"The Tragedy of the Commons": how ecofascism was smuggled into mainstream thought

[gmoke]

Elinor Ostrom kicked Garrett Hardin into a cocked hat. Her work on real examples of common pool resources made Hardin’s little thought experiment look like a drooling daydream. Ostrom and her colleagues discovered common pool resources (commons) that had been sustainably governed for decades, centuries, and, possibly, millennia and provided the guidelines to replicate them.

"Ostrom identified eight “design principles” of stable local common pool resource management:[31] She also discussed the eight “design principles” on Big Think.[32]

1. Clearly defined (clear definition of the contents of the common pool resource and effective exclusion of external un-entitled parties);
2. The appropriation and provision of common resources that are adapted to local conditions;
3. Collective-choice arrangements that allow most resource appropriators to participate in the decision-making process;
4. Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable to the appropriators;
5. A scale of graduated sanctions for resource appropriators who violate community rules;
6. Mechanisms of conflict resolution that are cheap and of easy access;
7. Self-determination of the community recognized by higher-level authorities; and
8. In the case of larger common-pool resources, organization in the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small local CPRs at the base level."

I keep on having to remind Cory Doctorow about Elinor Ostrom but then I keep on having to remind most people about Elinor Ostrom. When she won her economic Nobel, Paul Krugman congratulated her in his NYTimes column and said he wasn’t familiar with her work. The last thing I heard her say the last time I saw her speak was “No panaceas!!!” but she certainly is essential.

[anon73430903]

and @gmoke

This is the second time today that someone has mentioned Elinor Ostrom to me. I think I have someone else to add to my reading list.

[smulder]

privatization creates an owner who has an incentive to may or may not serve as a wise steward over the resource

ALSO: to an economist, “wise stewardship” is whatever makes the most money, by definition

[anon47741163]

It should be possible to estimate how much atmospheric carbon was released by each nation over the last century. If countries are held to account for the pollution theyve already released, it certainly changes how we view the burden of remediation.

I despise this american tradition of, " we’ve done all our dirty work, now we’re pulling up the ladder to this tree house, you’re not invited".

[Bernel]

@anon47741163

And no one on the left -that I could find- took issue with the private property implications,

Hardin warned about unmanaged commons where everyone could do as they pleased, and why that didn’t work. His point was that you needed some sort of management. He was more explicit in a later follow up article that this could be from making it private property or it could be people working together to agree on how the commons could be used. Either could work.

Some people took Hardin’s thought experiment (which wasn’t even his, he used an old one) too literally. It was never intended as a decription of how societies used to work.

[anon61221983]

@anon47741163

If countries are held to account for the pollution theyve already released

This is a good thing to do… however, who enforces it?

@anon47741163

I despise this american tradition of, " we’ve done all our dirty work, now we’re pulling up the ladder to this tree house, you’re not invited".

Right? Plus, we consume far more resources than other countries, and in the case of India and China, both are developing countries, with far more citizens than us, but hundreds of millions of people…

[anon73430903]

@Bernel

Some people took Hardin’s thought experiment (which wasn’t even his, he used an old one) too literally.

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose.

The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who takes things that are yours and mine.

The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.

[Scientist]

@doctorow

the only moral justification for waxing fat while others starve is a belief in your own innate superiority

I’d add that this is true if one claims to be good according to western morality. Plenty of societies have openly been the strong take whatever they can, end of story. In the world of billionaires worshipped by a Christian society the cognitive dissonance is extreme, and then people desperately clamor for ideas like the inherit superiority of the wealthy to rationalize the insanely unchristian inequality

[anothernewbbaccount]

@MrFawkes

Trump knows water levels are rising because it’s affected his golf courses and he’s had to make changes to them…

…because, as he well knows, it’s the ‘displacement’ (in his limited terminology, the ‘WEIGHT’) of these extra immigrants that is sinking the land and threatening his golf courses, not any climate change. THAT is why they must be stopped.

