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Sunday, October 4, 2009

"The Tragedy of the Commons"




"The Tragedy of the Commons" is an influential article written by Garrett Hardin


Garrett James Hardin was a leading and controversial ecologist from Dallas, Texas, who was most known for his 1968 paper, Tragedy of the commons....
and first published in the journal Science
Science (journal)

Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is considered one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals....
in 1968. The article describes a dilemma
Dilemma

A dilemma is a problem offering at least two solutions or possibilities, of which none are practically acceptable; one in this position has been traditionally described as "being on the horns of a dilemma", neither horn being comfortable; or "being between a rock and a hard place", since both objects or metaphorical choices being rough....
in which multiple individuals acting independently in their own self-interest can ultimately destroy a shared limited resource even where it is clear that it is not in anyone's long term interest for this to happen.

Central to Hardin's article is a metaphor

Metaphor is language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects. It is a figure of speech that compares two or more things without using the words "like" or "as." More generally, a metaphor describes a first subject as being or equal to a second object in some way....
of herders sharing a common parcel of land (the commons), on which they are all entitled to let their cows graze. In Hardin's view, it is in each herder's interest to put as many cows as possible onto the land, even if the commons is damaged as a result. The herder receives all of the benefits from the additional cows, while the damage to the commons is shared by the entire group. If all herders make this individually rational decision, however, the commons is destroyed and all herders suffer.

A similar alleged dilemma of the commons had previously been discussed by early agrarian reformers since the 18th century. The predecessors of Hardin used the alleged tragedy, as well as a variety of examples of the Greek Classics, to motivate the Enclosures. Radkau sees Garrett Hardin's writings as having a different aim. Hardin asks for a strict management of global common goods via increased government involvement or/and international regulation bodies (the rule of an 'Ökodiktatur', ecodictatorship according Radkau).

Neither the old or new use of the tragedy of the commons were in line with the state of real "Commons". These lands, e.g. meadows and grassland have not been poor but very valuable from an ecological standpoint.


Garrett Hardin's essay


Precis

At the beginning of his essay, Hardin draws attention to problems that cannot be solved by technical means (i.e., as distinct from those with solutions that require "a change only in the techniques of the natural science
Natural science

In science, the term natural science refers to a methodological naturalism approach to the study of the universe, which is understood as obeying rules or law of nature origin....
s, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values
Value (personal and cultural)

A personal and cultural value is a relative ethic value, an assumption upon which implementation can be extrapolated. A value system is a set of consistent value and measures....
or ideas of morality


Morality has three principal meanings.In its first, descriptive usage, morality means a code of conduct which is held to be authoritative in matters of right and wrong....
"). Hardin contends that this class of problems includes many of those raised by human population growth and the use of the Earth's natural resource

Natural resource

Renewable resources Renewable resources are sometimes living resources,, which can restock themselves if used sustainably and not over- harvested....
s.

To make the case for "no technical solutions", Hardin notes the limits placed on the availability of energy (and material resources) on Earth
Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun. Earth is the largest of the terrestrial planets in the Solar System in diameter, mass and density. It is also referred to as the World and Wiktionary:Terra.Note that by International Astronomical Union convention, the term "Terra" is used for naming extensive land masses, rather...
, and also the consequences of these limits for "quality of life


Quality of life is the degree of well-being felt by an individual or group of people.Quality of life cannot be measured directly, however the perception of QOL is made up of of two components: the physical and the psychological....

". To maximize population, one needs to minimize resources spent on anything other than simple survival, and vice versa. Consequently, he concludes that there is no foreseeable technical solution to increasing both human populations and their standard of living


The standard of living refers to the quality and quantity of goods and services available to people, and the way these goods and services are distributed within a population....
on a finite planet.

From this point, Hardin switches to non-technical or resource management solutions to population and resource problems. As a means of illustrating these, he introduces a hypothetical example of a pasture


Pasture is land with herbaceous vegetation cover used for grazing of ungulate livestock as part of a farm or ranch. Prior to the advent of factory farming, pasture was the primary source of food for grazing animals such as cattle and horses....
shared by local herder


A herder is a worker who lives a possibly semi-nomadic life, caring for various domestic animals, in places where these animals wander pasture lands....
s. The herders are assumed to wish to maximize their yield, and so will increase their herd size whenever possible. The utility of each additional animal has both a positive and negative component:

  • Positive: the herder receives all of the proceeds from each additional animal.
  • Negative: the pasture is slightly degraded by each additional animal.


