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Originally Posted by WarOnIgnorance
Both 'The invisible hand' - which, by the way, is all the time erroneously attributed to Adam Smith as a basic tenet of his ideas, while he used it only once and solely as a metaphor- and this argument rest on a faulty assumption, expressed here :
This is an ideological, cultural statement and not an observation of human nature, let alone of rationality. As Kropotkin demonstrates conclusively, the predominant factor in human society is, and always has been, cooperation. Competition is secondary. Humans are not solitarily living rhinoceroses or mindless viri. The complete absence of awareness of the effects of personal decisions on the other members of society is actually a symptom of a number of pathologies.
As such, these typically reductionistic approaches to human enterprise, so prevalent in economic theories, are cathedrals built on quicksand.
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I sympathize with your wariness of reductionist approaches, but I think you've somewhat avoided the point.
You've mentioned the importance of cooperation in human society and the awareness of one's effect on society. In so doing I think you've highlight what is arguably
the premier flaw in Hardin's model: the herdsman never attempt to communicate with each other. However, I don't think flaw totally undermines Hardin's metaphor, nor does it escape the two possible solutions to the "tragedy".
Either one must claim that humanities cooperative tendencies and awareness of consequences will naturally lead all (or, at least, almost all) individuals acting on the commons to eschew opportunities for personal gain in favor of what is best for the all: the rosy outlook of option (1).
Or one must admit the need for some sort of coercion which forces (or "persuades") those of a more self-serving nature to restrain themselves: option (2)
Quote:
Originally Posted by WarOnIgnorance
Humans have feedback systems in place, both manifest and latent, and have the ability to communicate information. Sure, there are examples where e.g. the exhaustion of freely available resources does occur, but, obviously, if this were the general rule, there simply would never have emerged human societies in the first place.
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The last sentence seems to ignore two key facts:
(A) The Tragedy of the Commons is only a factor when the commons is limited. In situations of very low population-to-resource ratios, its a non-issue; a society can always simply open up more pasture as soon as what they have becomes over-grazed. A society could easily emerge and thrive so long as its numbers remained too few (or its resources so expansive) that no real competition for the commons existed.
(B) More importantly, practically every successful and enduring human society as embraced solution #2: coercive regulations that punish those who seek personal gain at the expense of the general good. These coercive regulations may be cast in political, cultural or religious terms, but they are the same in that they create an artificial cost for those who would attempt to use more than "their share" of a common resource. This is Hardin's "mutual coercion mutually agreed upon", which in our culture exists primarily in the form of governmental regulations, fees, and laws.
It strikes me that it might be worthwhile to highlight that section of the essay as well:
Quote:
Mutual Coercion Mutually Agreed upon
The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort. Consider bank-robbing. The man who takes money from a bank acts as if the bank were a commons. How do we prevent such action? Certainly not by trying to control his behavior solely by a verbal appeal to his sense of responsibility. Rather than rely on propaganda we follow Frankel's lead and insist that a bank is not a commons; we seek the definite social arrangements that will keep it from becoming a commons. That we thereby infringe on the freedom of would-be robbers we neither deny nor regret.
The morality of bank-robbing is particularly easy to understand because we accept complete prohibition of this activity. We are willing to say "Thou shalt not rob banks," without providing for exceptions. But temperance also can be created by coercion. Taxing is a good coercive device. To keep downtown shoppers temperate in their use of parking space we introduce parking meters for short periods, and traffic fines for longer ones. We need not actually forbid a citizen to park as long as he wants to; we need merely make it increasingly expensive for him to do so. Not prohibition, but carefully biased options are what we offer him. A Madison Avenue man might call this persuasion; I prefer the greater candor of the word coercion.
Coercion is a dirty word to most liberals now, but it need not forever be so. As with the four-letter words, its dirtiness can be cleansed away by exposure to the light, by saying it over and over without apology or embarrassment. To many, the word coercion implies arbitrary decisions of distant and irresponsible bureaucrats; but this is not a necessary part of its meaning. The only kind of coercion I recommend is mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected.
To say that we mutually agree to coercion is not to say that we are required to enjoy it, or even to pretend we enjoy it. Who enjoys taxes? We all grumble about them. But we accept compulsory taxes because we recognize that voluntary taxes would favor the conscienceless. We institute and (grumblingly) support taxes and other coercive devices to escape the horror of the commons.
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