To summarise on game theory. The whole discipline is based on maximizing, yes, maximizing negative externalities iff utility maximization can take place. Hallmark traits of ethics being love, compassion, and doing things for the greater good are devoid in it's logic.

It's the bastard child of Skinnerian behaviorism in my view.

Doubtless some great economist will come along and reify self interest to be inclusive of cooperative behavior, which is an ongoing task in the field today. But fundamental changes would have to take place in the field before that ever happens.

@Isaac, @Hanover

So the argument has degenerated into whether indigenous folk have better teeth.

The take home in this thread is no great revelation; it's just that I noticed how clearly the supposed tragedy of the commons displays the tragedy of some ways of thinking about economics.

It reinforced a prejudice that grew in me after reading Small is Beautiful as a child. Economics is a logic, a language that allows us to set out what will happen given certain assumptions, certain deeds, on the part of the players. It has long become a fetish; worshiped for powers attributed to the "free market" to make all things clean and pure. The Commons displays how the assumption that Greed is All leads to tragedy; A tragedy avoided simply by taking an ethical stance.

That has little to do with the teeth of the natives.

It has long become a fetish; worshiped for powers attributed to the "free market" to make all things clean and pure — Banno

This at least acknowledges the straw man you've been fighting all along attempting to attribute to me. There's nothing free market libertarian in my position. I argued for for democratic regulation. I gave full nod to the commoners to protect their commons.

I don't give a flying fuck what you believe. your arguments are simply not that interesting.

Edit: Thinking on that, what the fuck is a flying fuck?

Doubtless some great economist will come along and reify self interest to be inclusive of cooperative behavior, which is an ongoing task in the field today. — Wallows

The usual approach is to make cooperative behaviour drop out of greed, by claiming that it's the best way to get what you want.

But of course that entirely misses the point.

I don't give a flying fuck what you believe. your arguments are simply not that interesting. — Banno

But I was so vying for your affection.

Edit: Thinking on that, what the fuck is a flying fuck? — Banno

Not sure, but it sounds like a playful question designed to detract from the obnoxiousness of your post above.

SO there is nothing free market libertarian in your position, but you vehemently object to the criticism of free market libertarian views presented in the OP...?

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. — Banno

A few cheats, for sure. That's what happened to Martin Shkreli. I'm not going to defend him, because he's a 24k piece of shit, but! he defended himself, occasionally, along these lines: 'I'm just a scapegoat for Big Pharm which does what I did every day, but even worse.- and he's right. He was tv-ready loatheable, and his public dressing-down drew off heat from everyone else.

This guy introduced A MILLION COWS plus he had a bad attitude (draws attention away from the well-pr-trained people who do far worse.)

Anti-pharm demographics went wild and reveled in his downfall, then quieted down to the occasional facebook meme.

'A few cheats' sustains an order, temporarily. Hence the insatiable, ever-growing, hunger for scandal, which appeases the need to see justice served. Scraps for that appetite. But it won't lead us to maintain the commons. That guy had way too many cows and he got his just desserts. So let us continue, keeping an eye out for the next guy with too many cows. And so on. Meanwhile the commons goes to pot and eagle-eyes real eatate men wait for a prime price to buy.

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. — Banno

In classical China, if we're talking about the same thing/era, the independent council was made of people recruited to serve an authoritarian state. They did give up worldly things, but only through a intricate system of morality involving respect for elders, the mandate of heaven, and so forth. a universal morality of strict obedience (obedience over everything) leading to recruitment from the provinces, to be brought to the center.

An ever starker example can be drawn from the Ottoman Empire and the 'Devshirme'. The Ottoman Empire, during this period, wouldn't populate their higher-courts with insiders, but with children kidnapped. These kidnapped kids would be objective in relation to court politics, due not only to their lack of connection to dynasties, but also to the sheer trauma of capture. The emotional 'snipping ' (and, irc also physical snipping)- of capture.Thus they were able to serve the Ottoman state objectively. this still happens , but in subtler ways.

I think we're largely in agreement that the missing ingredient is a moral/ethical one ---but, for the same reason I tried to show you can't self-consciously call a guiding ideology a guiding ideology without ruining it, you can't simply say we need a moral/ethical 'ought' because we need a moral/ethical ought. Which makes me feel like - we have to 'build' one. And I don't think that's even it, because it's too top down. We have to suss out the moral/ethical order that's already there, waiting to precipitate.