Crucially, the division of these costs and benefits is unequal: the individual herder gains all of the advantage, but the disadvantage is shared among all herders using the pasture. Consequently, for an individual herder the rational course of action is to continue to add additional animals to his or her herd. However, since all herders reach the same rational conclusion, overgrazing


Overgrazing occurs when plants are exposed to livestock grazing for extended periods of time, or without sufficient recovery periods. It reduces the usefulness of the land and is one cause of desertification and erosion....

and degradation of the pasture is its long-term fate. Nonetheless, the rational response for an individual remains the same at every stage, since the gain is always greater to each herder than the individual share of the distributed cost. The overgrazing cost here is an example of an externality

Externality

In economics, an externality or spillover is a positive or negative impact on a party not directly involved in an economic transaction. In such a case, prices do not reflect the full costs or benefits in production or consumption of a product or service....
.

Because this sequence of events follows predictably from the behaviour of the individuals concerned, Hardin describes it as a "tragedy".

In the course of his essay, Hardin develops the theme, drawing in examples of latter day "commons", such as the atmosphere, oceans, rivers, fish stocks, national park
National park

A national park is a reserve of land, usually declared and owned by a national government, protected from most human development and pollution....
s, advertising


Advertising is a form of communication that typically attempts to persuade potential customers to Purchasing or to consume more of a particular brand of Product or Service ....
, and even parking meter


A parking meter is a device used to collect money in exchange for the right to park a vehicle in a particular place for a limited amount of time....
s. The example of fish stocks had led some to call this the "tragedy of the fishers". A major theme running throughout the essay is the growth of human populations, with the Earth


Earth is the third planet from the Sun. Earth is the largest of the terrestrial planets in the Solar System in diameter, mass and density. It is also referred to as the World and Wiktionary:Terra.Note that by International Astronomical Union convention, the term "Terra" is used for naming extensive land masses, rather...
's resources being a general commons.

The essay also addresses potential management


Management in business and human organization activity is simply the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals. Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leadership or directing, and Control an organization or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal....
solutions to commons problems including privatization


Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of business from the public sector to the private sector . In a broader sense, privatization refers to transfer of any government function to the private sector including governmental functions like revenue collection and law enforcement....
, polluter pays, and regulation


Regulation refers to "controlling human or societal behaviour by rules or restrictions." Regulation can take many forms: law restrictions promulgated by a government authority, self-regulation, social regulation , co-regulation and market regulation....
. Keeping with his original pasture analogy, Hardin categorises these as effectively the "enclosure


Enclosure or inclosure is the process by which common land is taken into fully private ownership and use. Common land is land which is owned by one person, but over which other people have certain traditional rights, such as arable farming, mowing meadows for hay, or grazing livestock....
" of commons, and notes an historical progression from the use of all resources as commons (unregulated access to all) to systems in which commons are "enclosed" and subject to differing methods of regulated use in which access is prohibited or controlled. Hardin argues against relying on conscience


Conscience is an ability or a Power that distinguishes whether one's actions are right or wrong. It leads to feelings of remorse when one does things that go against his/her moral values, and to feelings of rectitude or integrity when one's actions conform to our moral values....
as a means of policing the commons, suggesting that this favours selfish individuals – often known as free riders


In economics, collective bargaining, psychology and political science, "free riders" are those who consume more than their fair share of a resource, or shoulder less than a fair share of the costs of its production....
– over those who are more altruistic.

In the context of avoiding over-exploitation of common resources, Hardin concludes by restating Hegel


Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German people philosopher, and with Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, one of the creators of German idealism....
's maxim (which was quoted by Engels


Friedrich Engels was a German Social science and Philosophy, who developed Communism alongside his better-known collaborator, Karl Marx, co-authoring The Communist Manifesto ....
), "liberty is the recognition of want." He suggests that "liberty


Liberty, the freedom to act or believe without being stopped by unnecessary force, is generally considered in modern time to be a concept of political philosophy and identifies the condition in which an individual has the right to act according to his or her own free will....
" completes the tragedy of the commons. By recognizing resources as commons in the first place, and by recognizing that, as such, they require management, Hardin believes that humans "can preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms."

Aside from its subject matter (resource use), the essay is notable (at least in modern scientific circles) for explicitly dealing with issues of morality


Morality has three principal meanings.In its first, descriptive usage, morality means a code of conduct which is held to be authoritative in matters of right and wrong....
, and doing so in one of the scientific community


The scientific community consists of the total body of scientists, its relationships and interactions. It is normally divided into "sub-communities" each working on a particular field within science....
's premier journals, Science
Science (journal)

Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is considered one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals....
.
Indeed, the subtitle for the essay is "The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality."

Meaning

The metaphor illustrates the argument that free access and unrestricted demand for a finite resource ultimately dooms the resource through over-exploitation. This occurs because the benefits of exploitation accrue to individuals or groups, each of whom is motivated to maximize use of the resource to the point in which they become reliant on it, while the costs of the exploitation are borne by all those to whom the resource is available (which may be a wider class of individuals than those who are exploiting it). This, in turn, causes demand for the resource to increase, which causes the problem to snowball to the point that the resource is exhausted. The rate at which exhaustion of the resource is realized depends primarily on three factors: the number of users wanting to consume the commons, the consumptiveness of their uses, and the relative robustness of the commons.

