I am uninterested in comparing the moral qualities of generations. Humans are humans.
I am interested in the scale of the violence done by these generations against the earth as it will never be able to be surpassed without fully annihilating the human race.
800 years from now no one is going to care how sorry everyone was now about the damage they have done, what matters is the impact and for the destructive impact generations such as Boomers have done to the earth they will be remembered for thousands of years as a calamity.
By the way the “Tragedy Of The Commons” has largely been discarded as a useful way of understanding societies, it is a political narrative with an interest in specific ideologies more than a serious tool to understand humanity.
As Mildenberger points out, this isn’t a case where a terrible person had some great ideas that outlived them: Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons was a piece of intellectual fraud committed in service to his racist, eugenicist ideology.
What’s worse: the environmental movement elevates Hardin to sainthood, whitewashing his racism and celebrating “The Tragedy of the Commons” as a seminal work of environmental literature. But Hardin is no friend of the environment: his noxious cocktail of racism and false history are used to move public lands into private ownership or stewardship, (literally) paving the way for devastating exploitation of those lands.
By contrast, consider Nobelist Elinor Ostrom’s Governing the Commons, whose groundbreaking insights on the management of common resources are a prescription for a better, more prosperous, more egalitarian future.
…
(Hardin quotes that didn’t make it into his seminal paper: “Diversity is the opposite of unity, and unity is a prime requirement for national survival” and “My position is that this idea of a multiethnic society is a disaster…we should restrict immigration for that reason.”)
I did not know the history of the term tragedy of the commons. Thanks for educating me on that, I will now reconsider using that specific term in the future. However overgrazing is a real issue historically and still today. Overgrazing in the modern Sahel is a great contributor to the advancing of the sahara for example.
Oh definitely, my issue with the concept of the Tragedy Of The Commons is not that shared wealth is not vulnerable but rather that the idea that humans innately cannot function in an environment while preserving and growing a shared commons without some kind of system of authoritarian control and violence actively preserving that shared commons is a deeply political, problematic and scientifically incorrect way of understanding people.
I would imagine a system you’re suggesting would first have to eliminate scarcity of resources. We certainly have the ability to do that with our technology today but choose not to do so. Wouldn’t it require a turn to benevolence by all involved in the society to achieve that? If so, that doesn’t sound like a likely outcome. What, in your opinion, would it take to escape the Tragedy of Commons that is likely to actually occur?
I would imagine a system you’re suggesting would first have to eliminate scarcity of resources.
Provide evidence for this claim.
I understand this has been established as our cultural intuition but it is a near axiomatic assumption that upon examination has very little evidence to support it, whether we look to the natural world or to human societies.
I can provide zero evidence. I’m trying to imagine a world where your proposal works. Scarcity elimination the best possible way I could come up with.
I understand this has been established as our cultural intuition but it is a near axiomatic assumption that upon examination has very little evidence to support it, whether we look to the natural world or to human societies.
If your proposal doesn’t need to eliminate scarcity, I’m even more interested in how it is done. Whats the secret sauce has society-at-large been missing? You mention examining human societies. Do you have a human society to point to where your proposal exists successfully already?
Do you have a human society to point to where your proposal exists successfully already?
Every single human society in history where a commons was maintained via a system other than centralized authoritarian violence?
In other words, every society that experienced periods not entirely ruled by an oppressive, authoritarian regime and that had/have some shared wealth whether it be in public spaces, public knowledge, public utilities, public education or other forms of public shared resource.
If we turn to the natural world it is very difficult to find ecosystems that function purely on a scarcity mechanism. If one considers the function of a predator in an ecosystem, it is precisely to stabilize an ecosystem so it can absorb large inputs of excess resources without the system collapsing. If one considers the basic function of herbivores in an ecosystem it is the same, to stabilize the growth of plants so that abrupt periods of resource abundance and opportunity don’t destabilize the forest.
The only systems I can think of that function under the axiom that you suggest, which is that scarcity is a necessary obstacle to tackle before systems can resist destroying shared resources, are ecosystems dominated by invasive species and cancer. In both cases, it is the inability to tolerate abundance in a system because of an endless growth mechanism that causes the destruction of a dynamic encompassing stability. This is in a way how all dynamic stabilities collapse inevitably, but that doesn’t mean that this is a fatal weakness, rather that all things that can be undone eventually do tend to become undone.
Which is all to say, there are systems that cannot handle abundance as a temporary state rather than a final destination never to be reached, but they are systems of cancer. All the dynamically stable systems we can point to whether they in the natural world or in human societies all feature some degree of scarcity, some degree of abundance and yet still manage to develop a shared commons of wealth.
