Tragedy of the Commons

1
Tragedy of the Commons

• Alan Rudy
• ISS 310 Spring 2002
• Thursday, February 28

2
Small Group Question

• Do you think that privatizing resources leads to
  more or less ecological degradation?
• What are your reasons?
• Choose an instance, one way or the other, and
  play it out showing how privatization did or
  didnt lead to more resource depletion,
  degradation or pollution.

3
Garrett Hardin

• We want to maximize good per person but what is
  good? wilderness? ski lodges? estuaries? factory
  land?
• Comparing one good with another is, we usually
  say, impossible because goods are
  incommensurable but in real life
  incommensurables are comparable.
• Only a criterion of judgment and a system of
  weighing are needed.
• In nature the criterion is survival. Man must
  imitate this process. (p.1244)

4
Hardin II

• natural selection favors the forces of
  psychological denial (p.1244)
• The pollution problem is a consequence of
  population. (p.1245)
• The laws of our society follow the pattern of
  ancient ethics, and therefore are poorly suited
  to governing a complex crowded, changeable
  world. (p.1245)

5
Hardin III

• To couple the concept of freedom to breed with
  the belief that everyone born has an equal right
  to the commons is to lock the world into a tragic
  course of action. (p.1246)
• If we love the truth, we must openly deny the
  validity of the Universal Declaration of Human
  Rights (p.1246)

6
Hardin IV

• We must admit that our legal system of private
  property plus inheritance is unjust but we put
  up with it because we are not convinced that
  anyone has invented a better system. The
  alternative of the commons is too horrifying to
  contemplate. Injustice is preferable to total
  ruin. (p.1247)

7
Hardin V

• First we abandoned the commons in food
  gathering, enclosing farm land and restricting
  pastures and hunting and fishing areas. Somewhat
  later we saw the commons as a place for waste
  disposal would also have to be abandoned. In a
  still more embryonic state is our recognition of
  the evils of the commons in matters of pleasure.
  
• Every new enclosure of the commons involves the
  infringement of somebodys personal liberty.
  (p.1248)

8
Hardin VI

• Hardin suggests that there is an turning point at
  which an individual's marginal gain from adding
  one more animal to his herd as it feeds on the
  commons -- is no longer greater than the marginal
  costs however, this point is far beyond that of
  the maximum sustained yield or the sustainable
  productivity of the system.

9
Hardin VII

• For Hardin, the tragedy of the commons is
  inevitable, unless someone or something
  (typically governments, police, or armed
  militaries -- mutual coercion mutually agreed
  upon) intervene.
• Abating the tragedy from occurring requires that
  people act collectively to preserve the commons.

10
Hardin VII

• But, if individuals are self-interested, by
  nature as Hardin argues and have the freedom
  to use, misuse, and abuse common property
  resources, there will be many free riders -
  individuals who will use the good but do not pay
  for its upkeep.
• The question is how to minimize or eliminate free
  riding.

11
Hardin IX

• The only option according to Hardin -- is for
  the land (or water, or air, or resource) to be
  transformed from common to private property.

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If Hardin is right

• How did the earth and its natural resources
  survive up until the present?
• How common has private property in land been in
  history?
• Does it make sense that people in the past DID
  regulate access to the commons?
• How might they have done this?

13
Does it make a difference if

• we are talking about the global commons, as
  opposed to local commonses?
• For example, whats the difference between
  regulating collective access to local resources
  and things like greenhouse gas emissions?
• Should we privatize the atmosphere? The oceans?
  All the worlds fresh water? The ozone layer?

14
Furthermore

• who should the key players be in the control,
  individual and collective of common or private
  property?
• to what social institutions would people appeal
  to if someone abused their private property in
  such a way as to cause environmental degradation
  of social health problems downstream?

15
Also

• how would the bidding on the privatization of
  resources be done?
• would people of great (or normal) intelligence,
  but limited resources, have their bids pro-rated
  so that they might be competitive,
• or would the already powerful run the show
  largely in their own interest?

16
What kinds of property are there?

• Open Access very rare
• Usufruct historically, very common
• Private Property Individual Excludability
• Communal Property Communal Excludability, Open
  Access w/in group
• State Property Govt determines access/use
• Do they do so Democratically?
• Do they do so Bureaucratically?
• Do they do so Judicially?

17
Historically

• our economic interests have contradicted
  ecological sustainability, esp. re long-maturing
  or non-local/not-our resources
• multiple property rights regimes almost always
  overlap
• people spontaneously generate cooperative
  methods of resource utilization
• displacement into the future or onto someone
  elses home, land, resources, etc. has been most
  common

18
Most People and the Commons

• Most people (like me and most of you) own no
  substantive amount of productive resources what
  are their responsibilities to be?
• These same people, along with private owners of
  natural resources, rely not only on natural
  commons but also on social common resources for
  life
• highways, schools, the military and police,
  regulatory bureaucracies, etc.

19
Are markets a common resource?

• If so, should we privatize them?
• Remember the Progressives from the lecture on
  Samuel P. Hays and scientific management?
• The Progressives understood that the
  privatization of markets, via monopolies, and the
  destruction of the land, by small land-owners
  (and powerful monopoly producers) was exactly
  what was wrong at the turn of the 20th century
  they wanted public, expert-led, scientific
  regulation and policy.

20
Michael Goldman

• Hardins ideas have led to a search for the holy
  grail of successful commons models. Whether
  implicit or explicit, their prescriptions are
  meant for the ubiquitous professional-class we,
  recommending that development professionals get
  investment portfolios right, for the benefit of
  developments alleged client, the worlds
  commoners. (p.2)
• (1997) "'Customs in Common' The Epistemic
  World of the Commons Scholars." Theory and
  Society 26, 1, Feb., 1-37.

21
Goldman II 3 kinds of players

• The Human Ecologists, I argue, demonstrate the
  complexity of the commons from the local culture-
  and territory-based perspective
• the Development Experts show how to restore the
  degraded commons, strengthen weakened social
  institutions, and modernize the Third World
  poor and
• the Global Resource Managers explain how the
  commons are not just local or the problem of the
  poor, but contribute to global ecological
  crisis. (p.4)

22
Goldman III

• For development experts (of all three types
  APR) to assert that they have a game plan for
  making productive relations on common property
  better, more efficient, and sustainable,
  they have first to construct a world of values
  and property relations that befits an imagined
  reality.
• To do so, they must agree to a definition of
  property however far removed these definitions
  are from the irreducible material activities of
  resource-dependent communities. (pp.12-13)

23
Why all this focus on the commons?

• The crisis of developing the commons has ignited
  social movements that threaten the workings of
  development, state and economic institutions
  (SOCIAL APR), and
• second, the rapid and large-scale degradation of
  the worlds air, water, forest, and biogenetic
  resources (ECOLOGICAL APR) threatens the
  reproduction of capital (ECONOMIC APR).
  (Goldman, p.23)

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What kinds of solutions are there?

• Given what Ive said throughout the semester,
  what do you think?
• Open up the process to include local folks,
  experts, policy makers, etc. and get to the hard
  work of learning 1) why things are the way they
  are, 2) where the collective group thinks the
  project should be headed and 3) what itll to
  take to get there by fair and reasonable,
  ecologically-sound means.