PHILOSOPHY - Rational Choice Theory: Tragedy of the Commons [HD]

In this video, Professor Jonathan Anomaly (Duke and UNC - Chapel Hill) discusses commons tragedies, which are defined as a situation in which the benefits of an action are borne by the individual while the costs are shared by all members of a group.
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Great video, one of the best quality I've seen from wiphi so far (and what a great name "Jonny Anomaly"). Also a subject close to my heart after working some time in research and becoming totally disillusioned by the patent system. Anyone that thinks patents are a good idea need only ponder for a few moments to see that it's supposed to protect the smaller people from the large corporations but in fact it does the opposite. One thing that needs changing right now is the intellectual property rights should never be transferable. If an inventor/song writer/whatever dies then the ideas go into the public domain.

[@BenJamin-rt7ui]

Makes the mistake of confusing Common Ownership will Common Use. Common ownership means owning an equal share of the value derived from that resource. For example, if a State gets royalties from leasing mineral rights for public revenue, this is common ownership. Also, the moral case for intellectual property and patents isn't clear cut. The laws of nature dictate that new ideas are not so much invented but discovered. Being first to discover is rewarded by being the first to capitalise that new idea. IP and patents in this sense are State granted monopoly privileges that harm the rate of progress and are not in the consumer interest.

[@TrotskysBeard1917]

The age of property rights is the age we live in which has been the most destructive and wasteful age of man. This is more ideology than factual

[@MrEndzo]

You are wrong

[@seansense]

Why do you have the right to the product of what I do with my liberty? Why do you wish to enslave me?

[@TrotskysBeard1917]

+S Reilly How did you get to that conclusion from what I said? I'm commenting on the video that claims that when land was held in common it was badly managed, which isn't true. It's terribly managed now while being privately owned and managed by corporations, governments etc.

[@seansense]

I interpreted your statement to be arguing for the destruction of property rights.

[@TheThreatenedSwan]

Kropotkins Beard I guess that's why massive parts of asia and Africa that are in government hands are deforested.

[@BadMouseProductions]

You seem to completely mix up Commonly owned from State owned. Elinor Ostrom has pointed out very distinctly that there are various ways in which large amounts of people can own land and collectively manage it correctly and keep it sustainable.

[@jonathan-anomaly]

+BadMouseProductions I did not "completely mix up" this distinction. Both commonly owned and unowned resources are often depleted for similar reasons: the benefits of use are internalized to the individual (when s/he can get away with it) and the costs are shared by all. Elinor Ostrom is very clear that people do not always manage to solve commons tragedies, even in small groups, and she has always argued that social norms are virtually hopeless in large and heterogenous groups. Here is an excellent paper she published in 2000 that summarizes these points: ostromworkshop.indiana.edu/reprints/R00_11.pdf

[@sidenorna2140]

The modern State is form of a social contract of a group of people in a given region. If the state owns anything is due to the consent of the people. Or if you may, a group of people have bought a mass of land, they all own it and set up rules on who can use it for what reason. The people do not trust everyone in said group to follow the rules, so they hire a guard agency to make sure things are safe and the rules are followed. Guards are not free, so the set up a membership cost... Wait that sounds like forming a State!

[@grasshopper33xx]

How does this work then for preserving things that don't have a profit value to being preserved? Selling a public forest to a private company does nothing to ensure that the private company won't just log all the trees. For me this is the biggest fault in this argument and might be one of the biggest problems the world faces today. Seems like regulation rather than ownership is the only solution I can see.

[@brandonrice6346]

kristian puccio and thats what they want....getting the people i.e YOU begging for their oppression and regulation.

[@nicholas8479]

Can someone explain his challenge in terms of the hoarding of toilet paper during this coronavirus pandemic?

[@stormy5377]

That last name tho

[@garethham]

So essentially, we need to create strong global cohesion, and eliminate scarcity as much as possible! - A Resource Based Economic Model?

