from the article
"Hardin wasn’t just inventing false histories out of a vacuum. He was, personally, a nasty piece of work: a white supremacist and eugenicist, and the Tragedy of the Commons paper is shot through with this vile ideology, "
why is this bad for him and not bad for the founder of planned parenthood?
Because she didn’t use it to advocate for genocide, despite what people might imply. Given that she worked with people like WEB DuBois, probably one of the most brilliant thinkers of the 20th century, I’ll give her a pass.
Eugenics in the early 20th was a well accepted ideology that did not always mean white supremacy. It sometimes did mean improvement of the HUMAN race entirely, not just racial competition…
I’d like to know what you intended it to mean, though.
Why? Does it really matter?
I do my best to understand.
Okay. So?
I don’t understand, but I’m going to move on now because it’s late here so it’s 
then 
for me. Take care, have a good night.
I’m not educated, but I’ve always thought ToftC just meant a resource will be wasted/ruined/squandered if there’s no one responsible for it. Which I’d guess would be the owner. But the owner’s not necessarily big, bad, evil corporations… could be co-ops or public ownership.
I’ve never though it was an argument for privatization.
I meant the second part. Being collected in 111 books would make it one of the most reprinted articles ever?
It’s interesting that you say ECON. I studied political science in university and the way I was taught about the tragedy of the commons aligns with the alternate opinion in the thread: it’s not an argument for privatisation, it’s an argument for organization. This is especially the case in environmental matters. It would be in the self-interest of many companies to pollute just a little more than their competitors. Nobody can own the atmosphere and it can’t realistically be enclosed. You need a government or at least an organization of some kind with powers to protect the commons. It’s usually discussed as a kind of free rider problem.
I wonder if it’s taught differently in economics than political science. That could account for the different opinions.
Neither did Hardin.
And this is further proof that just because you do not like someone doesn’t mean they are incapable of good ideas. The TotC is the reason why we having hunting seasons and fishing liscences and public yet protected lands. It may not be the underlying reason for the endangered species list but the idea remains the same.
In Medieval England the farmers were able to make the commons to work - probably - because they were living with no safety net and no dependable wide-spread trade network, let alone a government which actually cared about what happened to them. They needed to make it work in order to survive. If we lived under such conditions we wouldn’t need so many regulations, as it is we don’t and we do. Some people will take care of what they use, far more will just trash the place, sometimes for no greater reason than that they can.
Yeah, so for me the only real tragedy about the TotC is the walking human sewer hole that it poured forth from.
Says Cory on his privately owned toxic bullshit commons which has some of the best managed comments anywhere.
Here is where I’ll point out that many native tribes managed their commons quite well without rigid institutional structures far before this
Would BB or Mr. Doctorow ever be interested in examining the ease with which false information is spread via social media, and their own propensity to be taken in by misstatements of fact and then amplifying them?
Not as long as it’s profitable. And that’s why I don’t disable my adblocker for BB.
Actually, it seems to be quite the other way around, but it only takes a few trashing the place to ruin it for everyone.
Not always, though. For example, what brought the Comanche Empire to an end was less being overwhelmed by more powerful Europeans, and more about how they’d reached the limits of their ability to balance their internal needs with their growth - they overgrazed and overhunted:
Correct me if I am misstating this, but I believe the Anasazi went that route previously, and the Europeans were well on their way in this direction just before the “discovery” of the New World. Humans have a strong locust tendency, and a determination to make themselves extinct. We also have the intelligence and insight to, perhaps, overcome that. Maybe. But we are at, if not passed, the tipping point and this time there are no new continents to destroy. The whole world is one big TotC.
I don’t know if I’d call what the Comanches ended up controlling a “commons” in the sense of the “TotC”. The overhunting happened alongside trade agreements with Mexicans, settlers, and other tribes. Was it still a commons when it had been already parcelled up and bound by treaties?
Maybe I’m hung up on whether the grazing lands were at that point a common resource, or whether they were a resource pool controlled and regulated unevenly?
I believe that’s correct, from what people who study that period know (I’m a modern historian, so…). But Charles Mann’s 1491 book explores the Americas prior to the Columbian voyages (from a strongly ecological point of view).
And the going consensus now among historians of this period is that the Europeans (contrary to what Jared Diamond argues) were not striking out from a position of power, but were having serious economic problems, with regards to feeding everyone, as well as ecological ones. Part of the reason for the Tudor and then Cromwell push into Ireland was for farm land… and on top of that, the 16th century was in part about reconfiguring the relationship with the near east with the rise of the Ottomans… An early example is The Columbian Exchange by Alfred Crosby… he also discusses how the new world discovery ended up reconfiguring European ideas about man and nature…
that’s part of the problem, trying to shoe horn an idea about property from a particular perspective into other contexts… but I’d say that it could be considered a “common” land among members of the Comanche themselves, as they used it for a common purpose (resources to support their community), but then again, I think part of the concept of the commons rests on the idea of private property, which they didn’t really have (if I’m remembering from the book, it’s been a while).
That was my (strictly amateur historian, take with grain of salt, etc.) understanding. The Europeans had made a mess of their environment, overfished, overhunted, overgrazed, etc etc. The new world expansion saved them from themselves, but at a huge cost to native civilizations all over the Americas.
