Tragedy of the Commons Alan Rudy ISS 310 Spring 2002 Thursday February 28 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 didn t lead to more resource depletion degradation or pollution 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 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 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 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 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 somebody s personal liberty p 1248 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 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 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 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 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 Does it make a difference if we are talking about the global commons as opposed to local commonses For example what s 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 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 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 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 Gov t determines access use Do they do so Democratically Do they do so Bureaucratically Do they do so Judicially 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 else s home land resources etc has been most common 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 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 Michael Goldman Hardin s 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 development s alleged client the world s commoners p 2 1997 Customs in Common The Epistemic World of the Commons Scholars Theory and Society 26 1 Feb 1 37 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