Both the Ottoman and Chinese models rely on emotional 'snips' which let people decide soberly, from a macro-perspective. And the most 'snipped' people of all are post-hayekian neoliberals who can crunch the economic numbers without guilt. And that doesn't work. Because they leave the most important thing out.

So the interesting question, in my mind, isn't the need for a universal ought. It's the pragmatic one - involving rhetoric, strategy, empathy, poetics, experience - of how you find and disseminate one.

That has little to do with the teeth of the natives. — Banno

Actually, it has everything to do with the teeth of natives. The point of the commons is about the ethics of managing shared resources. The choices are either regulated individual competition (whether those regulations are democratically or dictatorially arrived at is irrelevant), or ethically driven egalitarianism.

Hunter-gatherers lived on one massive common and their social structure was ethically egalitarian. Whether that system 'worked' (or whether we could take some bits of it and apply them to our modern society) is absolutely the crux of the matter.

In the 'it never worked' corner are exactly the kind of colonial myths that @Hanover keeps bringing up. Without competition we'll stagnate. Dispelling them is pretty much foundational to any argument that claims egalitarian ethics can work.

Snips. Dibs not me.

How strange for anyone not to realize we are social mammals? with the complex set of motives that entails. Cuo buono: who benefits from us thinking that we are completely separate monads in a completely modular individualistic society. It sure isn't everyone. And it sure isn't the best and brightest, though some people with certain skills and intelligence will be the beneficiaries.

A post in "The Power of Truth"

Drawing attention again to the conundrum of personal choice as against social requirement.

re #3:

You'll have to recruit a dictator or totalitarian structure to create and enforce this sort of cultural uniformity.

wrong thread, sorry.

No, no. This is the Right thread.

I saw that last post was two years ago, figured out how I got here, went back where I was, deleted this. I'm new. :sweat:

I'm happy to have one of my dead threads re-animated, even if by accident. A welcome zombie.

The tragedy of the commons is used by neoliberals as an excuse for privatization.

edit, oh I just noticed that's in the op

There is one obvious answer: Get all domestic/private animals off public land. Better yet, shoot them in place so they can go back into the soil from which they profited. Then re-wild with bison, etc.

In other words, don't let the commons be used for extractive private profit. Tell the free marketers to go pay fair market value to graze their range maggots on private land.

Zombie thread but let's milk it dry.

It all boils down to the much-discussed and highly-regarded notion of cooperation. Given a common pasture (resource), people who use it could do so productively and for a long time if only they work together - don't overgraze (limit consumption) among other things. However, even though we've defined ourselves as social animals and have attributed our success to being such, our cooperative behavior can't hold a candle to that of other social creatures like bees and ants.

Perhaps we need to put the notion of social existence under the microscope. Social existence is simply a group of individuals of the same species banding together in order that it gain a survival advantage over other species whether themselves social or solitary. In other words, social existence is designed to work against external threats and although this may require cooperation between individuals of a social group, the cooperative "spirit" that evolved in us is probably just that much as required to fend off external dangers and no more. What this means is the level of cooperation necessary to forestall/mitigate/end the tragedy of commons never evolved in us. That the protagonists in this tragic tale are all human doesn't help - we instinctively treat each other as allies and, implicit in that, is the assumption that no harm will come from doing what comes naturally to us, taking our cattle to graze for example. I guess what I'm getting at is that we're failing to notice internal threats to our social structure. The fact that such "threats" are subtle and not like the direct frontal assault of pride of lions, something our proto-social ancestors probably faced on a daily basis, makes it almost impossible to detect such threats and the risks involved.

Thus the tragedy of the commons is simply an indication that humans are somewhere in between a completely solitary existence (tigers, leopards) and a full-fledged social way of life (bees, ants)

I feel like it must've taken some sophistry to shrug the basic dig against industrialization, being that people were freer under feudalism.

even though we've defined ourselves as social animals and have attributed our success to being such, our cooperative behaviour can't hold a candle to that of other social creatures like bees and ants. — TheMadFool

...and you'd be the centralized authority, in control of the commons, ensuring that people don't do what's in their own self interest, but limit their needs and wants to what's good for the environment, would you? I'm so glad you are impervious to corruption, because otherwise such power could drive a fool mad!