For example, if you watch how Grizzly Bears eat Salmon, they do a shit job of it. They often become distracted in the process of eating a Salmon and just drop it leaving an only half eaten Salmon carcass on the ground wherever they happened to be. The way you understand how scarcity MUST impact systems cannot explain this blatant inefficiency in a natural ecosystem, individuals in nature are supposed to use EVERYTHING they can right? Evolution selects for efficiency right?.. Except it didn’t because it turns out the Grizzly Bears discarding the Salmon ends up transferring a massive amount of nutrients from the Ocean to the Forest. The system benefits from slack, from a giving up of an individual boon for no perceivable immediate collective gain…
You cannot understand the essential aspects of the above example of Grizzly Bears, Salmon and Forests under the mindset that you are approaching this problem from. It would be a logical error of the system for a Grizzly Bear to waste effort beginning to eat a Salmon and then abandoning it for another animal, plant or creature to exploit. The Grizzly Bear should spend the minimal effort to catch only the Salmon it will eat in order to be competitive in an ecosystem that undergoes scarcity… but they don’t… why?
The only systems I can think of that function under the axiom that you suggest, which is that scarcity is a necessary obstacle to tackle before systems can resist destroying shared resources, are ecosystems dominated by invasive species and cancer. In both cases, it is the inability to tolerate abundance in a system because of an endless growth mechanism that causes the destruction of a dynamic encompassing stability.
Well, that sounds like an accurate description humanity in the last 1000 years at least.
In other words, every society that experienced periods not entirely ruled by an oppressive, authoritarian regime and that had/have some shared wealth whether it be in public spaces, public knowledge, public utilities, public education or other forms of public shared resource.
I think that statement is more supports my current position. You’re pointing out a temporary state, not an enduring condition. I could probably argue that even many of those temporary states of a successful shared commons were potentially built on the exploitation of others outside of those benefiting from the commons, but lets ignore that for now. None of those endured. Every single one has ended, or in some possible isolated cases that may exist today, have not shown they could endure with changing social or geopolitical conditions. These examples don’t live in a vacuum either. Unless the whole of humanity is onboard, a segment could pillage the shared commons of another society if they did not have adequate defense as has been shown in humanities history an uncounted amount of times. So what, in your approach, would change one of these temporary states to a permanent one that humanity would actually implement?
The way you understand how scarcity MUST impact systems cannot explain this blatant inefficiency in a natural ecosystem, individuals in nature are supposed to use EVERYTHING they can right?
Not right. There is no scarcity of resources for the bears because here bears use a form of violent authoritarianism to ensure resource (salmon in your example) availability for themselves. A dominate bear will kill weaker bears to ensure food, mates, and territory are established. In that sense, it mirrors the human reaction. Again, that points away from a non-violent benevolent society of a workable shared commons.
Except it didn’t because it turns out the Grizzly Bears discarding the Salmon ends up transferring a massive amount of nutrients from the Ocean to the Forest. The system benefits from slack, from a giving up of an individual boon for no perceivable immediate collective gain…
The only way I can see your example apply to humanity is if you’re suggesting humanity should enforce a class hierarchy where apex predators (small segment of high class humans) get first dibs of the prime resources, and lesser creatures (the middle class) and plants (those in poverty) benefit by what the bears leave behind. Isn’t this the premise of Regan’s much hated “trickle down economics”? I don’t believe you’re suggesting that, but I’m not seeing an alternate interpretation. I’m open to hearing your alternate explanation.
There is no scarcity of resources for the bears because here bears use a form of violent authoritarianism to ensure resource (salmon in your example) availability for themselves. A dominate bear will kill weaker bears to ensure food, mates, and territory are established. In that sense, it mirrors the human reaction. Again, that points away from a non-violent benevolent society of a workable shared commons.
Are you an expert on Bear behavior? How do you know this? How do you explain Bears co-existing nearby while feeding on Salmon without killing one another?
You seem to be absolutely convinced the lens you see reality with is not a lens but reality itself and you are wrong.
You’re pointing out a temporary state, not an enduring condition.
Well yes, everything is temporary, but it is much easier for a system to decisively enter abundance and stay there than for it to oscillate back and forth between scarcity and abundance. If everyone has enough resources until ever after there is no reason to fight so bringing up any such example of a system would be less relevant to the argument. The reason I brought up the examples of systems that despite that manage to move between the two states without shared commons being destroyed is because they are more thorough demonstrations of the possibility of stability and shared wealth without needing the kind of violence and control you axiomatically assume is necessary.