Like William Lloyd and Thomas Malthus
Thomas Malthus

The The Reverend. Thomas Robert Malthus Royal Society was an England political economy and demography.His main contribution was to draw attention to the potential dangers of population growth:...
before him, Hardin was primarily interested in the problem of human population growth
Overpopulation

Overpopulation is a condition where an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. In common parlance, the term usually refers to the relationship between the world population and its environment , the Earth....
. In his essay he also focused on the use of larger (though still limited) resources such as the Earth's atmosphere and oceans, as well as pointing out the "negative commons" of pollution (i.e., instead of dealing with the deliberate privatisation of a positive resource, a "negative commons" deals with the deliberate commonisation of a negative cost, pollution).

As a metaphor
Metaphor

Metaphor is language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects. It is a figure of speech that compares two or more things without using the words "like" or "as." More generally, a metaphor describes a first subject as being or equal to a second object in some way....
, the tragedy of the commons should not be taken too literally. The phrase is shorthand
Shorthand

Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed or brevity of writing as compared to a normal method of writing a language....
for a structural relationship and the consequences of that relationship, not a precise description of it. The "tragedy" should not be seen as tragic in the conventional sense, nor must it be taken as condemnation of the processes that are ascribed to it. Similarly, Hardin's use of "commons" has frequently been misunderstood, leading Hardin to later remark that he should have titled his work "The Tragedy of the Unregulated Commons".

The tragedy of the commons has particular relevance in analyzing behaviour in the fields of economics
Economics

File:Ballard Farmers' Market - vegetables.jpgEconomics is the Social sciences that studies the Production theory basics, Distribution , and Consumption of Good and Service ....
, evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology attempts to explain Mind and psychology Trait theorys?such as memory, perception, or language?as adaptations, that is, as the functional products of natural selection or sexual selection....
, game theory
Game theory

Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that is used in the social sciences , biology, engineering, political science, international relations, computer science , and philosophy....
, politics
Politics

Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions. The term is generally applied to behaviour within civil governments, but politics has been observed in all human group interactions, including corporation, academia, and religion institutions....
, taxation, and sociology
Sociology

Sociology is a branch of the social sciences that uses systematic methods of Empiricism and critical theory to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social structure and activity, sometimes with the goal of applying such knowledge to the pursuit of social welfare....
. Some also see it as an example of emergent behaviour, with the "tragedy" the outcome of individual interactions in a complex system
Complex system

A complex system is a system composed of interconnected parts that as a whole exhibit one or more properties not obvious from the properties of the individual parts....
.

Controversy

Even today, Hardin's essay is a source of controversy. Some of this controversy stems from disagreement over whether individuals will always behave in the selfish fashion posited by Hardin. Others have argued that even self-interested individuals will often find ways to cooperate, because collective restraint serves both the collective and individual interests (of course, "finding ways to cooperate" might be facilitated if they better understand the situation prior to said cooperation; hence, the essay). Hardin's piece has also been used to promote the interests of Western economic ideology. G. N. Appell, an anthropologist, states: "Hardin's claim has been embraced as a sacred text by scholars and professionals in the practice of designing futures for others and imposing their own economic and environmental rationality on other social systems of which they have incomplete understanding and knowledge."

More significantly, controversy has been fueled by the "application" of Hardin's ideas to real situations. In particular, some authorities have read Hardin's work as specifically advocating the privatization of commonly owned resources. Consequently, resources that have traditionally been managed communally by local organisations have been enclosed
Enclosure

Enclosure or inclosure is the process by which common land is taken into fully private ownership and use. Common land is land which is owned by one person, but over which other people have certain traditional rights, such as arable farming, mowing meadows for hay, or grazing livestock....
or privatized
Privatization

Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of business from the public sector to the private sector . In a broader sense, privatization refers to transfer of any government function to the private sector including governmental functions like revenue collection and law enforcement....
. Ostensibly, this serves to "protect" such resources, but it ignores the pre-existing management, often appropriating resources and alienating indigenous (and frequently poor) populations. In effect, private or state use may result in worse outcomes than the previous commons management. As Hardin's essay focuses on resources that are fundamentally unmanaged rather than communally managed, this may be a mischaracterisation of his ideas, given that Hardin discussed how usage of public property could be controlled in a number of different ways to stop or limit over-usage.

