The tragedy of the commons is the dumbest shit ever. It's equivalent to someone giving you a well-articulated and elegant argument why powered flight will never be possible. You show them pictures and videos of airplanes flying, you tell them the history of airplanes and how and why they work, you even take them to an airport and show it working, but they just keep insisting it can't happen because of human nature
The commons works. I don't even have to explain it, it just does, demonstrably
@socalledunitedstates
Out of curiosity, have you actually read Hardin?
@arteteco No, not yet. I guess my wording was poor - I didn't mean the tragedy itself, but the way it's used by people online as an argument against common ownership and communism. I've gotten a couple other people telling me it wasn't intended for that originally, which is fair
I understand you were just blowing some steam off, no worries.
People using the tragedy of the commons against communism may not have read it neither.
Which is weird, as it is not a long article. You can read the original here: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243.full
Even if Hardin positions in general are very controversial to say the least, he thought about them long and hard, which is something that I personally respect.
He also triggered quite some researches in social and natural sciences, even if just to prove him wrong =D
