The public voted for Trump.

Not a good track record. — Banno

So you're going to tell them their preferences, wants, desires?

Excellent post. Stopping now for a sleep and a think.

The public voted for Trump. — Banno

As you know, the majority of the people did NOT vote for trump.

Yes. And? Is there a problem with "tedious" in this context? Do you want adventure and excitement every day? Most cities have public parks. Boston (Massachusetts, USA) in addition to parks has Boston Common, a commons set aside 1634 as a commons for grazing cows (until 1830), 50 acres downtown with nothing on it but grass, trees, a frog-pond and a small bandstand; maintained by a mix of public and private effort, policed by city police, and used every sunny day by thousands who act like they own it - which they do. 385 years of mainly tedium in maintenance, protection, and governance.

The tedium, in our context, is in reality a functioning that is steady, reliable, and that produces over a long time a desired result. Calling it tedium is a solecism.

Quite true. Bu that even a near minority did, carries my point.

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

Yes, but how is that culture developed? Elinor Ostrom (a political economist) won a Nobel prize in 2009 for her findings on this:

Contribution: Challenged the conventional wisdom by demonstrating how local property can be successfully managed by local commons without any regulation by central authorities or privatization.
...
Work: It was long unanimously held among economists that natural resources that were collectively used by their users would be over-exploited and destroyed in the long-term. Elinor Ostrom disproved this idea by conducting field studies on how people in small, local communities manage shared natural resources, such as pastures, fishing waters, and forests. She showed that when natural resources are jointly used by their users, in time, rules are established for how these are to be cared for and used in a way that is both economically and ecologically sustainable. — Elinor Ostrom - Nobel Prize

Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues looked at how real-world communities manage communal resources, such as fisheries, land irrigation systems, and farmlands, and they identified a number of factors conducive to successful resource management. One factor is the resource itself; resources with definable boundaries (e.g., land) can be preserved much more easily. A second factor is resource dependence; there must be a perceptible threat of resource depletion, and it must be difficult to find substitutes. The third is the presence of a community; small and stable populations with a thick social network and social norms promoting conservation do better.[47] A final condition is that there be appropriate community-based rules and procedures in place with built-in incentives for responsible use and punishments for overuse. When the commons is taken over by non-locals, those solutions can no longer be used. — Non-governmental solution - Wikipedia

Those "community-based rules and procedures" are an example of internalizing the externalities that Wallows mentioned. Their function is to ensure that those that benefit from the shared resource also bear the costs of their use that would otherwise be borne by others.

And, finally:

A resource arrangement that works in practice can work in theory. — Ostram's law

Though don't we have external ends, now? I think wealth acquisition is a kind of external end, no? And, in our current environment at least, it's the insatiable desire for wealth meeting the finite resources required for that wealth that's ruining our commons. Or do you mean that the opposition, in eliminating said telos, doesn't offer anything and so just isn't compelling? — Moliere

Definitely wealth acquisition is an external end - its just not a moral one. It's relentlessly amoral, in fact, even avowedly so - Hayek says markets are amoral, in principle, and quietly laments that fact while maintaining its just the way it is.

But I'm not championing external ends as ... ends in themselves. I'm saying they're necessary and the political (and personal!) struggle is finding shared ends to work toward.

I also want to hear more....I just want to hear realistic, pragmatic approaches and suggestions.I think we're on the same page, I'm just being a little bit of a bloviating diva about it.

Going to university to learn a trade...

That's the crack in education, right there. — Banno

Sure. Universities are full of cracks, not to mention quacks.

...abd that's were we went wrong. It is a moral equation. That's the point of this thread - to point out that the solution is neither political big fat dictators nor economic privatisation, but showing respect fort the commons. — Banno

If the common folk pass a law through the democratic process, then obviously the common folk do show respect for the commons. The reason they allow only 4 trout per line is because they think everyone should get a fair shake at catching trout. Fairness seems like a moral question to question to me to some extent.

You're stuck calling an agreement among the townsfolk as to how the commons should be fairly divided a dictatorial act. I don't follow that. Politics, in a democracy, is people collaborating and coming to a agreed upon solution.

If true, that's a problem, because if the happy world succeeds in getting rid of the cheats, it loses the for-the-sake-of-which or toward-which (to speak in faux-heidegger) that sustains social responsibility. On a broader scale, 'getting rid of the cheats' seems to be an ethical goal that corresponds to a cyclically repeated stage of 'corruption' or 'decadence' and usually leads to new cheats. The most obvious recent example being Stalinism. — csalisbury

OK, so we keep a few cheats on to serve as bad examples...

Actually, a fairytale about how putting too many cows on the commons leads to disaster is the usual approach.

1. A Big Fat Dictator who shoots anyone who tries to put two cows on the commons.
2. Sell the commons, making it private so that folk take care of it. (We might call this the Selfish Git solution)
3. Develop a culture that treats the commons with respect. — Banno

4. Find an economic model that supports the commons.

I wonder what happens after the tragedy of the commons? Life goes on so the tragedy can't be the final word. Let's say the land gets ruined by overgrazing and now nobody can raise cows and make money. So now what happens? Does the land no longer have any use? Does nature never recover? Is there no technology that comes along and introduces grass that can support more cows?

Your thought experiment seems to treat the world as some steady-state entity. This used to be the way to estimate the carrying capacity of Earth. But then it was realized that humans alter that equation, creating higher yield crops, making deserts bloom, and so on. So now the carrying capacity is estimated to be around 10 billion. But some say we could increase that by building huge arcologies, genetic engineering and advanced nanotech and replicators.