Hardin's advocacy of clearly defined property rights has frequently been used as an argument for privatization, or private property, per se. The opposite situation to a tragedy of the commons is sometimes referred to as a tragedy of the anticommons
Tragedy of the anticommons

The tragedy of the anticommons is a neologism coined by Michael Heller to describe a coordination breakdown where the existence of numerous rights holders frustrates achieving a socially desirable outcome....
: a situation where rational individuals (acting separately) collectively waste a given resource by under-utilizing it. Tragedy of the anticommons, however, suffers from the failure to address human factors that throughout history have caused the failure of resource collectivization; lack of ownership, lack of responsibility, lack of punishment to those who consume more than they produce, and lack of reward to those who produce more than they consume are the primary agents causing under-utilization of collective resources. Physical sciences are advancing more complete models to quantify and understand human irrationality, and the role evolved brain functionalities play in influencing rational decision making.

Application


Modern commons

"The Tragedy of the Commons" can be applied to environmental issues such as sustainability
Sustainability

Sustainability, in a broad sense, is the ability to maintain a certain process or state. It is now most frequently used in connection with biological and human systems....
. The commons dilemma stands as a model for a great variety of resource problems in society today, such as water, land, fish, and non-renewable energy sources like oil and coal. When water is used at a higher rate than the reservoirs are replenished, fish consumption exceeds its reproductive capacity, or oil supplies are exhausted, then we face a tragedy of the commons.

Situations exemplifying the "tragedy of the commons" include the overfishing and destruction of the Grand Banks
Grand Banks

The Grand Banks of Newfoundland are a group of underwater plateaus southeast of Newfoundland on the North American continental shelf. These areas are relatively shallow, ranging from 80 to 330 feet in depth....
, the destruction of salmon
Salmon

Salmon is the common name for several species of fish of the family Salmonidae. Several other fish in the family are called trout,the difference is often attributed to the migratory life of the salmon as compared to the residential behaviour of trout, this holds true for the Atlantic salmon....
runs on rivers which have been dammed – most prominently in modern times on the Columbia River
Columbia River

The Columbia River is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. It is named after the Columbia Rediviva, the first ship from the western world known to have traveled up the river....
in the Northwest United States, and historically in North Atlantic rivers – the devastation of the sturgeon fishery – in modern Russia, but historically in the United States as well – and, in terms of water supply, the limited water available in arid regions (e.g., the area of the Aral Sea
Aral Sea

The Aral Sea is a landlocked endorheic basin in Central Asia; it lies between Kazakhstan in the north and Karakalpakstan, an autonomous region of Uzbekistan, in the south....
) and the Los Angeles
Los Ángeles

Los ?ngeles is the Capital of the Biob?o Province, in the municipality of the same name, in Regions of Chile VIII , in the center-south of Chile....
water system supply, especially at Mono Lake
Mono Lake

Mono Lake is an alkaline and hypersaline lake in California, United States that is a critical nesting habitat for several bird speciesand is an unusually productive ecosystem....
and Owens Lake
Owens Lake

Owens Lake is a large dry lake in eastern California's Owens Valley, located about south of Lone Pine, California. Unlike most dry lakes in the Basin and Range Province that have been dry for thousands of years, Owens held significant water until 1924, fed by the Owens River....
.

Other situations exemplifying the "tragedy of the commons" include pollution
Pollution

Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into an environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms ....
caused by driving cars. There are many negative externalities
Externality

In economics, an externality or spillover is a positive or negative impact on a party not directly involved in an economic transaction. In such a case, prices do not reflect the full costs or benefits in production or consumption of a product or service....
of driving; these include congestion, carbon emissions, and traffic accidents. Every time Arthur gets in a car, it becomes more likely that Zelda – and millions of others – will suffer in each of those areas.

More general examples (some alluded to by Hardin) of potential and actual tragedies include:

  • Planet Earth
    Earth

    Earth is the third planet from the Sun. Earth is the largest of the terrestrial planets in the Solar System in diameter, mass and density. It is also referred to as the World and Wiktionary:Terra.Note that by International Astronomical Union convention, the term "Terra" is used for naming extensive land masses, rather...
    • Uncontrolled human population growth
      Population growth

      Population growth is the change in population over time, and can be quantified as the change in the number of individuals in a population using "per unit time" for measurement....
      leading to overpopulation
      Overpopulation

      Overpopulation is a condition where an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. In common parlance, the term usually refers to the relationship between the world population and its environment , the Earth....
      .
    • Water
      Water

      Water is a common chemical substance that is essential for the survival of all known forms of life. In typical usage, water refers only to its liquid form or States of matter, but the substance also has a solid state, ice, and a gaseous state, water vapor or steam....
      - Water pollution
      Water pollution

      Water pollution is the contamination of water bodies such as lakes, rivers, oceans, and groundwater caused by human activities, which can be harmful to organisms and plants that live in these water bodies....
      , Water crisis
      Water crisis

