
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