Home » Posts tagged 'tragedy of the commons'
Tag Archives: tragedy of the commons
Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons” explained with a practical example: a tourist trap in Florence
Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons” explained with a practical example: a tourist trap in Florence
Garrett Hardin’s idea of “The Tragedy of the Commons” has become well known, but not always really understood. In my case, I can say that I have big troubles in having my students grasping its mechanism; that is the interplay of individual advantage versus public goods; the basic factor that leads to what we call “overexploitation.”
Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that Hardin used the example of sheep and pastures to explain the reasons of the tragedy, but that’s rather unfamiliar to my students (as well as to most of us). For instance, many of my students don’t seem to be able to grasp the concept of “overgrazing”, that is the fact that grass doesn’t regrow if it is grazed too much. Besides, the pastures that Hardin was considering never experienced the “tragedy”; they were well managed and well regulated, specifically in order to avoid it.
So, let me propose a different example for the mechanism of overexploitation, based on a real event that happened to me. Maybe it can explain the concept better.
Just a few days ago I was literally kidnapped inside an underground parking in Florence because I had lost my entrance ticket, with the employees of the place insisting that they won’t let me out unless I was willing to shell out 237 euros for about two hours of parking (!!).
I described the experience in detail in a post in Italian, that you may machine translate if you are really interested. The gist of the story, anyway, is that I found myself caught in a trap mainly designed to siphon out some money out of the pockets of the hapless foreign tourist passing by. In my case, I was able to negotiate my release and avoid paying the exorbitant surcharge.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Ecological Crisis and the Tragedy of the Commodity
Ecological Crisis and the Tragedy of the Commodity
We live in an era of ecological crisis, which is a direct result of human actions. Natural scientists have been debating whether the current historical epoch should be called the Anthropocene, in order to mark the period in which human activities became the primary driver of global ecological change.[1]
Initially, it was proposed that this new epoch, corresponding with the rise of modern capitalist and industrial development, began in the eighteenth century. The growth imperative of capitalism, as well as other sociocultural changes, is a primary factor generating major environmental problems that culminate in ecological crisis.[2]
It has become increasingly clear that humans face an existential crisis. The environmental writer and activist Bill McKibben explains:
Earth has changed in profound ways, ways that have already taken us out of the sweet spot where humans so long thrived…. The world hasn’t ended, but the world as we know it has—even if we don’t quite know it yet. We imagine we still live back on that old planet, that the disturbances we see around us are the old random and freakish kind. But they’re not. It’s a different place. A different planet…. This is one of those rare moments, the start of a change far larger and more thoroughgoing than anything we can read in the records of man, on a par with the biggest dangers we can read in the records of rock and ice.[3]
Many modern ecological problems are referred to as a tragedy of the commons, a concept developed by Garrett Hardin in the 1960s to describe the overexploitation or despoliation of natural resources.[4]We contend that they are actually associated with the tragedy of the commodity.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Hope For Imagining a World Beyond Corporate Control | On the Commons
Hope For Imagining a World Beyond Corporate Control | On the Commons.
The commons is not just a battlefield between corporate predators and those who resist them – it is also a source of hope for those willing to imagine a world beyond capitalism. It represents a space between the private market and the political state in which humanity can control and democratically root our common wealth. Both the market and the state have proved inadequate for this purpose. In different ways, they have both led to a centralization of power and decision-making. Both private monopolies and state bureaucracies have proved incapable of maintaining the ecological health of the commons or managing the fair and equitable distribution of its benefits.
The conservative ecologist Garrett Hardin’s belief that the commons is facing a tragedy was based on the notion that individual self-interest in exploiting common resources was undercutting the overall health of those limited resources. Hardin maintained that individual self-interest trumps any more thoughtful notion of preserving resources for future use. External restraints needed to be imposed. To prove his point, Hardin used the example of the individual herder taking more than their share of pastureland. It assumes a human behavior that is all too familiar to those who have seen the global fishery depleted and seen watersheds destroyed by those hungry for land to grow crops.
The Tragedy of NATO: Economic Problems Embedded in Collective Security Agreements – Ludwig von Mises Institute Canada
The economic phenomenon known as the “Tragedy of the Commons” instructs us that commonly held resources that are insufficiently protected will be plundered to extinction. The phenomenon was recognized in the early nineteenth century to explain why the commons in England quickly came to be denuded by sheep. All sheepherders had an equal right to graze sheep on the commons. There often was no agreement as to how many sheep each could graze, so it was sheer rational self-interest for each to graze as many sheep on the common ground as possible. In short order the commons came to be overgrazed. What later came to be called “the tragedy of the commons” was a simple and imminently understandable explanation.
Is security an economic resource?
One can easily accept that grassland is an economic resource that must be protected, but what about security and, if security is held collectively, can collective security agreements also be vulnerable to the tragedy of the commons? Security is a service that usually requires economic resources. We secure our personal possessions when we take precautions such as padlocking our bicycles, locking our car doors and the house, buying monitored security systems, purchasing heavy safes, and the like. These are all economic goods to secure our personal property. But what about protecting our physical selves? It is on a somewhat different plane but the purpose is the same. We may carry concealed weapons, take personal self-defense courses, or hire personal body guards. All these things require the expenditure of time and money to acquire economic goods to make us more secure.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
