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823 sats \ 9 replies \ @Undisciplined 1 Jun \ on: The tragedy of the commons is a false and dangerous myth econ

I don't think it's right to say "tragedy of the commons is false". It's more accurate to say that the conceptualization of private vs public was insufficiently nuanced.

The kind of community norms and regulation that Oster talks about is functionally the same as a private system where each community member has a sort of easement over the resource. In both systems, it's essential that non-community members be excluded from free access.

The whole point of tragedy of the commons is that scarce resources can't be freely available to everyone, without being depleted at a suboptimal rate. That remains true.

71 sats \ 2 replies \ @SimpleStacker 1 Jun

Came here to say this, you beat me to it.

I think one of the takeaways of Ostrom's work is that stakeholders can come up with their own solutions. You don't need a top down central planner to come up with solutions for them.

I wonder how Ostrom is viewed by the progressive left and by the libertarians.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 1 Jun

They can come up with their own solutions, but the conclusion of her work iirc was that working solutions follow a similar, complicated framework.

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 1 Jun

The social enforcement of these norms can be far more harsh than most of us would find palatable.

71 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury 1 Jun

Well put.

My additional gloss would be that basically every pronouncement on issues pertaining to "public", "private" and (especially) "the state" is insufficiently nuanced. If your mental models of the world are caricatures, you will be wrong in perpetuity, which seems a pretty accurate description of things as best I can tell.

27 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 1 Jun

It reminds me of discussions we've had about "rights". "Public" and "private" are often useful shorthands, but on the edges shorthands don't always hold up.

92 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 1 Jun

I had a similar reaction to the title. I'm surprised the author felt comfortable writing it after observing several commons that were functioning but fraught with discord.

90 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford 1 Jun

Even if you don't end up on the anarchist side being aware of the problems with state ownership and the complexities it creates helps you see many things more clearly.

So many just assume the status quo is like a law of nature.

52 sats \ 1 reply \ @drlh 2 Jun

I think it's right to say, at least for original study because it is based on the fact that fisher would continue to take fish from the pond on everyone's detriment. But this assumption breaks when you think of the fisher's motivation: what he gonna do with it? Sell to everyone else? There is no market stipulated in the issue afaik. And primitive people are ready to kill when you stupidly erode natural resources.

Limited resources create natural monopolies that's true, and usually people don't benefit from rich resources under their soils, only a handfull of elite.

31 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 2 Jun

Look at the Chinese fishing fleet off the coast of Argentina for the counter to that point.

The community still has to exert their ownership wrt to outsiders, which means they resolved the tragedy of the commons internally, by making it not a real commons.