[@MrEndzo]

no, the need is real capitalism

[@TheThreatenedSwan]

Gareth Ham No, not at all

[@GustavoRivasMendez]

Good luck creating global cohesion among billions of people. It would require a level of survailance so strong, that it would violate basic human rights of privacy and liberty. That doesn't mean we don't require indeed a level of global cohesion, but just doing that and "eliminating scarcity" (good luck with that as well) is surely not the solution. The solution needs to be multifaceted, with free market, government regulation, social conscience, global cooperation, local freedom, property right protections, property right exceptions, etc. Finding a correct balance is complicated, but that is politics, and its complicated, and that's why people scream at each other at congresses all over the world.

[@deletemymind565]

The tragedy of the commons is actually a tragedy of "no man's land". The difference should be obvious: -The commons belong everyone; the "no man's land" belongs no one. -For the commons are the municipality responsible; for the "no man's land" nobody. -For the commons there are usage rules which are established and monitored by the municipality; for the "no man's land" there is nothing like that. In addition, here is an excerpt from "Theorien alternativen Wirtschaftens" by Gisela Notz (translated by me): "In economics, it is referred to as" tragedy of the commons", that their general use leads to their overuse or damage, since the people are not able to regulate social sharing, that is: What belongs to everyone, seems no one to be worth something. Single individuals use public goods unduly at the expense of all. The neoclassical economics concludes that the solution of environmental problems is impossible if the market and the state fails. By contrast, Ostrom turns. She believes that institutions can crucially contribute to disarm this "tragedy of the commons". As part of case studies, on the use of community pastures, irrigation systems and fishing grounds, that she has created for research, she found a lot more examples of successful community usage of property as the contrary. She highlighted it with works from geologists, historians and anthropologists. Their conclusion is that not privatization and market mechanisms, nor government controls and rules are useful for a sustainable, durable successful use of common goods because both threaten harmful overuse. "Institutionalized regional cooperation of stakeholders on the municipal or cooperative level", (i.e. Commons) would function better. Ostrom warns to wait for global solutions (e.g. a global climate agreement); real opportunities to act have to be tested at the local level. However, she calls for clear principles, which are determined and monitored by all participants in common, for the management of common resources. The use of mild penalties for violations is not ruled out. She refers to on self-organized local groups of the alternative economy, which have crosslinked globally - in the cities, in the regions of the USA and Europe and also in developing countries. Alternative-economic ecology-oriented projects have followed mainly the important task of collecting experimental experience of the careful use of the commons on a networked level. The increasing privatization and expropriation-processes of Commons confronts the actors also with new tasks. Finally, it is important to produce new Commons, namely in the material and immaterial area. Inspiring for this purpose is also the theoretical approaches for an economy beyond commodity production and the market (so-called peer-economy). Peer-production always takes place in communities, where people in an open, never completed process determine the rules, organization- and institutionalization form, which correspond best to the attainment of their aims. In free cooperation, these self-organized communities manufactures products that are usually commons and freely available to all (or at least for all involved in the project). Anyone who have been involved in alternative economic projects knows, that joint production can make fun and that it can be pleasant and satisfying."

[@mattiassollerman]

Would be awesome if the illustrations were hand made, like those of RSA Animate. ^^

[@WirelessPhilosophy]

Mattias Sollerman Hi Matt! We completely agree. Those guys do incredible work and were our direct inspiration for the videos we made. When we first mapping out this project we contacted them and the price per video would be north of 10-15k. Our videos usually end up costing us around 300-500. This is an entirely free project (all of us are philosophy grad students) so it just wasn't affordable. But just wanted to say we completely understand the comment and completely agree.

[@mattiassollerman]

Wireless Philosophy Just re watched one of their videos and must say I had forgotten how incredibly sophisticated they are! Real works of art. No need for such extravagance. Just keep the content coming. ^^ Regards.

[@abbjon1]

Tragedy of the commons, it seems to me is only an issue in a market system.

[@jonathan-anomaly]

abbjon1 It's more general than a problem with markets. In fact, the source of the problem is typically with either unowned or jointly owned resources, as occurs in socialist societies. Here's the best overview of why that's the case: davidschmidtz.com/sites/default/files/research-paper/3/InstitutionProperty2012.pdf

[@AndyHoke]

The tragedy is that no one bothered to breed the birds for the predictable, known rate of human consumption. Do they taste like chicken?