[anothernewbbaccount]

@Avery_Thorn

Because in my economics classes, the tragedy of the commons was that capitalists ruined everyone else’s lives by taking advantage of commons resources for their own profit while eternalizing costs (such as negative environmental issues) by pushing those costs to other people. The lesson from the tragedy of the commons (if you’re not a psychopathic user) is to have laws to force unethical people to behave in ways that are not detrimental to society.

THIS!!! (And I wish Cory would acknowledge this when criticising the justifiably criticised capture of the term for other purposes.)

ETA and @anon73430903 - your rhyme expressed it perhaps even more succinctly. Where is that from, out of interest?

[LutherBlisset]

@doctorow

After a generation of climate denial, the US and European right is in the midst of a fast pivot to ecofascism, simultaneously acknowledging the seriousness and imminence of the climate crisis, but planning to address it by exerminating non-white people.

Just FTR: German neo-fascist AfD, during the last two weeks, is doing a great job of presenting itself as the “only party which doesn’t think climate change is man-made” or something.

Also, fascisms very roots are in a blood-and-soil bullshit argument, which always included “nature” and “natural forces”. The term eco-fascism is misleading, IMO. We’re not really something new, and we are not talking a different form of fascism here. We’re talking a fascist approach to environmenta and ecologicall issues.

Sadly, one point Cory criticised seems spot on.

@doctorow

doomed to grow out of control until they trigger a mass die-off

Yeah. There is a mass die-off.

Not of humans, though. We have caused mass extinction event. It might well turn out that climate change is but one minor issue in that.

[anon75430791]

@anon61221983

Right? Plus, we consume far more resources than other countries, and in the case of India and China, both are developing countries, with far more citizens than us, but hundreds of millions of people…

This is a big problem that is coming due.

Countries whose standard of living is rapidly increasing are looking for living the American dream (or at least the Western dream). Everyone has a house and a car, and a yard, etc.

They are looking over at us, and listening to us tell them, “Well you can’t have that because the Environment”. That is a tough sell if we aren’t practicing what we are preaching. And as a country we are trying our damnedest to do exactly that.

It’s actually hard to sell this perspective to the conservatives who (rightly) point out the problem of Asia and other developing nations. Because their take is just the opposite, “Why should we reduce our consumption when those other guys are the bigger part of the problem”.

So here we are. I think the Chinese government recognizes (and pundits have said so) that this is their opportunity to lead by example. Mix in some imperial expansion (which since Tibet, China has been a bit more sly about) and in a few decades, everyone is going to be wondering how America lost the #1 spot as the biggest economic/military power.

[anon61221983]

I agree with all that. It’s going to take a hell of a lot to convince people that the “competition” mindset is only going to deepen our crisis. If we’re going to fix this issue, it needs to be a global solution. Piecemeal with help, but it’s going to take all of us making major sacrifices and getting out of the endless growth mindset to a sustainability mindset.

[anon73430903]

@anothernewbbaccount

ETA and @anon73430903 - your rhyme expressed it perhaps even more succinctly. Where is that from, out of interest?

It’s from the 17th century by an anonymous protester against enclosure.

Enclosure

[gracchus]

@anon75430791

Countries whose standard of living is rapidly increasing are looking for living the American dream (or at least the Western dream). Everyone has a house and a car, and a yard, etc.

They are looking over at us, and listening to us tell them, “Well you can’t have that because the Environment”. That is a tough sell if we aren’t practicing what we are preaching.

We in the West, and especially in the U.S., have to be honest with them, which means being honest with ourselves. That is something that Americans – especially white, older Americans --are not good at.

First, we have to acknowledge that the house and car and yard were only available on a mass scale in the U.S. during the postwar economic anolmaly – before WWII you only had a chance at those things if you were at least an upper middle class professional.

Second, we have to acknowledge that, even between 1945 and 2000, not every citizen had access to this “American Dream”. Institutional racism and sexism saw to that.

Third, we have to admit that “bigger and better and shinier” didn’t necessarily make us fundamentally happier people. Yes, it’s great to feel secure in having steady shelter and food and transportation, but that doesn’t necessitate living in a McMansion on an acre of land or eating meat every night or owning a BMW (and “keeping up with the Jones” can lead to constant psychological and financial stress).

