[PaulDavisThe1st]

This is a periodic public service announcement that there is not, and never has been "a tragedy of the commons situation". Even the author of the concept, Garret Hardin, has acknowledged that he made mistakes in his understanding and research.

Resources held in common have historically been subject to significant control via social, civic and legalistic processes. What is typically referred to as "a tragedy of the commons situation" never turns out to be what Hardin originally suggested - individuals taking advantage of the lack of controls. Instead it is invariably individuals who first dismantle the control systems in place in order to pursue their own selfish ends.

This matters because the "tragedy of the commons" concept has been used to suggest (successfully) that communities cannot manage commonly held resources, which is false. What is true is that communities frequently cannot manage a sustained attack by selfishness and greed against their own systems of management, and that's a very, very different problem.

[crazygringo]

Can you elaborate?

My understanding is that overfishing and climate change are prime and valid examples of the tragedy of the commons.

You seem to be claiming that the problem is with systems of management, but the entire point of the tragedy of the commons is that it happens when there isn't management. Which is abundantly the case at the global level of international waters and a shared atmosphere, because there is no such thing as a world government, nor do most people want one.

So how exactly has there "never... been a tragedy of the commons"? How are overfishing and CO2 not exactly tragedies of the commons? What other principle explains why they weren't solved decades ago?

[PaulDavisThe1st]

If you go and study the actual history of fishing territories, it invariably turns out that they all came/come with complex systems for managing yields. There wasn't ever "a big sea full of fish and anyone could just do whatever they want". For example, if you catch fish with impunity because there is nobody at sea to stop you, you still need to sell them which means interacting the people (in some way) close to where you caught them, and markets have traditionally been one of the points of control.

When so-called tragedies of the commons occur, it is invariably because someone has first attacked those systems of control to further their own ends. In the case of fishing, most traditional fishing communities and systems have objected to the arrival of industrial scale fishing, but they have been ignored and sidelined because of the interests of the owners of those new systems. So the problem is not that people/communities cannot manage resources held in common, it is that they cannot effectively resist power, wealth and greed if and when it arrives. But that very inability is also contingent on broader political and economic conditions, and is not inherent to the fact that the resources are held in common.

Climate change may well be the first true example of Hardin's original concept of "tragedy of the commons". It has a number of properties that traditional resource "extraction" behaviors do not share (including the invisibility of the problem until it is too late). But when people talk about "tragedy of the commons", they are typically referring to much smaller scale situations than the one(s) that have led us to where we are with climate change.

There's also a case to be made, given the remarkably early understanding of the consequences of fossil fuel utilization and the documented behavior of the companies involved, that climate change is precisely the type of failure I'm describing rather than the one Hardin did. We have systems of control for the things fossil fuel has negatively impacted, but people who became very, very, very, very rich from their use actively subverted and captured them for their own purposes.

I acknowledge that the shift is subtle: from the problem being "humans cannot manage resources held in common" to "human systems for managing resources held in common are frequently not robust enough to withstand selfishness and greed". Nevertheless, I think it is an important one.

[crazygringo]

I guess I don't understand your motive in what you call a "subtle shift" of trying to redefine away the concept of the tragedy of the commons.

You say 'There wasn't ever "a big sea full of fish and anyone could just do whatever they want".' But to the contrary, that's basically always been the case. Fishing boats were limited by technology and the size of their local markets, but once those limitations disappeared because of inevitable technological progress, then that's exactly what happened. And we see this happening especially with Chinese overfishing today.

You're claiming that supposed "systems of control" existed in the first place and then were attacked, but that seems entirely counterfactual to me. There was no system of control for a problem that technological progress hadn't created yet -- humans don't see that far enough into the future. And if four countries that border a sea want to limit fishing but a fifth one says I'm going to overfish as much as I want, well then what do you think is going to happen?

I don't see what benefit there is in attacking the concept of tragedy of the commons. It's not some kind of fatalistic viewpoint of what must happen (which you seem to be claiming -- "that people/communities cannot manage resources held in common"), but rather a warning of what will happen when resources aren't properly managed. Claiming the tragedy doesn't exist seems like it would only benefit the people who want to to exploit our shared resources. By recognizing its validity, we can do our best to create and improve systems of management (especially international systems) to prevent the tragedies from occurring.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Your take on "toc" is a relatively new one. When Hardin first wrote about it, the message was (and was for some decades after it) that holding resources in common is doomed to failure and that is why private ownership/control of them is a good idea.

Even with your view, there's a subtle shift involved in talking about it as an issue of whether or not resources are properly managed or not, because the question is, quite directly, what is the best way of ensuring that this happens?

TOC has been routinely used over the last half-century of so to justify the answer to that being "privately owned", and reasonably given the name Hardin came up with: it's a tragedy of the commons, implicitly not affecting privately held resources.

> And if four countries that border a sea want to limit fishing but a fifth one says I'm going to overfish as much as I want, well then what do you think is going to happen

It depends a lot on scale. If country #5 plans to sell the fish to countries #1-4, it won't work (or at least, it may not work). If country #5 plans to eat all the fish it catches and has no effective internal population that will be able to gain control over its fishing behavior, then ... tragedy.