However, even though we've defined ourselves as social animals and have attributed our success to being such, our cooperative behavior can't hold a candle to that of other social creatures like bees and ants. — TheMadFool

Ants and bees don't "cooperate" in the way that humans do. Ants have no concept of the entirety they're a part of. They simply do some task. An insect colony is more akin to a machine driven by a machine learning algorithm than a society.

I guess what I'm getting at is that we're failing to notice internal threats to our social structure. The fact that such "threats" are subtle and not like the direct frontal assault of pride of lions, something our proto-social ancestors probably faced on a daily basis, makes it almost impossible to detect such threats and the risks involved. — TheMadFool

I think you're giving humans very little credit here. We're very good at spotting internal threats - for example people who don't play by the rules. But we're evolved to live in bands of a few dozen individuals, so we're less capable at seeing and reacting to systemic issues caused by the hugely complicated economic systems we have created.

I'm so glad you are impervious to corruption, because otherwise such power could drive a fool mad! — counterpunch

Isn't that why we have elections?

I'm so glad you are impervious to corruption, because otherwise such power could drive a fool mad!
— counterpunch

Isn't that why we have elections? — Echarmion

Have you never noticed how the right represent peoples interests whereas the left assume, the people exist to represent their interests? Democratic communism is an oxymoron. People would vote for the freedom of self interest every time! A command economy necessarily implies totalitarian government - prone to corruption - and is inclined to genocide. Do bees and ants have democracy? No. It's a dictatorship. Drones exists to serve the queen, and are disposable. Is that a model you would emulate for human beings?

Have you never noticed how the right represent peoples interests whereas the left assume, the people exist to represent their interests? — counterpunch

I have not, but then I'm not caught up in some ideological straightjacket.

Democratic communism is an oxymoron. — counterpunch

It is indeed, because communism would imply there is no "ruling" at all.

People would vote for the freedom of self interest every time! A command economy necessarily implies totalitarian government - prone to corruption - and inclined to genocide when its latest five year plan falls short. — counterpunch

There are some things that make sense having under a "command economy". Vaccine production during a pandemic, for example. Or war materiel during a war. Basically, whenever you don't care about arbitrage effects and just want to put maximum effort towards one goal.

I'd say that is why the USSR managed to get the first man into orbit, despite being significantly weaker economically than the US. But to be honest I don't actually know enough about the history of the space race to be sure.

Have you never noticed how the right represent peoples interests whereas the left assume, the people exist to represent their interests? — counterpunch

In a functioning democracy, those that only assume to represent the people's interests will have the disastrous surprise defeat in the elections. And those can be also on the right. One might think this might improve things, but many times it doesn't, especially if the winners are populists, again who can be either on the right or the left. Populists are great in portraying every problem of having emerged because of the evil corrupt rulers. And usually that's all they have, apart of being incapable of reaching any kind of consensus in the democratic process and not having actual solutions to the problems. If they are also authoritarians, what a great mess it will be.

But this is a bit off the subject.

I think this thread became current because of @Banno in another thread saying:

The tragedy of the commons is a capitalist myth. — Banno

I asked him why it's so. I might have not noticed his answer...

Laika was the first dog in space and Yuri Gagarin was, in point of fact, the first person in space. The Soviet Union also achieved its goal of educating its entire populace. They had one of the highest literacy rates in the world, which has carried over into the Russian Federation today.

I think that the "command economy" that @counterpunch is referring to is the Collectivization that was put into place in opposition to Vladimir Lenin's New Economic Policy. I'm not sure what the history of the Soviet Union has to do with any of this, though.

I have not, but then I'm not caught up in some ideological straightjacket. — Echarmion

Well think about it. Every time Labour/Dems lose an election, it's the fault of the electorate. They're stupid, racist or greedy, and that's why the left didn't win. It's not that the left failed to represent the interests of voters. It's the voters who are at fault, every time.

It is indeed, because communism would imply there is no "ruling" at all. — Echarmion

Then how do you prevent the individual adding cows to the common grazing land until it's a desert?

There are some things that make sense having under a "command economy". Vaccine production during a pandemic, for example. — Echarmion

Private companies developed vaccines to combat the pandemic. The government merely created the market by pre-purchasing supplies. That aside, all economies are mixed to a greater or lesser extent. I'm not a free market fundamentalist - but capitalist economy is necessary to personal and political freedom.