      Water crisis is a term that refers to the status of the world?s water resources relative to human demand. The term has been applied to the worldwide water situation by the United Nations and other world organizations....
      of over-extraction of groundwater and wasting water due to overirrigation
      Irrigation

      Irrigation is an artificial application of water to the soil usually for assisting in growing crops. In crop production it is mainly used in dry areas and in periods of rainfall shortfalls, but also to protect plants against frost....
    • Forests - Frontier logging
      Logging

      Logging is the process in which certain trees are cut down for forest management and timber....
      of old growth forest
      Old growth forest

      Old growth forest is a type of forest that has attained great age and so exhibits unique biology features.Old growth forests typically contain large live trees, large dead trees , and large logs, as well as many other common characteristics representative of forests in general....
      and slash and burn
      Slash and burn

      Slash and burn consists of cutting and burning of forests or woodlands to create fields for agriculture or pasture for livestock, or for a variety of other purposes....
    • Energy resources and climate
      Climate

      Climate encompasses the temperatures, humidity, atmospheric pressure, winds, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and numerous other Meteorology elements in a given region over long periods of time, as opposed to the term weather, which refers to current activity of these same elements....
      - Burning of fossil fuels and consequential global warming
      Global warming

      Global warming is the increase in the Instrumental temperature record of the Earth's near-surface air and the oceans since the mid-twentieth century and its projected continuation....
    • Animals - Habitat
      Habitat

      The term habitat has a number of meanings:* Habitat , a place where a species lives and grows** Human habitat, a place where humans live, work or play...
      destruction and poaching
      Poaching

      Poaching is the illegal hunting, fishing or eating of wild plants or animals contrary to local and international Conservation and wildlife management laws....
      leading to the Holocene mass extinction
      Holocene extinction event

      The Holocene extinction event is the widespread, ongoing mass extinction of species during the modern Holocene epoch . The large number of extinctions span numerous families of plants and animals including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and arthropods; a sizeable fraction of these extinctions are occurring in the rainforests....
    • Oceans - Overfishing
      Overfishing

      Overfishing occurs when fishing activities reduce fish stocks below an acceptable level. This can occur in any body of water from a pond to the oceans....


  • Public resources
    • Radio frequencies - Unlicensed frequencies used for wireless communications especially 802.11 a/b/g in the U.S., detailed under Part 15 (FCC rules)
      Part 15 (FCC rules)

      In the United States, Part 15 is an often-quoted section of Federal Communications Commission laws and regulations, mainly regarding unlicensed transmission s....
      are vulnerable to the overuse of high power transmitters, especially overdriven transmitters with dirty signal profiles, and especially when combined with omnidirectional antennas


It is also possible to view the current world banking crisis through the lens of Hardin's analysis. Individual agents in the financial industries saw positive personal (and to some extent corporate) gains through the packaging and reselling of debt. Arguably they failed to recognise (or misrecognised) the resource being exploited.

Modern solutions

Articulating solutions to the tragedy of the commons is one of the main problems of political philosophy
Political philosophy

Political philosophy is the study of questions about the city, government, politics, liberty, justice, property, rights, law and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what makes a The purpose of government, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it should take and why, what t...
. The most common solution is regulation by an authority. Frequently, such regulation is in the form of governmental regulations limiting the amount of a common good available for use by any individual. Permit systems for extractive economic activities including mining, fishing, hunting, livestock raising and timber extraction are examples of this approach. Similarly, limits to pollution are examples of governmental intervention on behalf of the commons. Alternatively, resource users themselves can cooperate to conserve the resource in the name of mutual benefit.

Another solution for certain resources is to convert common good into private property, giving the new owner an incentive to enforce its sustainability. Effectively, this is what took place in the English "Enclosure
Enclosure

Enclosure or inclosure is the process by which common land is taken into fully private ownership and use. Common land is land which is owned by one person, but over which other people have certain traditional rights, such as arable farming, mowing meadows for hay, or grazing livestock....
of the Commons
". Increasingly, many agrarian studies scholars advocate studying traditional commons management systems to understand how common resources can be protected without alienating those whose livelihoods depend upon them.

