I recently read Garrett Hardin's "The Tragedy of the Commons" for the first time and thought it might make for interesting discussion. To keep things somewhat focused I've pulled out the essence of Hardin's tragedy for quotation here. You can read the whole thing if you want, but be warned that he gets a little "out there" in some regards, and I didn't want this thread to stray into too many directions at once.
Anyway, the Tragedy of the Commons is basically a refutation of the "Invisible Hand" of the market theory. It attempts to demonstrate how, in regard to commonly owned resources, free competition in which each actor pursues his own best interest will lead, not to the best or most productive arrange, but to eventual impoverishment for all concerned. It is something of a challenge for those who assert that the market, if left alone, will take care of itself and that governmental regulation always has a negative impact.
I'll add another comment at the bottom, but for now, I give you the tragedy of the commons:
Quote:
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The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.
As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?" This utility has one negative and one positive component.
1) The positive component is a function of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly +1.
2) The negative component is a function of the additional overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decision-making herdsman is only a fraction of -1.
Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another. . . . But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit--in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.
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The Tragedy of the Commons -- 162 (3859): 1243 -- Science
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There are a couple different ways of approaching the same issue, if one wishes to get away from pastures and cows. Historian Arthur McEvoy writes about what he calls "The Fisherman's Problem", in which the fish in the sea (and or stream) are seen as common property. Each fisherman knows that a certain percentage of the fish must be allowed to survive to spawn if there are to be fish in the future. However, in a competitive environment, each fisherman may reasonably assume that each fish he spares is merely one more fish for another fisherman to catch. In other words, the benefits of catching the fish go entirely to the fisherman himself; the penalties of the reduced re productiveness of the fishery are shared evenly among all fishermen. A rational, self-interested fisherman therefore will catch all the fish he/she can.
But, of course, the most obvious example of the Tragedy of the Commons is pollution, only here the situation is reversed. Rather than taking something out of the commons (meaning, in this case, the air and water) the actors are putting something in. Each factory can calculate the benefits of some amount of pollution-generating production. Those benefits go directly and more-or-less completely to the factory. The costs of that increased pollution, however, are distributed to many different people (possibly globally). Consequentially, the benefits of production will always outweigh the costs, so all rational, self-interested factories will always increase production and increase pollution until the planet is destroyed.
The only obvious ways to avoid the tragedy are:
(1) Mutual consensus to restrain in which everyone agrees to take less from the commons then they could, for the benefit of all. In other words, everyone agrees not to act in rational self-interest. This would work, but it puts a great amount of faith in human nature, especially since it takes only a handful of dishonest individuals to crash the system.
(2) What Hardin refers to as "mutual coercion mutually agreed upon", which is basically enforced governmental regulation (though the government in question may be political, social or whatever). In this case, regulations create an artificial cost for adding "one more cow" to the commons, thus changing the cost/benefit equations so that they encourage communally beneficial limits.