I think you are overselling it’s incorrectness and so horseshoeing back around to being like the people who oversell it’s truthfulness. Yes, the tragedy of the commons is misleading if taken in isolation, but something being misleading does not automatically make it scientifically incorrect. Do you have direct evidence or an argument for why the tragedy of the commons isn’t the most likely outcome if the circumstances just so happen to match the assumptions Hardin made?
I think you are overselling it’s incorrectness and so horseshoeing back around to being like the people who oversell it’s truthfulness.
I am not.
Do you have direct evidence or an argument for why the tragedy of the commons isn’t the most likely outcome if the circumstances just so happen to match the assumptions Hardin made?
Even before Hardin’s ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ was published, however, the young political scientist Elinor Ostrom had proven him wrong. While Hardin speculated that the tragedy of the commons could be avoided only through total privatisation or total government control, Ostrom had witnessed groundwater users near her native Los Angeles hammer out a system for sharing their coveted resource. Over the next several decades, as a professor at Indiana University Bloomington, she studied collaborative management systems developed by cattle herders in Switzerland, forest dwellers in Japan, and irrigators in the Philippines. These communities had found ways of both preserving a shared resource – pasture, trees, water – and providing their members with a living. Some had been deftly avoiding the tragedy of the commons for centuries; Ostrom was simply one of the first scientists to pay close attention to their traditions, and analyse how and why they worked.
The features of successful systems, Ostrom and her colleagues found, include clear boundaries (the ‘community’ doing the managing must be well-defined); reliable monitoring of the shared resource; a reasonable balance of costs and benefits for participants; a predictable process for the fast and fair resolution of conflicts; an escalating series of punishments for cheaters; and good relationships between the community and other layers of authority, from household heads to international institutions.
To be clear, I agree with you like 95% of the way, it’s that last 5% that I still think you are overselling and would like you to be more careful with.
The problem is that Hardin’s argument simply isn’t much of a scientific one in the first place and is instead much more of a logical one. (I was being sloppy when I asked for direct evidence, so sorry about that.) Hardin made the massive assumption that people are wholly self-interested. If people are only trying to maximize their own share of the resources regardless of what it might cost others, then it is impossible to escape the competition that creates for the limited amount of resources that the commons provides. All of the examples and articles you’ve brought up attack that assumption and/or focus on the conclusions Hardin made based on those assumptions, but do nothing to actually disprove the fundamental argument behind the tragedy of the commons.
I see what you are saying but my argument is that in real world systems the vast majority of the time it is in the individual’s self interest to enrich and defend a shared wealth/commons.
The idea that it isn’t is inherently a belief not a finding of science and it has been imposed on us through cultural means for political reasons.
You can create narrow conditions where the self interests of the individual existentially diverge from the interests of the group, I don’t dispute that… rather I think Capitalism is monomanically obsessed with creating these systems artificially and through violence and imposed collapse.
I am fumbling at things Naomi Klein has already more brilliantly expressed.
so like, people can have both bad ideas and good. i don’t know enough about hardin, but the basic concept is a useful model to get people understanding a basic concept. is it a political narrative? i mean it’s macroeconomics. the entire damn field is politics under a veneer. their best model is barely better than flipping a coin.
don’t get me started on micro though, that field is just gambling analysis.
We really need to stop throwing away useful terms and concepts because their progenitors don’t turn out to be role models. Knowledge doesn’t always come from perfect sources. “Tragedy of the Commons” has no basis in race as a concept as I understand it, I don’t see why the guy who coined the term being a racist POS means I should take a moral stance on it.
supersquirrel: “The betrayal of generations from the 20th century against the future quality of life of humanity will be remembered for thousands of years.” Also supersquirrel: “I am uninterested in comparing the moral qualities of generations. Humans are humans.”
I am uninterested in comparing the moral qualities of generations. Humans are humans.
I am interested in the scale of the violence done by these generations against the earth as it will never be able to be surpassed without fully annihilating the human race.
800 years from now no one is going to care how sorry everyone was now about the damage they have done, what matters is the impact and for the destructive impact generations such as Boomers have done to the earth they will be remembered for thousands of years as a calamity.
By the way the “Tragedy Of The Commons” has largely been discarded as a useful way of understanding societies, it is a political narrative with an interest in specific ideologies more than a serious tool to understand humanity.
https://boingboing.net/2019/03/07/scientific-fraud.html
…
I did not know the history of the term tragedy of the commons. Thanks for educating me on that, I will now reconsider using that specific term in the future. However overgrazing is a real issue historically and still today. Overgrazing in the modern Sahel is a great contributor to the advancing of the sahara for example.