Libertarians
Libertarianism

Libertarianism is a term used by a political spectrum of Political philosophy which seek to promote individual liberty and seek to minimize or abolish the state....
and classical liberals
Classical liberalism

Classical liberalism is a doctrine stressing individual freedom, free markets, and limited government. This includes the importance of human rationality, individual property rights, natural rights, the protection of civil liberties, individual freedom from restraint, equality under the law, constitutional limitation of government, free marke...
often cite the tragedy of the commons as an example of what happens when Lockean
John Locke

John Locke was an English philosopher. Locke is considered the first of the British Empiricism, but is equally important to social contract theory....
property rights to homestead resources are prohibited by a government. These people argue that the solution to the tragedy of the commons is to allow individuals to take over the property rights of a resource, that is, privatizing it. In 1940 Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises

Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was an Austrian economics, philosopher, and liberalism who had a major influence on the modern libertarianism movement....
wrote concerning the problem:

If land is not owned by anybody, although legal formalism may call it public property, it is used without any regard to the disadvantages resulting. Those who are in a position to appropriate to themselves the returns — lumber and game of the forests, fish of the water areas, and mineral deposits of the subsoil — do not bother about the later effects of their mode of exploitation. For them, erosion of the soil, depletion of the exhaustible resources and other impairments of the future utilization are external costs not entering into their calculation of input and output. They cut down trees without any regard for fresh shoots or reforestation. In hunting and fishing, they do not shrink from methods preventing the repopulation of the hunting and fishing grounds.


Critics of this solution have pointed out that many commons, such as the ozone layer or global fish populations, would be extremely difficult or impossible to privatize. However, this criticism is only partial in that it does not address the results privatization has had with less complex resources.

Psychologist Dennis Fox used a number, what is now termed "Dunbar's number
Dunbar's number

Dunbar's number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable interpersonal relationship. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person....
", to take a new look at the tragedy of the commons. In a 1985 paper titled 'Psychology, Ideology, Utopia, & the Commons', he stated "Edney (1980, 1981a) also argued that long-term solutions will require, among a number of other approaches, breaking down the commons into smaller segments. He reviewed experimental data showing that cooperative behavior is indeed more common in smaller groups. After estimating that "the upper limit for a simple, self-contained, sustaining, well-functioning commons may be as low as 150 people" (1981a, p. 27).

The Coast Salish
Coast Salish

Coast Salish languages are a subgroup of the Salishan languages family. These languages are spoken by First Nations or Native Americans in the United States peoples inhabiting the territory that is now the southwest coast of British Columbia around the Georgia Strait and the state of Washington around Puget Sound....
managed their natural resources in a place-based system where families were responsible for looking after a place and its resources. Access to food was the major source of wealth and the empowerment of generosity was highly valued so it made sense for them to take care of the resources.

A popular solution to the problem is also the "Coasian
Coase theorem

In law and economics, the Coase theorem, attributed to Ronald Coase, describes the Efficiency of an economic allocation or outcome in the presence of externalities....
" one, where the people using the commons support one another so not to destroy the resource.

In Hardin's essay, he proposed that the solution to the problem of overpopulation must be based on "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon" and result in "relinquishing the freedom to breed". Hardin discussed this topic further in a 1979 book, Managing the Commons, co-written with John A. Baden. He framed this prescription in terms of needing to restrict the "reproductive right
Reproductive rights

Reproductive rights are rights relating to human reproduction and reproductive health. The World Health Organisation defines reproductive rights as follows:...
" in order to safeguard all other rights. Only one large country has adopted this policy, the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China

The People's Republic of China , commonly known as China, is the largest country in East Asia and the List of countries by population in the world with over 1.3 billion people, approximately a fifth of the world's population....
. In the essay, Hardin had rejected education as an effective means of stemming population growth. Since that time, it has been shown that increased educational and economic opportunities for women correlates well with reduced birthrates in most countries, as does economic growth in general.

Application to evolutionary biology
Evolutionary biology

Evolutionary biology is a sub-field of biology concerned with the origin of species from a common descent and descent of species, as well as their evolution, multiplication and diversity over time....

A parallel was drawn recently between the tragedy of the commons and the competing behaviour of parasites that through acting selfishly
Gene-centered view of evolution

The gene-centered view of evolution, gene selection theory or selfish gene theory holds that natural selection acts through differential survival of competing genes, increasing the frequency of those alleles whose Phenotype effects successfully promote their own propagation....
eventually diminish or destroy their common host.

Application to social evolution
Social evolution

Social evolution is a subdiscipline of evolutionary biology that is concerned with social behaviours, i.e. those that have fitness consequences for individuals other than the actor....

A tragedy of the commons is brought about by selfish individuals whose genes
Gênes

G?nes is the name of a d?partement in France of the First French Empire in present Italy. It was named after the city Genoa. It was formed in 1805, when Napoleon Bonaparte occupied the Republic of Genoa....
for selfish behaviour would therefore come to predominate, so the metaphor cannot explain how altruism
Altruism

Altruism is the deliberate pursuit of the interests or welfare of others or the public interest....
arises. This question is addressed instead by models of possible mechanisms that can give rise to "reciprocal altruism
Reciprocal altruism

In evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, reciprocal altruism is a form of altruism in which one organism provides a benefit to another without expecting any immediate payment or compensation....
", leading to ideas like the "tit for tat
Tit for tat

Tit for tat is a highly effective strategy in game theory for the iterated prisoner's dilemma. It was first introduced by Anatol Rapoport in Robert Axelrod's two tournaments, held around 1980....
" rule (reciprocation). These models freed evolutionary theory from the limitations imposed by the concept of "inclusive fitness
Inclusive fitness

In evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, inclusive fitness refers to an organisms' personal reproductive success plus the amount of fitness an individual induces in its genetic kin....
", a previous explanation for altruism, which proposed that organisms help others only to the extent that by doing so they increase the probability of passing shared genes to the next generation.

