It will not be that surprising to hear that I am in favour of the last option; and that despite it being despised of economists. It won't work, that say, because folk will always take more than they ought. Someone will sneak in an extra cow.

And doubtless they are right. But I still prefer the third option.

Now I guess there may be a fourth, fifth or sixth option that I hadn't even considered upon.

SO you folk might be able to help me out here.

Shooting folk just seems a tad antisocial, so that's why that's out.

There's some stuff that is damn hard to privatise. I mean, full credit to... carbon credits (pun unintended), but they don't seem to work all that well. And as for the Murray-Darling Basin Authority...

Well, ask the fish what they think.

SO you folk might be able to help me out here. — Banno

Pass a law limiting the number of cows you can have and charge a fee for usage so that the land can be maintained?

How would that be different from selling hunting licenses and placing limits on how many deer you can kill like they do now?

Pass a law limiting the number of cows you can have and charge a fee for usage so that the land can be maintained? — Hanover

So that's both the Big Fat Dictator solution and the Privatisation solution all mixed up. Not new.

How would that be different from selling hunting licenses and placing limits on how many deer you can kill like they do now? — Hanover

You tell me.

You tell me. — Banno

It's not different, and it works. There are plenty of fish to be caught and deer to hunt to this day. There are also open grazing states out west, and there are still plenty of cattle and meat at the butcher.

Way back when I prosecuted folks who had too many trout in the boat. $150 for each extra trout kept plenty in the river

Definitely 3 so long as it is voluntary. Unfortunately that might take a while.

Way back when I prosecuted folks who had too many trout in the boat. $150 for each extra trout kept plenty in the river — Hanover

Ah - so you want to be the Big Fat Dictator.

Doesn't help.

Ordering popcorn now.

:blush: Happy to entertain.

I hope this thread can do better than just attract Hangover and his Good Ol' Boy economics.

Ah - so you want to be the Big Fat Dictator.

Doesn't help. — Banno

I was a county worker. We weren't a dictatorship, but a democracy. It was the community that decreed how the commons were divvied up.

In this analysis, you were the dictator. You charged a fee so that those with no money could not go fishing, and said that was fair. Then you shot those who were found with too many fish. The dishonest ones had Fish Pie.

Option 3 is better than a combination of options one and two.

We need to make more use of Shunning.

Shun folk who put two cows on the Commons.

If you put two cows on the commons, we should all move away from you when you go to the Pub for a beer after work.

You charged a fee so that those with no money could not go fishing, and said that was fair. Then you shot those who were found with too many fish. The dishonest ones had Fish Pie. — Banno

The state charged a nominal license fee to fish. The fine was for catching more than your limit. If you couldn't pay your fine, you could pick up cans off the side of the road.

The dishonest ones were the ones I dealt with who got caught by the fish and game wardens.

So I'm not buying you a round, Mr @Hanover.

Pointing out that you were the dictator over and over again is not that helpful.

@Baden is going to lose interest if the only one talking is @Hanover.

The third option seems to me to be the one spoken of by First Nations folk. Respect for the world in which we are embedded, rejection of excessive individualism, all that airy-fairy stuff economists hate.

Sorry but can't resist....

FEUDALISM
You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

PURE SOCIALISM
You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.

BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM
You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and as many eggs as the regulations say you should need.

FASCISM
You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.

PURE COMMUNISM
You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM
You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

DICTATORSHIP
You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.

SINGAPOREAN DEMOCRACY
You have two cows. The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals in an apartment.

MILITARIANISM
You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you into the Armed Services.

PURE DEMOCRACY
You have two cows. Your neighbours decide who gets the milk.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY
You have two cows. Your neighbours pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair "Cowgate".

BRITISH DEMOCRACY
You have two cows. You feed them sheeps' brains and they go mad. The government doesn't do anything.

BUREAUCRACY
You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. After that it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

ANARCHY
You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbours try to kill you and take the cows.

CAPITALISM
You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

ENRON CAPITALISM
You have two cows. You sell three of them to your public-listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt / equity swap with associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping five cows. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the rights to all seven cows' milk back to the listed company. The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.

ENVIRONMENTALISM
You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.

FEMINISM: You have two cows. They get married and adopt a veal calf.

TOTALITARIANISM
You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
You are associated with (the concept of "ownership" is a symbol of the phallo - centric, war - mongering, intolerant past) two differently - aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non - specified gender.

COUNTER CULTURE
Wow, dude, there's like ... these two cows, man. You got to have some of this milk.

SURREALISM
You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

And the ethics espoused in Option Three is far from Singer's utilitarianism. It's not enlightened self-interest. Caring for the commons is a worthwhile ethical goal in itself.

Noice.

But I don't think you are taking this seriously enough.

If you want to save the world and stuff, you gotta sing loud.

Can't disagree in the slightest. Isn't this what environmentalism is basically about? Is that what the thread is basically about? Sorry if I was mischievous in posting that meme but even though it's funny, it also does convey something real.

I like the meme. I'm all for the counterculture version - I'm sure Wittgenstein would be, too: the stuff that is really important cannot be put into words. Just try some of this milk.

But I fear stuff is made more complex than that.

@T Clark will be along soon to tell us that this is a trivial thread.

I nearly call this thread The Tragedy of Economics.

The tragedy of the commons comes to pass because each person is assumed to be maximising there own self-interest in a rational way.

The solution to the tragedy of the commons must lie outside of that assumption, and hence outside of economics.

You establish a regulatory body like the National Forest Service that employs scientists to study the commons and provide recommendations for use that ensures renewability. Those recommendations turn into regulations that have teeth, for instance transgressors lose their cows, which are handed over to public bodies. Some American park land is made up of land that was confiscated due to over harvesting of timber or just incorrect harvesting procedures.

Then you wait until the kind of president Hanover prefers defunds and dismantles the regulatory body and it all turns to shit.

You... — frank

Not I.

A regulatory body with teeth falls under the Big Fat Dictator solution. All well and good, but I want here to expose the morality of the very need for such a solution.

Sure, Let's work out how many cows the commons will support. Let's also consider that having more cows than you ought is unethical. And that's what is missing from the economic analysis.

Accepting the economic, amoral analysis has led to the situation we are in now, where those with more cows on the common are somehow considered virtuous.

You're sounding too much like unenlightened. I'm out.

3. Develop a culture that treats the commons with respect. — Banno

This! Studying hunter/gatherer societies would probably be instructive; it seems they are ethically way ahead of us. The problems really started with the advent of agriculture, if what has been observed in contemporary hunter/ gatherer groups is any indication

So with agriculture begins, and there now remains, the general problem of ownership; it's not clear how that could be deliberately wound back. Globalism seems to greatly intensify the problem of ownership and responsibility (not to mention its contribution to global warming and the potential for pandemics with people and goods being shipped all over the place). If civilization collapses our current institutions of ownership will be null and void. Will anarchy reign or will new cooperative communities spring up and predominate? This may well depend in part at least on how people are educated from now on.

In general the tragedy of the commons goes hand in hand with the tragedy of loss of community.

Why?

Like a guiltfest accomplishes anything.