Oh definitely, my issue with the concept of the Tragedy Of The Commons is not that shared wealth is not vulnerable but rather that the idea that humans innately cannot function in an environment while preserving and growing a shared commons without some kind of system of authoritarian control and violence actively preserving that shared commons is a deeply political, problematic and scientifically incorrect way of understanding people.
i dunno. the community garden run by the local MS-13 has the weirdest red drip system, but my begonias have never looked better.
I would imagine a system you’re suggesting would first have to eliminate scarcity of resources. We certainly have the ability to do that with our technology today but choose not to do so. Wouldn’t it require a turn to benevolence by all involved in the society to achieve that? If so, that doesn’t sound like a likely outcome. What, in your opinion, would it take to escape the Tragedy of Commons that is likely to actually occur?
Provide evidence for this claim.
I understand this has been established as our cultural intuition but it is a near axiomatic assumption that upon examination has very little evidence to support it, whether we look to the natural world or to human societies.
I can provide zero evidence. I’m trying to imagine a world where your proposal works. Scarcity elimination the best possible way I could come up with.
If your proposal doesn’t need to eliminate scarcity, I’m even more interested in how it is done. Whats the secret sauce has society-at-large been missing? You mention examining human societies. Do you have a human society to point to where your proposal exists successfully already?
Every single human society in history where a commons was maintained via a system other than centralized authoritarian violence?
In other words, every society that experienced periods not entirely ruled by an oppressive, authoritarian regime and that had/have some shared wealth whether it be in public spaces, public knowledge, public utilities, public education or other forms of public shared resource.
If we turn to the natural world it is very difficult to find ecosystems that function purely on a scarcity mechanism. If one considers the function of a predator in an ecosystem, it is precisely to stabilize an ecosystem so it can absorb large inputs of excess resources without the system collapsing. If one considers the basic function of herbivores in an ecosystem it is the same, to stabilize the growth of plants so that abrupt periods of resource abundance and opportunity don’t destabilize the forest.
The only systems I can think of that function under the axiom that you suggest, which is that scarcity is a necessary obstacle to tackle before systems can resist destroying shared resources, are ecosystems dominated by invasive species and cancer. In both cases, it is the inability to tolerate abundance in a system because of an endless growth mechanism that causes the destruction of a dynamic encompassing stability. This is in a way how all dynamic stabilities collapse inevitably, but that doesn’t mean that this is a fatal weakness, rather that all things that can be undone eventually do tend to become undone.
Which is all to say, there are systems that cannot handle abundance as a temporary state rather than a final destination never to be reached, but they are systems of cancer. All the dynamically stable systems we can point to whether they in the natural world or in human societies all feature some degree of scarcity, some degree of abundance and yet still manage to develop a shared commons of wealth.
For example, if you watch how Grizzly Bears eat Salmon, they do a shit job of it. They often become distracted in the process of eating a Salmon and just drop it leaving an only half eaten Salmon carcass on the ground wherever they happened to be. The way you understand how scarcity MUST impact systems cannot explain this blatant inefficiency in a natural ecosystem, individuals in nature are supposed to use EVERYTHING they can right? Evolution selects for efficiency right?.. Except it didn’t because it turns out the Grizzly Bears discarding the Salmon ends up transferring a massive amount of nutrients from the Ocean to the Forest. The system benefits from slack, from a giving up of an individual boon for no perceivable immediate collective gain…
You cannot understand the essential aspects of the above example of Grizzly Bears, Salmon and Forests under the mindset that you are approaching this problem from. It would be a logical error of the system for a Grizzly Bear to waste effort beginning to eat a Salmon and then abandoning it for another animal, plant or creature to exploit. The Grizzly Bear should spend the minimal effort to catch only the Salmon it will eat in order to be competitive in an ecosystem that undergoes scarcity… but they don’t… why?
Well, that sounds like an accurate description humanity in the last 1000 years at least.
I think that statement is more supports my current position. You’re pointing out a temporary state, not an enduring condition. I could probably argue that even many of those temporary states of a successful shared commons were potentially built on the exploitation of others outside of those benefiting from the commons, but lets ignore that for now. None of those endured. Every single one has ended, or in some possible isolated cases that may exist today, have not shown they could endure with changing social or geopolitical conditions. These examples don’t live in a vacuum either. Unless the whole of humanity is onboard, a segment could pillage the shared commons of another society if they did not have adequate defense as has been shown in humanities history an uncounted amount of times. So what, in your approach, would change one of these temporary states to a permanent one that humanity would actually implement?