The idea has been applied to other areas of sociobiology
Sociobiology

Sociobiology is a Neo-Darwinism synthesis of scientific disciplines that attempts to explain social behavior in all species by considering the evolutionary advantages the behaviors may have....
and behavioral ecology
Behavioral ecology

Behavioral ecology is the study of the ecology and evolution basis for animal behavior, and the roles of behavior in enabling an animal to adapt to its environment ....
, such as in the evolution of virulence
Virulence

Virulence refers to the degree of pathogenicity of an organism, or in other words the relative ability of a pathogen to cause disease.The word virulent, which is the adjective for virulence, derives from the Latin word virulentus, which means "full of poison." From an ecology point of view, virulence can be defined as the host's p...
or sexual conflict
Sexual conflict

Sexual conflict occurs when the two sexes have conflicting optimal fitness strategies concerning reproduction, leading to evolutionary arms race between males and females....
, where males may fatally harm females when competing for matings. It is also raised as a question in studies of social insects, where scientists wish to understand why insect workers do not undermine the "common good" by laying eggs of their own and causing a breakdown of the society.

The idea of evolutionary suicide
Evolutionary suicide

Evolutionary suicide is an evolutionary mechanism where adaptation at the level of the individual results in a situation where the entire population goes extinct....
, where adaptation at the level of the individual causes the whole species or population to be driven extinct, can be seen as an extreme form of an evolutionary tragedy of the commons.

The commons dilemma

The commons dilemma is a specific class of social dilemma
Social dilemma

Social dilemmas are situations in which private interests are at odds with collective interests. Such situations arise because people frequently attach more weight to their short-term selfish interests than to the long-term interests of the group, organization, or society to which they belong....
in which people's short-term selfish interests are at odds with long-term group interests and the common good
Common good

The common good is a term that can refer to several different concepts. In the popular meaning, the common good describes a specific "Goodness and value theory" that is shared and beneficial for all members of a given community....
. In academia, a range of related terminology has also been used as shorthand for the theory or aspects of it, including resource dilemma, take-some dilemma, and common pool resource.

Commons dilemma researchers have studied conditions under which groups and communities are likely to under- or over-harvest common resources in both the laboratory and field. Research programs have concentrated on a number of motivational, strategic, and structural factors that might be conducive to commons management.

In game theory
Game theory

Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that is used in the social sciences , biology, engineering, political science, international relations, computer science , and philosophy....
, which constructs mathematical models for individuals' behavior in strategic situations, the corresponding "game", developed by the ecologist Garrett Hardin
Garrett Hardin

Garrett James Hardin was a leading and controversial ecologist from Dallas, Texas, who was most known for his 1968 paper, Tragedy of the commons....
, is known as the Commonize Costs — Privatize Profits Game (CC–PP game).

Motivational factors
First, the research shows that some people are more motivated
Motivation

Motivation is the set of reasons that determines one to engage in a particular behavior. The term is generally used for human motivation but, theoretically, it can be used to describe the causes for animal behavior as well....
than others to manage the common resource responsibly. Using the commons dilemma game, researchers found that people with "prosocial" value orientations harvest less from a resource during a period of scarcity. "Prosocial" individuals are also more inclined to engage in sustainable environmental behaviours such as taking public transport (instead of an automobile), conserving energy and water, and explaining their decisions in terms of environmental impact.

Motivation to conserve a common resource is also promoted by people’s group ties. When people identify with their group, they are more likely to exercise personal restraint, as well as compensate for greedy harvest decisions of ingroup members more so than outgroup members. Similarly, in the field, strongly knit communities are usually better at managing resource shortages than communities with weak social ties. Group identity may promote a long-term perspective on resource management, which makes it easier for people to sacrifice their immediate interest on behalf of their local community. Group identification may also increase the social interdependencies between community members, so that they care more for the social rewards and punishments of their community.

The state of the common resource can also shape motivations. Research has manipulated the reasons that people were given for resource overuse. When greedy people were seen as causing the depletion, participants were more greedy than when there was deemed to be a natural cause (such as a sudden drought). Resource uncertainty further contributes to over-harvesting. In commons dilemmas, uncertainty about the pool size tends to increase individual harvesting and expectations about how much other people harvest. When there is uncertainty, people overestimate the size of the resource and perceive greater variability in how much other people take. Similarly, uncertainty about the replenishment rate of the pool also increases harvesting. The most likely explanation is that people have an optimistic bias. In the fisheries example, each individual prefers to maximize their profits by fishing without limits. However, it is better for the group as a whole if everyone limits how much they fish so that there will be enough fish next year.

