The tragedy of the commons

Americans: "Tragedy of the Commons proves that people are incapable of working together for mutual benefit, because personal greed will always lead to the devastation of the collective common good."

Chinese: "Why do you not simply arrest and punish the bad actors in your society when they overstep and impede on the general welfare?"

Americans: "Because that's fascism. Also, we're arresting and deporting you for asking."

The Tragedy of the Commons was popularized by a man who was anti-immigrant and pro-eugenics, and it's not good science. The good science on it was done by Elinor Ostrom who won a Nobel-ish prize for fieldwork showing that various societies around the world had solved the issues of the governance of commons.

The thing is, Ostrom didn't disprove it as a concept. She just proved that with the right norms and rules in place it doesn't inevitably lead to collapse. IMO it's not about capitalism or communism, it's about population. A small number of people who all know each-other can negotiate an arrangement that everyone can agree to. But, once you have thousands or millions of people, and each user of the commons knows almost none of the other users, it's different. At that point you need a government to set rules, and law enforcement to enforce those rules. That, of course, fails when the commons is something like the world's atmosphere and there's no worldwide government that can set and enforce rules.

The famous tragedy of the commons essay was written by a eugenicist to spread propaganda

And enshitification proofs that capitalism doesn't work.

I think it's a refutation of unregulated production & resource distribution in general.

In socialism, distribution would be handled by the state or locality, by the producers themselves, by a work coupon system, with money (a la market socialism), or theoretically in a sort of free-for-all all where people just request what they need. Only the last one is really implicated in a tragedy of the commons type scenario, with the money and work coupon systems potentially causing a smaller degree of that sort of an issue (as there would be less inequality, so less possibility of overproduction due to demand). Producers would, in that case, be encouraged to produce more to fill the increased demand, but there wouldn't be a profit motive for doing so, and so a consumer-side tragedy of the commons is less likely. Also, producers' access to resources would theoretically be more tightly regulated than in capitalism, but that isn't necessarily the case.

In capitalism, distribution is dictated by the money system obviously and due the massive inequality there is a big disparity among people's buying power - but more importantly companies consume the vast majority of resources and are encouraged to grow infinitely in a world of finite resources - creating demand where it doesn't naturally exist to squeeze more profit out of folks' savings, make them take on debt, or cause them to deprioritize other purchases.

In capitalism, people are not encouraged to consume infinitely more because it is not possible. You only have so many needs and so much income as an individual. The market invents new needs with advertising and such (you need makeup, you need the newest smartphone with ten cameras, you need glasses that let facebook spy on you), but consumers' buying power is limited. People can't really cause a market-wide tragedy of the commons, only companies can because they have the vast majority of the access to resources and the ability and motive (profit motive) to acquire them.

Tragedy of the commons, or some iteration of it, seems inevitable under capitalism, but is mitigated or eliminated under socialism

When engaging in a rational discussion of facts and the other throws logic out the window... You have only yourself to blame for continuing as if the rules hadn't changed. 😶

Elinor Claire "Lin" Ostrom (née Awan; August 7, 1933 – June 12, 2012) was an American political scientist and political economist[1][2][3] whose work was associated with New Institutional Economicsand the resurgence of political economy.[4]In 2009, she was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her "analysis of economic governance, especially the commons", which she shared with Oliver E. Williamson; she was the first woman to win the prize.[5]

While the original work on the tragedy of the commons concept suggested that all commons were doomed to failure, they remain important in the modern world. Work by later economists has found many examples of successful commons, and Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize for analysing situations where they operate successfully.[17][14] For example, Ostrom found that grazing commons in the Swiss Alps have been run successfully for many hundreds of years by the farmers there.[18]

Ostrom's law

Ostrom's law is an adage that represents how Elinor Ostrom's works in economicschallenge previous theoretical frameworks and assumptions about property, especially the commons. Ostrom's detailed analyses of functional examples of the commons create an alternative view of the arrangement of resources that are both practically and theoretically possible. This eponymous law is stated succinctly by Lee Anne Fennell as:

A resource arrangement that works in practice can work in theory.[42]

Does anyone actually think it's pro-capitalism? Though the social psych equivalent to this is just the concept of the harvesting dilemma and the main lesson is generally pro government regulation (regardless of economics). Social dilemmas like this apply to any common good everyone benefits from, be it air quality, military defense, public parks, public safety, etc. (when explaining, I use a few right wing examples too, even if I am a bit ACAB myself lol).

Basically, they simply don't exist without some form of social agreement not to be a shitty greedy asshole. Government being the most obvious way to control that.

When private property is so ingrained in your brain that you think communism is when more people have land.

The tragedy of commons straight up describes capitalism, profits are privatized and costs are socialized, how can people think this is a refutation of communism.

I never even thought it was that deep (idk if in other countries ppl go over it in school or something, I first heard of it online) so I never really understood how people are relating it to any economic system. All it's saying to me is that one bad actor can be enough to ruin something for everyone - as far as I'm concerned it's just prisoners' dilemma in a larger group. So we need some way of enforcing that, if a shared ressource is vulnerable to singular bad actors (which isn't all of them, e.g. some people abusing welfare doesn't suddenly skyrocket costs), it won't be abused.

Edit: just realized I forgot whether tragedy of the commons was about some few fucking up the pasture for everyone, or everyone slightly overusing it. The latter is ofc a bit different, but "ah I can cheat the system a little, I need it after all" isn't an uncommon sentiment. That one usually just means you need a bit of a buffer, though, because most people won't grossly abuse something. (And of course, it's still quite independent of economic systems - regional software pricing for example is ultimately a capitalist thing to sell more, and yet would fall under this as it's usually possible to get these prices from other regions.)

It's about understanding the difference between the dictionary definitions of "communism" and "capitalism" and how they are actually practiced in the real life.

One of them is a system where the super rich hoard all the wealth and use the news media they own to keep the poor and middle classes fighting with each other while they, the rich, run off with all the f*cking money.

And the other one is a system where the super rich hoard all the wealth and use the news media they own to keep the poor and middle classes fighting with each other while they, the rich, run off with all the f*cking money.

"But wait a minute," you ask. "Aren't those the same thing" Yeah. Congratulations. You GOT it.