
Debunking the tragedy of the commons (2008) - bryanrasmussen
http://climateandcapitalism.com/2008/08/25/debunking-the-tragedy-of-the-commons/
======
simias
Interesting article, I didn't know that "tragedy of the commons" was used to
argue in favor of private ownership, rather I always thought it was used to
demonstrate the need for some amount of regulations for things that cannot be
meaningfully privatized (the quality of the air we breathe, the water we
drink, the streets we use etc...). So pretty much the opposite of what the
original author argued for apparently.

It's also interesting that the article points out that in practice communities
self-regulate to avoid the issue of over-using a shared resource. It seems it
doesn't work so well in a globalized economy. While social ties might work
well enough in rural England in the 17th century to self-regulate sheep
herding it doesn't seem to translate very well to our modern society where the
"commons" is the great coral reef dying or coastlines getting submerged tens
of thousands of kilometers away from me.

~~~
skummetmaelk
> It seems it doesn't work so well in a globalized economy.

It doesn't work because we are essentially at the stage where nations take on
the role of the individuals in the original example. Countries have much to
gain by quickly exploiting the resources common to all countries before the
others can. This leads to the tragedy of the commons on a global scale.

We need world government with real power in order to solve this problem, just
as national government has solved it for more local issues.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> We need world government with real power in order to solve this problem,
> just as national government has solved it for more local issues.

The problem with world government is that you would need sign on by literally
everyone, permanently. As soon as you had a serious disagreement and tried to
enforce it against a sufficiently powerful country without their consent, we
would have at best the dissolution of the world government and at worst World
War III. The American Civil War at world-scale is not a pretty picture.

The system we have now works much better than that. When someone is cheating,
the countries that don't like it put sanctions on them until they stop. The
sanctions aren't severe enough to fight a war over but they cost more than the
cost of doing the right thing, which resolves things for all but the most
obstinate countries.

The problem with climate change seems to be that countries lack the will to
actually use those methods. If most of Europe and China got together and
signed an agreement to all put sanctions on any country that didn't meet a
per-capita carbon emissions target, that would be the end of it. But
apparently they don't have the stones to actually do it.

~~~
skummetmaelk
> If most of Europe and China got together and signed an agreement to all put
> sanctions on any country that didn't meet a per-capita carbon emissions
> target, that would be the end of it.

Which would be the beginning of world government. Agreed upon rules with clear
consequences for breaking them. Right now there are consequences for doing
what the major players do not like, but the rules are not written down
beforehand.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Which would be the beginning of world government.

No it wouldn't, because it isn't a government, it's a relationship between
fully independent states.

If a federal judge orders an Alabama school superintendent to do something as
a matter of federal law, that superintendent is either going to do that thing
or be arrested by the feds, and nobody is going to stop them. That's what a
government looks like.

If the EU tells the US to cut carbon emissions or face sanctions and Donald
Trump tells them to piss off, nobody is going to arrest Donald Trump and
anybody who tries to is going to be met with force. Europe can then impose the
sanctions, and the US can either give in or suffer the ramifications _as a
country_ , but at no point is anyone who refuses to comply going to be held
personally responsible by an external governing body.

Moreover, each government's tools against the others are roughly symmetrical.
If the EU wants to put sanctions on the US they can, but the US can just
respond in kind. That hurts both of them and they both know it, so (absent
corruption) they won't do it unless it's something sufficiently important.
Which means you don't get the insane policies like we have in the US where the
feds start micromanaging everything just because they can get away with it.

------
legitster
Summary: There is no way there could a commons could be abused because no one
in a pre-capitalist society would be selfish enough to need to. Capitalism
(privatization) only cares about short term gains. Tragedy of the commons is a
political myth designed to extract resources.

I would make a couple of points.

1\. This article quotes Marx unironically as an argument.

2\. Even if I bought the argument that commons were actually great and
capitalism ruined them, Tragedy of the Commons is still a useful way to
describe collective action problems.

3\. Corporations choose long term viability over short term profits all of the
time. (A great example is Gifford Pinchot convincing the US lumber industry
that it was in their interest to effectively manage forests long term).

4\. Community ownership is not the same as government ownership.