Strategic factors
Strategic
Strategy

A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a particular Objective .Strategy is different from Tactic . In military terms, tactics is concerned with the conduct of an engagement while strategy is concerned with how different engagements are linked....
factors also matter in commons dilemmas. One often-studied strategic factor is the order in which people take harvests from the resource. In simultaneous play, all people harvest at the same time, whereas in sequential play people harvest from the pool according to a predetermined sequence – first, second, third, etc. There is a clear order effect in the latter games: the harvests of those who come first – the leaders – are higher than the harvest of those coming later – the followers. The interpretation of this effect is that the first players feel entitled to take more. With sequential play, individuals adopt a first come-first served rule, whereas with simultaneous play people may adopt an equality rule. Another strategic factor is the ability to build up reputations. Research found that people take less from the common pool in public situations than in anonymous private situations. Moreover, those who harvest less gain greater prestige and influence within their group.

Structural factors
Much research has focused on when and why people would like to structurally rearrange the commons to prevent a tragedy. Hardin stated in his analysis of the tragedy of the commons that "Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all". One of the proposed solutions is to appoint a leader to regulate access to the commons. Groups are more likely to endorse a leader when a common resource is being depleted and when managing a common resource is perceived as a difficult task. Groups prefer leaders who are elected, democratic, and prototypical of the group, and these leader types are more successful in enforcing cooperation. There is a general aversion against autocratic leadership
Leadership

Leadership is one of the most salient aspects of the organizational context. However, defining leadership has been challenging. The following sections discuss several important aspects of leadership including a description of what leadership is and a description of several popular theories and styles of leadership....
, although it may be an effective solution, possibly because of the fear of power abuse and corruption.

Another structural solution is the privatization
Privatization

Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of business from the public sector to the private sector . In a broader sense, privatization refers to transfer of any government function to the private sector including governmental functions like revenue collection and law enforcement....
of the commons, which has been very effective in experimental and field research. However, privatization raises concerns about social justice, as not everyone may be able to get an equal share, as well as Darwinian systems tend to evoke sympathetic responses that lead to the artificial support of those who actually weaken the system itself. It also may erode people's personal and social motivations to cooperate in preserving a resource.

The provision of rewards and punishments may also be effective in preserving common resources. Selective punishments for overuse can be effective in promoting domestic water and energy conservation – for example, through installing water and electricity meters in houses. Selective rewards work provided that they are open to everyone. An experimental carpool lane in the Netherlands failed because car commuters did not feel they were able to organize a carpool. Much field research on commons dilemmas has combined solutions obtained in experimental research. Elinor Ostrom
Elinor Ostrom

Elinor Ostrom is the Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science, and Co-Director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University Bloomington....
and her colleagues looked at how real-world communities manage communal resources, such as fisheries, land irrigation systems, and farmlands, and they identified a number of factors conducive to successful resource management. One factor is the resource itself; resources with definable boundaries (e.g., land) can be preserved much more easily. A second factor is resource dependence; there must be a perceptible threat of resource depletion, and it must be difficult to find substitutes. The third is the presence of a community; small and stable populations with a thick social network and social norms promoting conservation do better. A final condition is that there are appropriate community-based rules and procedures in place with built-in incentives for responsible use and punishments for overuse.

See also

  • Social trap
    Social trap

    Social trap is a term used by psychologists to describe a situation in which a group of people act to obtain short-term individual gains, which in the long run leads to a loss for the group as a whole....
  • Population control
    Population control

    Population control is the practice of limiting population increase, usually by reducing the birth rate. The practice has sometimes been voluntary, as a response to poverty, carrying capacity, or out of religious ideology, but in some times and places it has been socially mandated....
  • Prisoner's dilemma
    Prisoner's dilemma

    The Prisoner's Dilemma constitutes a problem in game theory. It was originally framed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher working at RAND in 1950....
  • The commons
    The commons

    The commons refers to resources that are collectively owned. This can include everything from Common land to software.. The process by which the commons are transformed into private property is often termed enclosure....
  • Enlightened self-interest
    Enlightened self-interest

    Enlightenment self-interest is a philosophy in ethics which states that persons who act to further the interests of others , ultimately serve their own self-interest....
  • The Market for Lemons
    The Market for Lemons

    "The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism" is a 1970 paper by the economist George Akerlof. It discusses Asymmetrical information, which occurs when the seller knows more about a product than the buyer....


Further reading

  • Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


External links


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