Oh my god. John Stossel Of course, I do not trust any man whose mustache I can see so prominently featured on 19-year-olds at the Xiu Xiu concert. Otherwise, take it away, La_Rana:
What none of these libertarians realizes is that she is not proposing a different interpretation of the tragedy of the commons, or a different solution to the tragedy of the commons. What Ostrom has worked to demonstrate is that, in many situations, there is no such thing as the tragedy of the commons. People can, over time, develop mechanisms for successfully managing common property. There is no need for private property enforced by a state.Or, of course, communism!
You know what Ostrom's work is really an argument for?
Anarchy.
36 comments:
No, it is a different solution to the tragedy of the commons. One of her examples is in Switzerland where you can only graze as many animals as you can winter (wintering is costly, so that is a restriction though it effectively subsidizes the wealthier). They wouldn't have had to come up with that solution if there were no tragedy of the commons (or considering my previous parenthetical, maybe they're really plutocrats who imagined the problem to justify the subsidy to the rich, but that's certainly not Ostrom's take). Consider it possible, La Rana, that it is YE who is mistaken, rather than others in her field. Furthermore, the point that sometimes such mechanisms can be developed does not entail that they will always and that the State is never a better substitute. There may be other arguments for that, but Ostrom has written about the limits of that kind of solution and in which situations it can arise.
It was socialism. Communism. Bo Diddley!
I love anarchy.
TGGP - The tragedy of the commons says that a group of people cannot efficiently manage common property without some sort of external readjustment of their incentives. Ostrom says people can efficiently manage common property without any external readjustment of their incentives. You say that people cannot efficiently manage common property without efficiently managing common property. I have to admit, you're probably right.
Commonism?
And, I would like my undies back.
What's the market value of a John Stossel mustache ride?
You know what they say, anecdotal evidence backed by Swedish gold is horseshit.
Congratulations. I actually read Stossel. I still kinda want an apology.
That said, I believe that a simpleton libert reporter has found anti-authoritarian socialism. If ever there was a time to find God, now is it.
The tragedy of the commons doesn't say anything about the readjustment having to be "external", that was just an assumption many people made. An assignment of property rights wouldn't have to be external, it could even be done through a collective mechanism of the sort that gave rise to these rules.
The tragedy of the commons doesn't say anything about the readjustment having to be "external", that was just an assumption many people made.
From the very beginning of Hardin's original piece:
Recall the game of tick-tack-toe. Consider the problem, "How can I win the game of tick-tack-toe?" It is well known that I cannot, if I assume (in keeping with the conventions of game theory) that my opponent understands the game perfectly. Put another way, there is no "technical solution" to the problem. I can win only by giving a radical meaning to the word "win." I can hit my opponent over the head; or I can falsify the records. Every way in which I "win" involves, in some sense, an abandonment of the game, as we intuitively understand it. (I can also, of course, openly abandon the game -- refuse to play it. This is what most adults do.)[emphasis mine]
To paraphrase: The only way to win is to change the definition of winning, which necessarily involves importing external conceptions of 'win' that are not a part of the game per se.
So, not such an assumption after all, methinks.
xiu xiu!
TGGP down for the count!
Lets try this again.
The tragedy of the commons begins with a basic game theory model, which shows that everyone is incentivized to use the commons as much as possible, but no one is incentivized to maintain the commons. Even though the individuals have some incentive to maintain the commons, each is also better incentivized to be a free rider. In other words, the game theory dictates that these people could not form any "collective mechanism" to manage the common property, because they are not incentivized to do so. This predicted inability to collectively manage the common property is called the tragedy of the commons.
Ostrom's work shows that in some situations, people can and will form collective mechanisms to manage the common property, which runs exactly contrary to the predictions made through the game theory modeling (which we call the tragedy of the commons). Her work is not a solution to those predictions, but rather shows that those predictions are wrong. Therefore, to repeat myself, in those situations there is no such thing as the tragedy of the commons!
'In other words, the game theory dictates that these people could not form any "collective mechanism" to manage the common property, because they are not incentivized to do so.'
I don't think that's exactly right. In fact, it seems to display the fundamental error shared by strong libertarianism and strong anarchism: a conception of the state as external to a community. The difference between government by a "state" and government by a (community council / gang / corporation) is not meaningful: when the state withers away, its functions are assumed by other power structures. In most social contexts, the available power structures tend to be much less democratic, accountable, and/or benevolent than the state, which is why I'm with Arthur Silber in dreaming of an anarchist utopia but under no illusions as to the possibility of such a thing without human consciousness undergoing a radical transformation first.
Long-winded, but my point is: game theory has very little to say about what people will do "collectively", only what they will do individually. Reality, on the other hand, has a lot to say about what people will do collectively to solve the trgedy of the commons: namely, they (or the most aggressive among them) will form a (state/gang/feudal hierarchy) and promulgate rules about who may use the formerly-communal resources, and how much, and they will enforce these rules with violence.
I love you, Anon 1:05. You succinctly break this shit down right here:
The difference between government by a "state" and government by a (community council / gang / corporation) is not meaningful: when the state withers away, its functions are assumed by other power structures.
States have died and been replaced by states that came from other sources. Conquest theory, bitches. Power is what we're talking about. Manifestations are what trip us up, because we are stupid.
It is the case that the individuals in an intuitive "state of the game" have an incentive to be a free-rider rather than maintain the commons. If a benevolent genius economist dictator sees such a situation he (or she) can declare changes to the rules which change the nature of the game (top-down regulation is one solution to the tragedy, preferred by Hardin). Ostrom's work points out that the participants can realize there is a problem, come up with the same solution as the benevolent dictator, agree to abide the same rule, and implicitly threaten to hit cheaters over the head. It might even be the case that the participants themselves better understand the problem and what solutions will work than a benevolent dicator, who may not be such a genius. Hardin phrased his solution as "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon". He said the solution would not be "technical", meaning some scientific invention saves all our asses. Ostrom's solutions are not technical. Among the solutions Hardin puts forward are to keep the resource public but allocate the right to enter it, possibly by some "agreed upon standard". Does that sound so different from what Ostrom has documented?