Not right. There is no scarcity of resources for the bears because here bears use a form of violent authoritarianism to ensure resource (salmon in your example) availability for themselves. A dominate bear will kill weaker bears to ensure food, mates, and territory are established. In that sense, it mirrors the human reaction. Again, that points away from a non-violent benevolent society of a workable shared commons.
The only way I can see your example apply to humanity is if you’re suggesting humanity should enforce a class hierarchy where apex predators (small segment of high class humans) get first dibs of the prime resources, and lesser creatures (the middle class) and plants (those in poverty) benefit by what the bears leave behind. Isn’t this the premise of Regan’s much hated “trickle down economics”? I don’t believe you’re suggesting that, but I’m not seeing an alternate interpretation. I’m open to hearing your alternate explanation.
Are you an expert on Bear behavior? How do you know this? How do you explain Bears co-existing nearby while feeding on Salmon without killing one another?
You seem to be absolutely convinced the lens you see reality with is not a lens but reality itself and you are wrong.
Well yes, everything is temporary, but it is much easier for a system to decisively enter abundance and stay there than for it to oscillate back and forth between scarcity and abundance. If everyone has enough resources until ever after there is no reason to fight so bringing up any such example of a system would be less relevant to the argument. The reason I brought up the examples of systems that despite that manage to move between the two states without shared commons being destroyed is because they are more thorough demonstrations of the possibility of stability and shared wealth without needing the kind of violence and control you axiomatically assume is necessary.
NO! You must prove the world in your mind to my satisfaction! Everything is an argument!
I think you are overselling it’s incorrectness and so horseshoeing back around to being like the people who oversell it’s truthfulness. Yes, the tragedy of the commons is misleading if taken in isolation, but something being misleading does not automatically make it scientifically incorrect. Do you have direct evidence or an argument for why the tragedy of the commons isn’t the most likely outcome if the circumstances just so happen to match the assumptions Hardin made?
I am not.
Here you go
https://boingboing.net/2019/03/07/scientific-fraud.html
https://aeon.co/essays/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-is-a-false-and-dangerous-myth
https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/voices/the-tragedy-of-the-tragedy-of-the-commons/
https://news.osu.edu/the-tragedy-of-the-commons--minus-the-tragedy/
https://news.cnrs.fr/opinions/debunking-the-tragedy-of-the-commons
https://landscapewanderer.link/tragedy/
https://discardstudies.com/2019/07/15/the-tragedy-of-the-tragedy-of-the-commons/
https://jacobin.com/2023/10/tragedy-of-the-commons-garrett-hardin-white-supremacy-enclosure-privatization-history
To be clear, I agree with you like 95% of the way, it’s that last 5% that I still think you are overselling and would like you to be more careful with.
The problem is that Hardin’s argument simply isn’t much of a scientific one in the first place and is instead much more of a logical one. (I was being sloppy when I asked for direct evidence, so sorry about that.) Hardin made the massive assumption that people are wholly self-interested. If people are only trying to maximize their own share of the resources regardless of what it might cost others, then it is impossible to escape the competition that creates for the limited amount of resources that the commons provides. All of the examples and articles you’ve brought up attack that assumption and/or focus on the conclusions Hardin made based on those assumptions, but do nothing to actually disprove the fundamental argument behind the tragedy of the commons.
I see what you are saying but my argument is that in real world systems the vast majority of the time it is in the individual’s self interest to enrich and defend a shared wealth/commons.
The idea that it isn’t is inherently a belief not a finding of science and it has been imposed on us through cultural means for political reasons.
You can create narrow conditions where the self interests of the individual existentially diverge from the interests of the group, I don’t dispute that… rather I think Capitalism is monomanically obsessed with creating these systems artificially and through violence and imposed collapse.
I am fumbling at things Naomi Klein has already more brilliantly expressed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine
so like, people can have both bad ideas and good. i don’t know enough about hardin, but the basic concept is a useful model to get people understanding a basic concept. is it a political narrative? i mean it’s macroeconomics. the entire damn field is politics under a veneer. their best model is barely better than flipping a coin.
don’t get me started on micro though, that field is just gambling analysis.
i don’t have a chip on my shoulder or nothin’
We really need to stop throwing away useful terms and concepts because their progenitors don’t turn out to be role models. Knowledge doesn’t always come from perfect sources. “Tragedy of the Commons” has no basis in race as a concept as I understand it, I don’t see why the guy who coined the term being a racist POS means I should take a moral stance on it.
… but, you know, fuck that guy.
supersquirrel: “The betrayal of generations from the 20th century against the future quality of life of humanity will be remembered for thousands of years.” Also supersquirrel: “I am uninterested in comparing the moral qualities of generations. Humans are humans.”