5\. There are cases where privatization or local ownership can lead to great
outcomes: ([https://www.npr.org/2011/10/10/140445502/to-save-wildlife-
na...](https://www.npr.org/2011/10/10/140445502/to-save-wildlife-namibias-
farmers-take-control))

I feel like framing environmental problems on capitalism is a big mistake
(socialist countries arguably have had much, much worse track records). Good
environmental policy is usually just that - good policy; not overtly socialist
or capitalist.

~~~
dnautics
5a. I think the NOx and SOx auctioning markets are also a great example of
privatization schemes that have been wildly successful (there's basically no
acid rain in the US anymore). There's an argument out there that privatization
in these two markets has been no better than regulation, I mean but it's
almost a silly argument, because in the US regulation had zero buy-in, but
privatization was acted on, so it got the job done.

------
greenshackle3
A much better article on this topic:

[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/284/5412/278.full](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/284/5412/278.full)

Any serious discussion of 'debunking' the tragedy of the commons should
mention Elinor Ostrom, the only woman with a Nobel prize in Economics, which
she won largely for her work on governance of the commons.

------
ZeroGravitas
I think the mental model is useful.

I think of it every time I stand at one of those coveyer belts to pick up
luggage in an airport and the crowd slowly creeps in closer, each person
trying to get a better view by standing in front of someone else, who then
does the same.

Always fascinating to observe the group dynamics and the designs (like a
painted line to show you how far back to stand) used to try to informally
enforce the norm that helps everyone get their case easily.

I'm not sure you can abandon every good idea that's been abused, even if it's
got a weird origin story. But I've not personally witnessed it being used to
support privatization, I can see how someone would get annoyed if they kept
seeing that happen.

~~~
vanderZwan
> the designs (like a painted line to show you how far back to stand) used to
> try to informally enforce the norm that helps everyone get their case
> easily.

There's two layers to your example: the part where the conveyor belt itself
and its affordances[0] encourage certain group dynamics, which you can change
through design (aka interaction design), and rules and regulations to
discourage that without changing the affordance of the conveyor belt (the
enforcing of good behaviour that you mention).

For example, to really speed things up you would need to parallelize: use
multiple shorter conveyor belt loops, each handling with luggage from
different sections of a plane (say seat 1 to 15, 16 to 30, etc). That requires
organisational overhead though. It also wouldn't work in situations where
everyone in the front of the plane had check in luggage, and only a handful of
people in the back.

But that presume we want to optimise time for luggage pick-up. If we go back
to the crowding behaviour you mentioned, the issue is everyone wanting to
stand next to the belt, and close to the point where luggage is thrown on it.

The former can be solved by maximising conveyor belt length vs surface area by
making it "snake" more, more people can stand next to it in the same area.
However, lengthening the belt makes it take longer for luggage to move all the
way around it, and you can't speed it up too much without making it difficult
to grab the luggage. The second can be mitigated by having multiple spots
through which luggage is thrown on the belts.

... you know what, now that I think about it, baggage carousel design could
make for a fun little Indy game a la Freeways or Minimetro[1][2]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance)

[1]
[https://captaingames.itch.io/freeways](https://captaingames.itch.io/freeways)

[2] [http://dinopoloclub.com/minimetro/](http://dinopoloclub.com/minimetro/)

------
pcarbonn
Elinor Ostrom would agree. She received the Nobel prize in Economics in 2009
(after OP's article) for her work on "Common Pool Resources" and the
institutions that successfully manage common resources.

Noticing that commons are not always managed to tragedy, as noticed by OP's
article, her motto was "A resource arrangement that works in practice can work
in theory".

------
aurizon
Ha - Ha - Ha, some self serving debunk this is. Marxism is a failed theory -
but the Tragedy of the Commons(TOTC) is an observation of reality - the
reality of people whose grasp exceeds their ability to restore what they have
consumed. The TOTC is the truth of man's nature - that the nature of man is
intrinsically corrupted by the same aspect of organic life as the urge of an
amoeba to eat first and starve the other amoebas...?

------
danharaj
The commons was developed thousands of years ago in order to be dismantled
hundreds of years ago to illustrate why capitalism is inevitable.