But a technocratic kibosh on over-fishing is different from a Levitican or Deuteronomic kibosh on promiscuous thread-weaving because the former is self-consciously an attempt to maintain equilibrium, while the latter is shot-through with cosmic significance and is enmeshed in epically understood historical struggle. — csalisbury

One of the great virtues of the Westminster system was a professional body called the Civil Service. In the fairytail these folk gave up worldly things in pursuit of the good of the nation. They gave independent and courageous advice to whomever was in government, while standing outside of the political process.

A similar thing was dreamed of in Classical China.

I wonder what happens after the tragedy of the commons? — Marchesk

It usually gets subdivided by a real estate developer.

Stock routes may be the largest commons.

Set aside for drovers to move cattle on hoof, these "long paddocks" are now vital resources for biodiversity and the movement of species in the face of climate change.

So, of course, the thinking at present is that they be sold off unless they can be shown to earn a profit.

4. Find an economic model that supports the commons. — Marchesk

Does this say anything more than:

4. Find a fourth option.

The number of cows that the paddock can sustain is not an issue that can be settled by a poll.

OK, so we keep a few cheats on to serve as bad examples... — Banno

Luckily it's out of our hands; it's hard to believe there has ever been a human community without its share, however small, of cheats. It's just a matter of natural variation.

Actually, a fairytale about how putting too many cows on the commons leads to disaster is the usual approach. — Banno

Fairytale indeed, if you believe this guy.

Definitely wealth acquisition is an external end - its just not a moral one. It's relentlessly amoral, in fact, even avowedly so - Hayek says markets are amoral, in principle, and quietly laments that fact while maintaining its just the way it is. — csalisbury

OK! I, for whatever reason, didn't pick up on the emphasis on morality.

Reread your posts, and they're interesting, but I don't have more to say right now. The brain-box is tired at the end of my work-week :D.

But I'm not championing external ends as ... ends in themselves. I'm saying they're necessary and the political (and personal!) struggle is finding shared ends to work toward. — csalisbury

Cool.

I also want to hear more....I just want to hear realistic, pragmatic approaches and suggestions.I think we're on the same page, I'm just being a little bit of a bloviating diva about it.

I wouldn't say you're being a diva, bloviating or otherwise. I wouldn't want to hear more if I thought you that ;).

And I think we're basically on the same page. At the very least close enough that discussion would be fruitful.

I guess I'd like to dig more into this notion of realism and pragmatism -- though I don't want to take too much away from the thread either, so I'll try and stay focused on the notion of the commons. I've been taking the environment as a kind of example of the commons, though maybe that's too broad. What do you think?

I was using fairytail in a more Tolkien sense: a tale that grows in the telling, showing what you ought do.

But, yes.

True, fairytales are predominately moral tales, and no doubt far more effective, insofar as they involve the imagination and emotions, than lists of prescriptions and proscriptions.

Put all the Cattle on the long paddock.

The number of cows that the paddock can sustain is not an issue that can be settled by a poll. — Banno

Is the sustainability of the paddock fixed to a certain number of cows?

But https://terrastendo.net/2013/03/26/livestock-and-climate-why-allan-savory-is-not-a-saviour/

The number of cows that the paddock can sustain is not an issue that can be settled by a poll. — Banno

It can better be settled by the collaborative decision of the group (as I suggest) than by each person's conscience (as you suggest).

Or. do you now imply a whole new theory, asserting the question of the good for the commons is empirical and within the purview of the scientist dictator?

You're an odd little fish. The carrying capacity of the paddock might be found by a bit of science. What to do about that carrying capacity is a different sort of question.

You do understand that, I trust.

Cattle farming is immoral. How could you not realize that?

Right, if his analysis is correct then he should not be believed.

Perhaps not all of them then? Or perhaps not any? Make do with kangaroo and emu meat instead?

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

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".

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.

These are the best, thank you Wayfarer :lol:

You're an odd little fish. The carrying capacity of the paddock might be found by a bit of science. What to do about that carrying capacity is a different sort of question.

You do understand that, I trust. — Banno

What to do about the carrying capacity of the paddock can be determined by science, likely by the Democracy (at least through trial and error), but how to go about that cannot be determined by resorting to one's conscience as far as I can see. It's one thing to say you want for it all to be fair and another to arrive at an actual figure that represents fairness.

Anyway, I look at the world and don't see a tragedy of the commons. I see a world with more food and access to resources than ever before. Those cultures, of what of them that are left, even in their still unspoiled environments, who hunt and gather ethically, making certain to leave to nature what is owed nature, live and die with the amount of rainfall in every season, and some even survive into their 40s.

The point being that privatization and democratic rule have led to great prosperity, so much so that you can sit in your living room and tell me I'm an odd little fish on this invention of the internet that didn't spring forth through the magic of a rising social conscience, but through privatization, the incentives inherent in capitalism, and through the extraction from the land of its many great resources, a good amount of which has fallen into the hands of the few, although very clearly the more capable few.

You are left with the unfortunate truth that this system you have declared unethical works, with only your doomsday predictions of collapse as your justification for hastening its collapse today.

Those cultures, of what of them that are left, even in their still unspoiled environments, who hunt and gather ethically, making certain to leave to nature what is owed nature, live and die with the amount of rainfall in every season, and some even survive into their 40s. — Hanover

This is just such a tired old trope. Among most hunter-gatherer groups those making it past the age of 5 live to an average 65 years, the same life expectancy of modern Glasgow. What drags the average life expectancy down is a high infant mortality rate (lots of people dying at 4 is going to make the average age at death much lower).

So if you want to elbow in the whole of the capitalist infrastructure as a cause of greater life expectancy to better fit your world view, then be my guest. But to anyone looking objectively at it, one thing and one thing alone is responsible for the change in life expectancy and that's better neonatal medical care.

To support your position, you'd have to show how the entire capitalist infrastructure was, in it's entirety, a necessary factor in improving neonatal care and that such improvements could not possibly have been brought about any other way.