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 the Tragedy of the Commons is an example why without a culture to support it the Commons fail.
People just forget that the culture exists, since capitalism doesn't support it. Unless the culture allows you to sell ads.
@alxd Yeah, I mean at best it's a strawman. The setup of the tragedy is that everyone has their private property, and in addition to that there's a very limited amount of common property. That has never been the case (on a large scale) and no one's calling for it to be the case
It doesn't even make sense. If there's enough land for the livestock to graze under capitalism, why would abolishing private property make that land scarcer? It's just dumb as hell to the core when applied to communism
Point is not that the land usage would get less under capitalism or communism, is that individuals tent to maximise their own gain and minimize their effort in gaining it. That, we can take as a solid point in natural sciences, but the implications are not obvious at all, otherwise we wouldn't have evolutionary strategies in altruism, cooperation and such.
Actually, I think you can apply the tragedy of the commons more to a completely free market, where everyone has a go to the resources and compete for them.
What is to be taken from it, is that we need to carefully regulate our usage of resources, as in the end we are just animals.
@arteteco @alxd I may not be an expert, but I disagree with the point that people will naturally attempt to maximize their gain. Absent of a consumerist culture, I feel like our natural inclination is to take what we need and not to exert ourselves any more for things we don't need
That's a really interesting way to turn it back around though. It's the profit motive that drives people in order to destroy their resources to maximize production
My two cents,
When saying people, you may be right. When saying individuals, and I mean of every species, that just wouldn't work.
Mind you, "gain" does not need to be economical, in evolutionary terms individuals (or genes) aim to maximize their fitness - and nothing else.
So if there is a lot of resources, we may not take more that we need as individuals, but we may breed more and on the long run consume more resources, putting the entire ecosystem in danger. We do not have mechanisms to self-regulate the population size, AFAIK. Ecology doesn't just look at individuals.
If by over-using resources I create a conflict with my neighbour, does that help my fitness? I will not have help in case of need, selection will be against me.
At the end of the day, is terribly complex, I don't think there is an easy answer.