Fourth, we have to acknowledge that this is not a sustainable way of living going forward for our own society, let alone theirs. This is not only due to global warming but also because unchecked capitalism (“free” market or state) produces dangerous levels of inequality and class stratification.

At least half of the U.S. population would refuse to admit any of these things, assuming that they could articulate them in the first place.

The Scandinavian and northern European countries would serve as better examples to us all in terms of living a happier, more environmentally and economically and politically sustainable lifestyle for the 21st century, but they haven’t captured the international cultural imagination to the degree that the postwar American experience has.

@anon75430791

I think the Chinese government recognizes (and pundits have said so) that this is their opportunity to lead by example. Mix in some imperial expansion (which since Tibet, China has been a bit more sly about) and in a few decades, everyone is going to be wondering how America lost the #1 spot as the biggest economic/military power.

Unfortunately, while China will overtake the U.S. as a global power, the current government and probably the next will be too authoritarian, corrupt, and expansionist to do any better than American conservative governments have. They may set a good example as a side effect of population-driven necessity and Confucian cultural values, but if they’re headed in any direction it’s toward late 19th/early 20th-century British imperialism with Chinese characteristics.

[philbin1]

@Avery_Thorn

Is there really teachers teaching this fucked up, counter-world example of tragedy of the commons, or did some fuckwit come up with this Ann Rand-grade bullshit

Karl Rove, with his permanent Republican majority idea, is who comes to mind for me. All this fecal matter we are in now flows from his philosophy, which was based on Reagan’s, of course. The role of useful fuckwit was played by Bush 43.

[thechuck_2112]

@doctorow

After a generation of climate denial, the US and European right is in the midst of a fast pivot to ecofascism, simultaneously acknowledging the seriousness and imminence of the climate crisis, but planning to address it by exerminating non-white people.

In a piece chock full of links, it would have been nice to see a link here, particularly when the US right actually in government has made no pivot away from denialism.

[anon73430903]

After Hurricane Dorian, We Get A Glimpse Of Ecofascism

Stéphane François : « L’écologie est devenue un enjeu de l’extrême...

Eco-fascism: The ideology marrying environmentalism and white supremacy...

Nature writing’s fascist roots

Eco-fascism is undergoing a revival in the fetid culture of the extreme right...

Watch out for algiz, or the life rune, commonly used by ecofascists.

Algiz

[heh]

While I agree that ‘overpopulation’ gets abused a lot to shift blame from western countries, and it is certainly true that the poorest people contribute the least to the greenhouse emissions, this is imho only a valid argument as long as the poor people stay poor. Which is obviously not what we should aim for.

Blaming the ‘poor’ countries with high population count for the climate crisis is silly . But saying overpopulation is “not a problem” or even a “myth” is imho equally silly. The world can maybe support the current population level in a way that is more or less comfortable for everybody (which will be way less comfortable than we westeners are used to), but keeping up the exponential population growth is definitely unsustainable.

On a side note:
While there are scary fanatics in any movement and real eco-fascists certainly exist, the (media)linking of the words eco- and fascist is a rather popular one currently. I wonder which industries benefit from framing environmental laws as fascist by association. </cynic mode>

[anothernewbbaccount]

@gracchus

The Scandinavian and northern European countries would serve as better examples to us all in terms of living a happier, more environmentally and economically and politically sustainable lifestyle for the 21st century, but they haven’t captured the international cultural imagination to the degree that the postwar American experience has.

They would in theory, perhaps in the recent past, but ever since WWII their cultural imagination has also to a significant extent been captured by the American cultural post-war experience.

Some have resisted manfully (e.g. France) in a cultural sense but, economically, the EU is as globalist/end-stage capitalist, in parts, as the US, with only social democratic regulation preventing worse behaviour.

My view may be jaundiced, being in the UK but in much of Europe there is a not dissimilar culture, and older white Europeans would have as much difficulty in admitting any of your four points as USians and would likely be no further ahead in being able to articulate them. Indeed, EU social democratic regulation may well be insulating them from even seeing that some of them are even a problem.