Quote:
Originally Posted by Dilettante
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.
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(1) could also be looked as social conventions. In many cases social conventions are in place that reduce or eliminate commons problems (or externalities). When there a small number of people in a group forming a consensus is generally a better way to address these problems. As the group starts to get larger regulation becomes a more viable solution.