As it happens, I believe Hardin is wrong regarding his main concern of population, but that may be because I am more of a total-utilitarian than average-utilitarian.
Anon - No, that is exactly right. were you listening to the dude's story?
TATTOO IT ON YOUR FOREHEAD!
I think I should amend what I said. There may be an implicit threat that cheaters will be hit over the head in many situations. It may also be the case that other members of the community refuse to do business with you, as in the medieval law merchant. Then, as Steve Sailer noted*, there is the possibility that your children will become unmarriageable in your village. Akratists might only deem the hit-over-the-head threat to be statist, and even then many anarcho-capitalists like the medieval Viking custom of people becoming "outlaws" thereby losing any protection of law and becoming free game for anyone who'd like to kill you and seize your swag.
*In that link Ostrom bemoans the low public investment resulting from diversity. A while back I argued that may actually be a good thing.
I guess that's the way the whole durned human comedy keeps perpetuatin' itself.
So that's the tragedy of the commons?
"There's not unlimited stuff, so you either learn to manage it or you run out of stuff"?
It doesn't really seem to warrant all the pomp and circumstance, frankly.
Christopher, countless self-help books have been written explaining just that message, because apparently it has a hard time getting through.
The main point Hardin wanted to make was that we need to restrict breeding, a la China, and given the unpopularity of that measure he needed to make a big splash. However, if all the natural resources of the earth were perfectly managed (a big assumption, I know) the costs of breeding are internalized and free fertility is efficient. Since a small or even shrinking population may still have a big environmental footprint (see under, First World) the real message should have been that we need to better manage our resources, which does sound more boring than saying we need to sterilize poor people or we're all doomed.
In case my contempt was not evident, the tragedy of the commons is one of those thought experiments, like the coase theorem, which, although it is thoroughly incompatible with reality, is used by economists to justify their continued employment and those in power to justify their bad decisions.
Stossel is kinda hot
mdf1960, de gustibus and all that, but gack! Profoundly imprinted by '70's porn?
The tragedy of the commons is thoroughly incompatible with reality? You're right, smog in L.A and global warming aren't problems at all! I understand that TotC has been used retroactively to justify enclosure movements which replaced customary systems of land governance that may have worked pretty well, but when was the last time it was used by those in power to justify their bad decisions?
Some googling turned up this example of the Coase theorem playing out in reality. Nick Szabo argues that the Coase theorem fails to properly take into account coercion here.
TGGP,
In fairness to la rana, the TotC is an application of game theory and does assume that all of the players understand the game perfectly, which is transparently not the case with global warming.
Also, the TotC requires that maximal exploitation of the common will eventually render it completely unusable, which doesn't necessarily hold for something like smog in L.A. or global warming.
None of which even gets into the issue of the differential ability of groups exploiting the common to cope with the consequences of the exploitation. The rich, for example, will probably do just fine under any realistic global warming scenario, so they have zero incentive to quit belching CO2 into the atmosphere.
I thought that would be figured in by those who can afford more cattle practically riding the commons into ruin. Again, I'm more interested (not to mention informed) in general principle than the discipline of economics theory, but doesn't your last point, system, actually make the TotC perfectly applicable?
Hardin did not invent the tragedy of the commons. It is one of the main themes of Adam Smith and other economic writers in the 17th and 18th centuries. There was a big movement, preceding and coinciding with the Agricultural Revolution that accompanied the Industrial Revolution in Britain, to enclose commons. This was accompanied by vast increases in capital improvements to land: draining swamps, fertilization, and so on.
Pick up almost any literature written about it at the time (not the 20th century Marxist revisionism that dominates current discourse) and you'll find overwhelming evidence that privatizing the commons greatly improved capital investment in and productivity of farmland, paving the way for the Agricultural Revolution which reduced the workforce needed for agriculture from about 90% of the English population to less than 35% by 1800.
Commons usually only work on a very small scale and only with people who spend their entire lives together, for example the kibbutz worked to some extent or (more successfully) the Hutterian colonies. These are basically communes where people spend their entire lives interacting with only about 150 other people. When the colonies get larger than that they split apart. Communism requires very long-term relationships doesn't scale.
And with capital investment and productivity at their highest, everyone made out fine. The end.
Greg Clark argues against both Cüneyt and jimhart. In his view, medieval Europe was characterized by a constantly shitty quality of life which had nothing to do with poor institutions. Everyone made out fine as the process of Malthusian replacement of the poor with the downwardly mobile excess descendants of the rich created a population of less violent and more patient people cut out for middle class life. This process is marked by a long downward trend in interest & homicide rates.
What did Greg Clark say caused that shitty quality of life? And how does he define "medieval Europe"?
The cause is agriculture, which allowed for a much larger population, but in an agricultural economy limited by the fixed amount of land ensured lower per-capita income. This was meliorated by the terrible health standard of Europeans, which kept population density lower than in China or Japan. I use the word "medieval", but the idea really applies to all of human history between the introduction of agriculture and the industrial revolution.
did any of y'all talking about the Tragedy of the Commons actually read Garrett Hardin?
it helps to read it before using it as a cultural touchstone.
it's not about private property any more than it's about donkey sex. it's about resources and their finitude. whatever else a libertarian-squid may want to layer on top of it... well that's the invertebrate's prerogative I guess.
Thanks for clarifying, TGGP.
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