But notice the key point here: it's not as if country #5 is ignorant about the situation. Countries #1-4 will be quite belligerent in their objections to #5's behavior. So the problem here is not that "people just blindly take from a commonly held resource and destroy it". It's the people (in this case, country #5) willfully ignore the social structures in place to protect the fish in order to pursue their own greed and selfishness.

[crazygringo]

> Your take on "toc" is a relatively new one.

I don't think so. I'm just regurgitating what I learned in political science classes decades ago, and what the mainstream understanding still is today in the general media.

And what you're omitting is that while yes, the solution from the point of view of the political right is privatization, the solution from the point of view of the political left has always been more active government management/regulation, international treaties, etc.

You seem to be ignoring the entire history of solutions on the left, and treating the problem as if it's solely an invention of the right. I don't know why.

And with the fishing example, I never suggested country #5 was ignorant, or that countries #1-4 wouldn't object. I never used the word "blindly". But you're claiming that people in country #5 are "willfully ignoring the social structures in place" and that's false. There are no structures and never were. (Again, see: Chinese overfishing.) And you're admitting "then... tragedy" in my very example.

So I still don't understand why you're claiming ToC doesn't exist, except that you think it's a justification for privatization. But you're ignoring it's also a justification for regulation and cooperation. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater?

[PaulDavisThe1st]

What you're omitting is that the solutions to ToC style problems already existed throughout time and space until they were ignored/destroyed/captured by selfishness and greed.

Think about it: if I set you the challenge of "come up with a regulation model for this fishery" the nature of your solutions will be fundamentally different than if I set you the challenge of "prevent selfishness and greed from overriding the cultural, social and historical patterns for this resource use". Depending on your own particular political outlook, it is possible that given the first problem you would still focus more on the type of problem described in the second but that's not inevitable at all.

> There are no structures and never were.

Chinese overfishing ... when I look this up, the most common word associated with it is "illegal". Perhaps you mean the overfishing they carried out in their own waters before increasing (and now decreasing) the size of their distant fishing fleet(s).

> But you're claiming that people in country #5 are "willfully ignoring the social structures in place" and that's false.

In reading up a bit more about this (with China being country #5), I come across articles with titles like "China’s IUU Fishing Fleet: ariah of the World’s Oceans". So I don't think it's false at all.

> But you're ignoring it's also a justification for regulation and cooperation.

That's not an unfair point, but what I'm really getting at (mostly based on Ostrum's work) is that regulation and cooperation have always existed historically, and telling the story of ToC-style problems as if they haven't bends the solutions in ways that do not reflect the history.

[sokoloff]

Whaling (especially that done for oil rather than meat) seems to be another example that seems a pretty clear-cut case (IMO).

Or the catching of live tortoises to use as meat on long sea voyages.

[clcaev]

The planet's air and international waters are truly public resources, at least currently. I'm not sure if I would call them a commons.

Speaking of which, Elinor Ostrom's book, Governing the Commons, outlines the conditions for the successful management of a commons. Notably neither private ownership nor governmental control is ideal, the best outcomes are by cooperative organizations where those with a direct stake in the commons are the managers.

[crazygringo]

> I'm not sure if I would call them a commons.

I don't understand why not. That's the literal definition of a commons in the political economy sense -- a public resource everyone can take from freely. (As opposed to a public resource that is managed via licenses, auctions, limits, etc.) On what basis would you not call them a commons, in political economy?

The entire point of the "tragedy of the commons" is the tragedy of overfishing, the tragedy of CO2 levels, because nobody is in charge of managing it.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> That's the literal definition of a commons in the political economy sense -- a public resource everyone can take from freely.

Part of Ostrom's point is that this sort of commons has rarely, if ever, existed. It's a misunderstanding that Hardin's work created or amplified. Resources held in common are in fact always managed and not "free for the taking".

[crazygringo]

Well if modern-day climate change and overfishing in international waters fall into these "rare" examples where the concept is true, then the concept certainly seems important enough to me. I mean, it's mathematically true from a game-theory perspective in the first place. I don't see why you'd want to throw it out.

[underlipton]

A few days ago, I was watching a video where a man took a walk through a Los Angeles park, which was quite run-down. Most of the comments were complaining about the "junkies" milling about, about how they'd made the place dirty and dangerous. I thought this was peculiar, since everyone (the idea that they were all drug addicts or homeless people was doubtful) seemed to be keeping to themselves. The area WAS trashed, but the overflowing bins suggested to me that the city wasn't putting many resources towards upkeep. Which itself suggested that the order of events was more something like:

>Lax maintenance and poor accessibility (remember, LA) made the park undesirable for families to visit.

>"Undesirables" began frequenting the park, as their chances of being harassed by police at the behest of the families who were no longer visiting was much lower.

So, what is commonly seen as a tragic outcome caused by individuals abusing resources is really a matter of authorities abusing their prerogative to hold or not hold to what could reasonably be considered their responsibilities.

For your examples: there are international laws and agreements that "govern" (maybe more like "suggest") best practices wrt fishing and carbon emissions, based on publicly-available research and inquiry. Further, the entities causing these issues aren't "free radicals"; they're mostly formally-incorporated organizations that are subject to state regulation and their own policies (which, when known by the public through their actions, are subject to public pressure - either wallet diplomacy or the threat of further regulation). It's a choice for the US government to not hold companies accountable, or to not ratify, say, the Kyoto Protocol, or to ignore studies on fishery health in favor of placating the fishing industry. Same for every other country. And every country has some ability to influence others through the shape of their relations. I suppose you could exclude pirates.

Tragedy of the commons assumes that individual actors haven't bound themselves together by some kind of expectation or obligation. The most authoritative version of that is government, of course, but you can have lesser agreements. In those cases, it's not merely a matter of individual entities abusing resources, but of flaunting self-imposed "management."

^This is the most important part of this comment, sorry for taking a while to get to it.

[tshaddox]

> This matters because the "tragedy of the commons" concept has been used to suggest (successfully) that communities cannot manage commonly held resources, which is false.

This is not my impression. I’ve always heard “tragedy of the commons” invoked precisely to advocate that commonly held resources must be regulated.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

The concept of "toc" is used to claim that you must have regulation otherwise you get a tragedy. The historical reality is that we have almost always had regulation, and tragedies happen anyway because the regulatory process is not robust enough in the face of greed and selfishness.

[jart]

TOC is used to claim that spaces should be owned. Bureaucrats will only protect a space insofar as it allows them to get their palms greased before leaving office. An owner on the other hand has their incentives aligned with both the space itself and its future.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> An owner on the other hand has their incentives aligned with both the space itself and its future

This is absolutely not reflected in the history of resource extraction in the United States. Time and time again, companies have become owners, begged to be trusted because their interests are "aligned", only to destroy the resource, and frequently the communities around it, and then move on.

The version of game theory you're imagining an owner is playing (unbounded, repeated interactions) is not the version played by the companies that have taken ownership of so many resources on our planet.

[jart]

Could you give me three examples of what you're talking about? Are you saying like someone owns a coal mine and destroys the coal because they dug it up and sold it? Or do you mean more like they blew up the mountain to get the coal, to save money, so now the mountainside is less picturesque?

[tshaddox]

How about Superfund sites, where the owners didn’t just remove valuable resources, but actively added and then left behind hazardous materials which are now the responsibility of the taxpayer?

[PaulDavisThe1st]

1. the forests. I know most about the ones in the pacific northwest. wherever there has been private ownership (and sometimes where there has not) by a corporate entity, the forest productivity has declined (sometimes to zero)

2. mining. The owners care only about what's in the ground, not what's above it, and so there are repeated cases of them poisoning waterways and the rest of whatever is downstream because they actually have no incentive to preserve the land itself. [ Note: this really covers multiple resource extraction industries, but I'll leave it as just one example for now ]

3. topsoil. Farms across the country have been losing topsoil for more than a century. Despite the long term implications of this being acknowledged by everyone involved, practices to stop it from happening are limited, and generally constrainted to non-corporate, non-vertically-integrated farmers.

[tshaddox]

Generally the textbook commons are resources which are not easily divided up into private ownership, like large bodies of water that feed a large number of people via fishing. Of course in some cases new technology can enable privatization of previous commons.

[superhuzza]

"there is not, and never has been "a tragedy of the commons situation"

I kindly invite you to visit the kitchens of undergraduate house-shares. I think you may soon appreciate there are "tragedy of the commons" situations happening all the time :)

[jart]

I saw what that type of community management looks like at Occupy Wall Street. No thank you. Yes, it was people like Bloomberg who were scheming to bus criminals into the park. But if that weakness hadn't existed he would have never been able to exploit it.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

There are literally hundreds if not thousands of examples of community managed resources throughout time and space that are more long lasting and more positive than Occupy.

Just in the part of the world where I live, but inherited from the Arabic world via Spain, are the acequias of New Mexico. Contrary to US law, they hold water to be a communical resource, and are managed at the community level, typically with an individual elected to be the "majordomo" who make decisions about allocations but is constantly subject to input from and being overridden by the community itself. When acequias "go wrong" (i.e. there are water shortages), it is typically caused by some combination of:

1. an actual water shortage

2. poor decisions on the part of the majordomo

3. someone stealing from the system

What it almost never is: a "tragedy of the commons" as described by Hardin et al.

[jart]

Is that where your drinking water comes from? Only a monster or a foreign invader would poison a drinking well.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

The water in this part of the world all comes from the same sources (wells, some surface sources, rain). The problem is not poison, but supply (i.e. overuse).

[jart]

I could imagine community ownership working in your case. Whoever controls such an important and scarce resource that many people depend upon for survival, whether it be public or private, is going to have their top minds focusing on maximizing its utility and longevity. The governance model probably doesn't matter as much as the virtues of the people doing it.